I finally got around to trying out Sorenson Squeeze 6 and I feel like I’ve been living in the stone ages with my encoding after using it. Basically, it takes everything in and puts everything out without going into the myriad of specific codecs you can find on Sorenson’s site. The best part about it though is that it’s ridiculously easy to use, and very user friendly.

Sorenson claims that it is over 500% faster than the last version which was already pretty quick. The most fun element of Squeeze 6 is the new client approval process, utilizing it’s Sorenson 360 service. Basically, when the encode is done it will email it for review to your client, while simultaneously telling you that the render finished and it was emailed to your client. It can issue these alerts as SMS or emails. The client can click a button saying Approved or Dissaproved and make notes. I want to stress that this was super easy to do, and it comes with a tutorial video that explains everything you need to know very quickly and efficiently.

Using Sorenson is so easy cause it plays right to our video editing strengths, namely dragging and dropping filters on video clips. Want that video to have timecode overlaid on it? Drop a filter on it. Want it to be output as an FLV?  Drop an encoder type on it.

See all the details on Sorenson’s site, but I give it a big thumbs up. Oh bluray too. Bam!

PS:  It retails for $799.  Web producers may be able to get away with the Flash only version at $499.