TV  Technology by Geoff Polster

This is the dawning of the age of compression. Consider this: you produce an HD news story in 1080i; then you need to deliver an uncompressed version for broadcast, a compressed version for the station's Web site and a highly compressed version for iPhones and other handheld devices.

We're now shooting at resolutions higher than ever before, and distributing resolutions lower than ever before.

Thank the engineers for compression. One of the companies that followed this trend is Sorenson Media. Their latest product is Sorenson Squeeze 6, which is designed to fit all of the needs of the modern media producer.

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Sorenson Squeeze has been around for a long time, and it is one of the premier software applications that can take any source video and deliver it to any destination, no matter how small. It all revolves around codecs, the complex algorithms that convert the huge source video files into small, portable versions that can be streamed to cell phones.

Sorenson Media has developed some of the best codecs around, and these are incorporated into Sorenson Squeeze 6. But Sorenson Squeeze is also designed to use the best codec available regardless of the maker. Therefore, Sorenson Squeeze 6 incorporates Apple Motion JPEG, Main Concept H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and others to give you the choices you need to get the best compression for the job.

The main problem with compression is that it is complex. So, Sorenson Squeeze 6 is focused on making the task as simple as possible, while still preserving your ability to control the process as you learn more about how to make things work well. read more...