Tutorial: Sorenson Squeeze 9
Squeeze offers great single- and multiple-file encoding performance, excellent quality, and a range of features that other encoders in its class simply can't match. Here's a look at how Squeeze works and how to leverage some of its key features.
Divide and Conquer
When you’re encoding a single long file, most encoders render from start to finish, which can be slow and inefficient. Squeeze uses a process called Divide and Conquer to divide the longer file into smaller portions that it can render simultaneously, and then piece back together into the complete file. You can see the files it’s creating during the encoding process in the window shown in Figure 10 (below).
Figure 10. Squeeze dividing and conquering.
This technique allows Squeeze to more efficiently use available CPU resources and encode single files much faster.
Distributing Encoded Files
Next we’ll look at how Squeeze helps you distribute your encoded files more effectively. For example, HTML5 is a great technology for streaming single files to desktops and mobile devices. Squeeze is the only tool that produces both WebM and H.264 files, and generates the HTML code necessary to post the file to a website.
You use an HTML5 preset to encode your files. Press Squeeze It! and Squeeze produces the two encoded files, plus the JPEG poster image and the necessary HTML code (Figure 11, below).
Figure 11. Squeeze generates the full complement of files necessary to publish HTML5-encoded video and switch to Flash on devices that don’t support HTML5. Click the image to see it at full size.
Squeeze creates a SWF file and the necessary code to fall back to Flash, so you can deliver to legacy browsers that aren’t HTML5-compatible. This technique lets you deliver to all iOS and Android devices, and virtually all desktops, all without any coding. No competing product offers anything like it.
Adaptive File Creation
No tool makes it simpler to create the files necessary for adaptive streaming, whether via Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming, Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming, or DASH.
Squeeze’s well-conceived assortment of presets make it simple to create your files and follow best practices like using the same keyframe interval for all files and the same audio parameters (Figure 12, below).
Figure 12. Adaptive file creation in Squeeze 9. Click the image to see it at full size.
During encoding, Squeeze produces all the necessary chunked audio/video files and manifest files; all you have to do is upload them all to a web server and link to the main manifest file.