Sorenson Media has launched Sorenson Squeeze 7, an upgrade of the company’s video encoding application. Among its key new features are GPU acceleration, adaptive bitrate encoding and myriad new input and output formats.
 
Peter Csathy, CEO of Sorenson Media, says Sorenson Squeeze 7's new improvements include:

° New GPU acceleration. By utilizing GPUs, the specialized microprocessors that power graphics cards in personal computers, laptops and workstations, Sorenson Squeeze 7 delivers significantly faster encoding times. Sorenson Squeeze 7 automatically recognizes when the user’s primary CPU or GPU may be faster and will use the better resource for the encoding job. The software is optimized for CUDA, the computing architecture created by Nvidia that powers a variety of popular graphics processing units. Internal benchmark tests have shown Sorenson Squeeze 7 is up to three times faster than Sorenson Squeeze 6 when encoding in the H.264 format using GPU acceleration.
 
° New adaptive bitrate encoding. Sorenson Squeeze 7 handles all aspects of adaptive bitrate encoding, from encoding multiple renditions of videos at varying data rates to segmenting files and uploading them to the user’s chosen content delivery network. This streamlined workflow frees users from the previously labor-intensive, detailed and time-consuming process involving many steps and tools.
 
° New input and output formats. Sorenson Squeeze 7 adds Flash, Apple ProRes, and MPEG Transport Streams to its wide range of existing input formats. New output formats available in Squeeze 7 include WebM, MPEG Transport Streams with H.264 and Dolby AC3 for broadcasters, MPEG-2 elementary streams for Blu-ray authoring with H.264 and VC-1, DVB for cable/satellite/terrestrial television, and digital signage-specific formats.
 
° New audio only output formats. Sorenson Squeeze 7 now supports audio-only output formats such as Dolby’s AC3, AAC, AIFF, M4A, MP3, Ogg, WAV and WMA.
 
° New Adobe Premiere plug-in. With the addition of a unique plug-in for Adobe Premiere (compatible with Creative Suite 4 and Creative Suite 5), Sorenson Squeeze 7 now provides seamless encoding from within every major professional non-linear editing application, including Avid’s Media Composer, Newscutter and Symphony and Apple’s iMovie, Final Cut and Final Cut Pro.
 
Sorenson Squeeze 7 is available immediately for electronic download or for shipping in CD form. The suggested retail price for Sorenson Squeeze 7 is US$799. Upgrades from previous versions of Sorenson Squeeze begin at $299 (with special limited $199 introductory pricing for Squeeze 6 users). For additional info about purchasing Sorenson Squeeze 7, visit www.sorensonmedia.com/squeeze-pricing .