how does Sorenson Squeeze perform with mpeg2 encoding?

mpeg2 encoding is my priority but i like SS's other formats

i believe that squeeze uses the mainconcept mpeg encoder, which does a pretty decent job... but you should look at procoder as well, i think that it's a better mpeg encoder.

I agree with Dan. Squeeze is targeted toward web delivery. If MPEG-2 is your priority then it's not the best product for you.

Thing is our systems are Mac (FCP) so i cant use Procoder.

we tried FCP's Compressor but the quality is subpar and its extremely slow,.


any recommendations?

Hmm, the only thing I like about Compressor is that it seems faster than the other encoders on the Mac (well, that and it came free with FCP). Most people on this board like BitVice, but I don't find the quality that much better than Compressor when working with DV source, which is all I do, and it is painfully slow. When I used the demo it was at least 3 times slower than Compressor. Still, people on this board and on the DVD Studio Pro Apple forum who have way more experience than me say that BitVice blows away the quality of Compressor. I think Digigami encoders are supposed to be fast: http://www.digigami.com/products.html. But I don't know anyone who uses them. MainConcept is another option, but if you are going to use that then you might as well get Squeeze. Again I found little difference with DV source, but the speed is comparable to Compressor. You will have to play with the gamma a bit in MainConcept because it tends to make things darker than the source.

Squeeze is great for web formats, but if you are serious about MPEG-2 on a Mac then BitVice is probably the way to go.

Edit: I guess I should ask: what is your basis for comparison when you say Compressor is slow? If you are comparing to a system running on Windows then you may be out of luck. As far as I can tell, CPU clock speed is the biggest factor in determining speed of MPEG-2 encodes, so a 2Ghz G5 will be much slower than a 3Ghz Pentium 4 regardless of other factors.

i've tested Compressor, BitVice, Digigami and Popwire

it appears that Popwire's Compression Master 3.2 turns out tops
and guess what. Its the fastest of the lot as well!