anyone got any comments on this version - I'm not happy with the export from edius and have tried Handbrake but squeeze seems to give you a great selection of export formats - I'm just wincing at the price.
,

Squeeze is great at what it does:
* A fast and efficient workflow when you have to encode 20 clips today, and 200 clips tomorrow.
* Filters like black restore and gaussian blur to apply when bad video comes your way and you gotta fix it without sending back to an NLE.
* Encode to all the latest codecs like multibitrate segmented and indexed HLS, as well as obselete codecs like WMV... and today's standards like the x264 version of h.264.

If you're encoding as a business, these are features you've got to have. If you're occasionally called on to do high-volume or boutique encoding it's a great product. If you're doing occasional vanilla encoding it's a great working environment with excellent workflows, but spendy.

On the other hand, though I own Squeeze, I most frequently encode using Handbrake. It's a one trick pony, but that one trick is the one I need 99% of the time.
* It provides a decent set of controls for the truely excellent x264 version of h.264, and that's what I use for almost everything.
* It handles low volumes just fine, and is very fast.
* It's freeware, which is good and bad. Inexpensive but not supported like a commercial product.
* It has its quirks.

For h.264/mp4, Squeeze isn't going to do a better job than Handbrake. But HB doesn't even try to cover Squeeze's state-of-the-art feature set, if that's what you need.

thx - great answer - I think I'll bit the bullet

How is Squeeze for taking HD material down to MPEG2 for use on a DVD compared to using other programs such as TMPGEnc, or the Lanczos3 option in Edius. My concern here is quality, not time to encode.

I've never done any MPEG2 encoding in Squeeze. For a proper evaluation you might download the trial version and do some apples-to-apples comparisons with TMPGEnc and Edius on your typical content. If you do test I'd be interested in your results.

Lanczos is excellent though. IIRC Squeeze is using it as well. I was always happy enough with the Vegas/DVDArchitect workflow.

Am running some tests now. Using what are essentially default settings for each program and starting with a short Canopus HQ 1080i clip:
- Edius 7 output has the least DCT ringing around moving objects (essentially none), but looks a bit softer (viewed at about 24" from a 32 inch HD TV).
- TMPGenc VMW (and AW) have DCT ringing around moving objects and look identical (no big surprise).
- Squeeze had a bit less ringing, a wee bit sharper, a slight color shift, a slight resize, and some diagonal line step artifacts, but that might reflect internal default setting I have not yet sorted out.

Viewed from seven feet the differences were not noticeable.
Testing will continue this evening.

The resize is not Squeeze, it appears to be from everything else. Depending on which product I use (at mainly default settings) I got various SD image sized (with black boarders to fill space at times. These ranged from:

720x486
712x480
704x480
720x480

This is starting with a 1920x1080i video clip.

More testing to go.