Sorenson Media announced its new Sorenson Squeeze 8 and Squeeze 8 Lite video encoding and transcoding applications.

For more information visit: www.sorensonmedia.com

Unedited press release follow:

Sorenson Media Launches New Sorenson Squeeze 8 – Empowers Users with Unmatched Quality, Flexibility, Control, and Cost-Effectiveness

• New Seamless Squeeze Server Integration with Squeeze 8 Enables Multiple Users to Simultaneously Offload Encoding to Separate Servers, Streamline High-Volume Workflows
• Squeeze 8 Now Includes Full Adaptive Bitrate Encoding, Increased GPU Acceleration
• New x264 Support Allows Squeeze 8 Users to Optimize, Customize Parameters of H.264 Encoding to Their Needs
• Additional New Squeeze 8 Lite Version Offers the Industry’s Highest-Quality, Most Cost-Effective Encoding and Transcoding to the Prosumer Mass Market

SAN DIEGO (November 1, 2011) – Sorenson Media today announced the immediate availability of Sorenson Squeeze 8, which adds enhanced functionality and ease-of-use to the company’s gold-standard video encoding and transcoding application at a lower price point. In addition, the company has also introduced Sorenson Squeeze 8 Lite, which makes select features of Squeeze 8 accessible to prosumers at a further significantly reduced price.

Key additions to Sorenson Squeeze 8 provide users with the highest quality and greatest control in encoding and transcoding. These include: seamless Squeeze Server integration; adaptive bitrate encoding for new formats, unprecedented x264 support and optimization; and enhanced GPU acceleration.

Integration with Squeeze Server. The new version’s seamless integration with Squeeze Server maximizes encoding and transcoding power for the enterprise and other high-volume users by enabling users to free up their desktop machines by offloading encoding jobs to a separate server. Squeeze Server enables secure video encoding behind a user’s firewall, and can easily run in any Windows-based server environment — including the Cloud.

Adaptive Bitrate Support for Most Popular Formats. A major improvement over Squeeze 7, this latest release now includes optimized performance for all three leading adaptive bitrate streaming platforms: Adobe Dynamic Streaming; Apple HTTP Adaptive Streaming; and Microsoft Smooth Streaming. The unique adaptive bitrate support automatically transcodes each individual video file into multiple, chunked segments in a full array of bitrates, organizes these segments into a folder, and delivers them to the specified destinations for playback on anydevice. This process simplifies and streamlines workflows by eliminating unnecessary tools and steps required by other applications.

Full x264 Support and Optimization. In addition to being the current quality leader for encoding using the MainConcept H.264 codec, Sorenson Squeeze 8 is one of the first commercial video encoding applications to include full support for the increasingly popular x264 codec. This new support opens thex264 codec in a way that has never been done before, employing an intuitiveuser interface, complete with in-product instructions that enable video professionals to easily adjust and optimize up to 48 major encoding parameters, including key frame rates, encoding modes and performance, to adapt the popular H.264 format to their needs and workflow.

Enhanced GPU Acceleration. Optimized for Squeeze 8, GPU acceleration using NVIDIA CUDA has become the best option for creating .mp4 proxy files in both speed and quality. CUDA encoding enables both faster encoding and video quality equal to video content encoded without GPU acceleration, including true to source black levels.

Ease-of-Use.  In addition, Sorenson Squeeze 8 re-thinks the user experience and includes new features to improve the overall ease-of-use of the application and give users greater control of their videos, including:

• Tooltips serve as a ready-reference guide giving users additional details by simply hovering the curser over any button or control.
• Fine-grain controls associated with each codec enable users to adjust more aspects within each setting.
• New Preset naming conventions gives users greater control and organization of more than 246 Presets shipped with Squeeze 8.
• Enhanced Preset Exchange provides users broader and more intuitive access to Presets developed by some of theworld’s leading encoding professionals.
• Encode preview has been refined to display five seconds of encoded video to visually demonstrate encoded video easily and clearly before an encode is run.

“Sorenson Squeeze 8 packs more punch than ever, in two versions with significantly reduced prices. It truly expands our tradition of innovation leadership in the encoding and transcoding arena – and of anticipating and meeting the needs of every type of user, from the individual to the enterprise,” said Randon Morford, Squeeze product manager for Sorenson Media. “The full product’s integration with Squeeze Server moves the most painful and time consuming encoding tasks to a separate server, freeing up the productive capability of the computer and allowing users to focus on more strategic tasks, while our x264 optimization tools provide greater control than ever over all the key encoding parameters of H.264.”

New Squeeze 8 Lite
Available for thefirst time, Sorenson Squeeze 8 Lite enables the rapidly expanding market of web developers, videographers and other content creators who are focused primarily on online publishing to cost-effectively encode and transcode in the most popular video formats, including Flash FLV, Flash SWF, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, WMA, WebM and others. This streamlined version of the software enables single file encoding to the highest standards with the ability to still usepopular settings and filters available in Sorenson Squeeze.

“Sorenson Squeeze 8 Lite brings the power of Squeeze encoding to a larger population of users at a significantly reduced price,” said Morford. “As video consumption continues to grow exponentially online and across a multitude of mobile devices, we recognize there is a growing segment of users who want and need the ability to easily publish the highest-quality video online, but who do not need the full features an enterprise or broadcast professional might need. Quality is credibility, and Squeeze 8 Lite gives more users the ability to fully engage viewers and deliver the best possible online video experience.”

Pricing and Availability
Sorenson Squeeze 8 is available immediately. The suggested retail price for Sorenson Squeeze 8 is $599 ($200 less than the suggested retail price for the earlier full version) and Squeeze 8 Lite is $199. The Squeeze 8 “classic” edition also includes a complimentary account for the Sorenson 360 online video platform, complete with Review & Approval functionality. For additional information about purchasing Sorenson Squeeze 8, visit: www.sorensonmedia.com/squeeze-pricing.

About Sorenson Media
Sorenson Media (www.sorensonmedia.com) is an award-winning provider of the highest quality, differentiated video encoding solutions. With highly scalable cloud- and server-based encoding solutions and desktop applications, Sorenson Media empowers the enterprise and video professionals to easily and cost-effectively encode, transcode, manage and deliver the highest-quality video online and to mobile devices. Since 1995, Sorenson Media has been at the forefront of bringing online and mobile video into the economic and cultural mainstream. As video rapidly proliferates online, businesses and video professionals increasingly rely on Sorenson Media’s innovative solutions and legacy of trust to meet their evolving needs.