Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 18, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The success of YouTube has also motivated Sorenson: The Salt Lake City (Utah) company, known for its Squeeze conversion software, has developed an Enterprise Solution that handles the conversion, management, upload, hosting and publishing of videos. It consists of the two components Squish and Squish-Net.
Squish is a Java applet that runs in the customer’s browser or another web application and uses client resources to convert video files and streams into Flash video format and upload them. Squish recognizes the video formats ASF, DV, MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and WMV. It also handles the image formats GIF, JPEG and PNG. According to Sorenson, users can simply drag and drop files onto the application or capture the video stream from a connected camera.
After uploading to the server, Squish-Net takes over. It is a server-side backend that embeds image and video files into websites. It offers all “Web 2.0” functions such as organization, viewing and sharing, as well as ratings, comments and the like. Tools for managing user rights and approving uploaded content are also available to the website operator. According to Sorenson, the design of Squish-Net can be changed easily using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Sorenson distributes both products under a licensing model. With 5,000 users, the price per year and user is 1 US dollar for Squish and 1.80 US dollars for Squish-Net. Traffic and storage costs are added. Both products are to be available from May 2007.
The new XCEL 2500 / 3500 HD video encoding cards will be available from June 2007. They are intended to make encoding HD material in real time possible. Sorenson recommends using certified computers such as the HP XW 8400. The cards currently process only the MPEG-2 and H.264 codecs. When the HP workstation (4-core Xeon, 2.66 GHz) is used, Sorenson specifies the following speeds: Resolution 1920 x 1080i with MPEG-2: 38 frames/s, with H.264: 10 frames/s. Accordingly, processing that is in some cases faster than real time is possible. The price for the cards starts at 6,495 US dollars.
Further links:
- Sorenson
