The 2008 Encoder Shootout

H.264 quality trailed Squeeze slightly, but it was slightly ahead of the new Compressor results, though most viewers wouldn’t notice absent side-by-side quality comparisons. ProCoder’s H.264 file peaked at 960Kbps, compared to 730Kbps for Compressor and the Adobe Media Encoder, which may be a problem on tight connections.

Sorenson Squeeze 4.5.7
Sorenson Squeeze 4.5.7 Compression Suite ($599 with Flash) is a novice compressionist’s dream come true—easy to use, handles all relevant formats, available in Mac and Windows, and produces generally high-quality output. There’s just one thing—friends don’t let friends deinterlace in Squeeze. Instead, render deinterlaced intermediate files from your editor to submit to Squeeze and you’ll be much happier with overall quality.

Squeeze offers multiformat batch functionality along with watch folders, and a good dosage of postencoding features like burning a simple DVD or uploading a file via FTP. The interface is, without question, the easiest encoding interface available. You import a file or files by pressing the big Import File button, which loads it into a batch tree. From there, you drag a setting or settings onto the file, press Squeeze It!, and you’re off and running.

Squeeze presents all encoding options on one screen, which makes them easy to scan and customize. The program presents all codecs in a similar interface, rather than changing the interface and workflow for each codec, making it conceptually simpler than ProCoder. Squeeze lets you toggle most settings between a Simple view, which shows only basics such as data rate and frame size, and Advanced, which usually exposes codec-specific parameters.

One quirk is that Sorenson doesn’t enable "auto key frames" for all settings, and this parameter is only viewable when Advanced parameters are exposed. Once you notice a few ugly frames after scene changes, you’ll quickly remember to enable this for all of your encoding. You’ll also quickly learn not to trust Squeeze’s deinterlacing algorithms, which are unreliable once diagonal lines enter the picture. Basically, you should never encode interlaced source video in Squeeze; instead, export a deinterlaced file from your editor and encode that.

Working with our pre-interlaced test file, Squeeze’s Windows Media output was nearly indistinguishable from that produced by the Windows Media Encoder, and Semaphore revealed a highly streamable file that hovered around the target data rate, with one peak to 650Kbps. Squeeze placed I-Frames at only 50% of the scene changes that I tested, however, though this didn’t impact streaming quality. For 2-pass variable bit rate encoding to the VP6 Flash format, Squeeze’s results were generally good, though there were some concerns, mostly relating to clips shot against a compression-unfriendly background, like an open, light-colored, reflective wall. For example, on a clip that was shot against a blank white wall, Squeeze showed more compression artifacts than Flix Pro, and had some ugly moments. Still, in most other sequences, including high motion, Squeeze ranks at or near the top.

Squeeze performed well in H.264 quality trials, producing output similar to or slightly better than Compressor, particularly during extreme high-motion sequences. The only problem was that the Squeeze file would not load into Semaphore without crashing, though the file played normally in QuickTime Player, and loaded without incident in Premiere Pro.

Telestream Episode Pro 4.4
The picture for Telestream Episode has been brightening considerably over the last few revisions. I’ve always liked the interface and found deinterlacing quality outstanding, but previously was put off by sub-par quality in several formats and potentially misleading configuration options in the program’s templates. The company has made many improvements since our last look which eliminate most of my serious objections.

First, the basics. Telestream offers two versions of Episode: the standard version ($395, $495 with Flash 8) and Episode Pro ($895, $995 with Flash 8), which adds support for more exotic formats and unlimited batch capabilities (the standard version can only process 25 jobs at a time). Both versions offer widgets for drag-and-drop encoding, but neither offers watch folders. For this, you’ll need to upgrade to the Episode Engine. Again, there are multiple Engine versions and the ability to access clusters of computers for faster than real time encoding.

The workflow is generally simple; you drag a clip or clips into the Batch window, drag a canned or custom preset onto the clip, modify the clip as desired, and off you go. Though they are presented in a logical order, Telestream typically displays many more encoding controls than any other utility. As if that weren’t enough, those encoding controls are often unique to Episode. Needless to say, this can be confusing to newbies and experienced compressionists alike.