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Sorenson Media Squeeze 6 Test Drive

Nov 23, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

           

Figure 4. HD H.264 Mac encoding trials. Click the figure for a full-resolution display.

Mac quality comparisons

As was the case in the Windows tests, both MainConcept-based encoders—Squeeze 6 and Adobe Media Encoder—proved superior to both Apple Compressor (which uses Apple's own H.264 codec) and Telestream Episode Pro (which uses the dicas codec) in my Mac tests. The difference between Squeeze 6 and Compressor was significant, particularly in HD comparisons. In contrast, the difference between Squeeze 6 and Episode was minor and commercially irrelevant, since it wouldn't be noticed without side-by-side comparisons—which, of course, web viewers never have.

There are few sub-$1,000 Windows Media encoding tools on the Mac, since neither the Mac version of Adobe Media Encoder or Compressor produce WMV files natively. To fill out the comparisons, I added Telestream's Episode Engine into the mix, which starts at $3,995 and is much more efficient at producing multiple WMV files than Squeeze (it's the most efficient multifile encoding engine I've reviewed on the Mac).

Figure 5. SD Mac WMV encoding trials. Click the figure for a full-resolution display.

When producing WMV files, Squeeze 6 was noticeably clearer and sharper than Squeeze 5, with less fading and much better color fidelity. As was the case with the the Windows version, both Telestream products dropped frames during extremely high-motion sequences, so though single-frame quality was comparable, Squeeze's smoothness was superior. In HD trials, Telestream kept pace in high-motion quality, but Squeeze pulled ahead with much better quality for talking-head clips.