| The Digital Media Series Sorenson Video 2.1 Developer Edition Reviewed by: Michael Flaminio Rating: *** Review Date: 4.13.00 Updated: 4.20.00 Developer: Sorenson Media MSRP: $499 |
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Sorenson Media's Sorenson Video may not be too well known to Mac users, but you probably use it last time you fire up Apple's QuickTime. Apple originally licensed Sorenson Video for QuickTime 3.0. Since then, it has been the workhorse behind much of QuickTime's content.
Sorenson Video is a codec for encoding and decoding digital video. The codec's encoding works within QuickTime and can be configured via the Export Options. It specializes in taking a large clip of video and compressing it into a very small file. While squishing the
video file, Sorenson Video does still retains
excellent quality. The Sorenson codec is ideal for small web clips all the way up
to full screen multimedia projects. But perhaps what's most unique about Sorenson
Video is that it requires little CPU power. The MPEG format can also highly compress
video and retain a high level of quality, but it requires much more CPU power to
encode and decode. In some cases, MPEG files may require a very fast computer or
even dedicated hardware to properly perform.QuickTime Basic/Pro
QuickTime users benefit greatly from Sorenson Video. The free Basic version of QuickTime fully supports viewing files compressed with Sorenson Video. For $30, QuickTime Pro users can utilize the encoding power of Sorenson Video. QuickTime Pro essentially allows users to save files with the Sorenson format. Users can control frame rates, frame sizes, key frame settings and can also automatically detect scene changes. This of course is in addition to QuickTime Pro's other video features such as filters and other codec formats. For the most part, these simple QuickTime Pro options will probably cover most users' needs.
If you work with video compression frequently, the next step is Sorenson Video Developer. For $499, QuickTime developers can gain nearly complete control over their work.
Sorenson Video Developer Edition
The developer edition is not for everyone. Unless you work professionally with video and need a great deal of control over compression, QuickTime Pro should be adequate. If you bring a lot of video onto the web, especially with specific sizes and download rates, the developer edition is for you.
Sorenson Video Developer Edition has several features over what's available with QuickTime Pro. Developer edition offers control over encoding speeds, called Quick Compress. This can nearly cut encoding time in half, while only marginally losing quality. Developer can also automatically detect when a scene changes and insert a key frame. This improves quality between scene changes. Other features include flexible data rate tracking, which can control varying data playback rates, improved streaming support for Internet streaming, and playback scalability, which can alter playback quality for the particular system. The developer edition also support custom watermarks. Finally, the developer edition has G4 AltiVec support and also support multiprocessor Macs, which would be quite useful with a multiprocessor G4 computer.
Results
For the review I tested the basic and developer release of Sorenson Video and also
the Cinepak codec. Cinepak is another widely-used video 
codec.
One major feature of Sorenson Video has over Cinepak is that it supports the G4 processor.
With the G4 support, compression times can be cut more than in half.
I tested each codec on 400 MHz G4 and 400 MHz G3 processors. The tests were performed
on the same machine with identical settings and configurations. The test file was
a 134 MB DV movie. It measured 720 x 480 pixels and was captured with 29 frames per
second at high quality. Using the codecs, I compressed the DV file to a 360 x 240-pixle
QuickTime movie with 15 frames per second and high quality. The result for all tests
were interesting. Both basic and developer version of Sorenson compressed the file
down to 2.1 MB, while Cinepak came in at 9.9 MB. Besides being smaller, Sorenson
Video files also looked much better.
The G4 processor made the tasks surprisingly fast. Sorenson's G4 acceleration showed
off as the G4 was 2.5 times faster than the G3 processor. Cinepak on the other hand
does not have any G4 acceleration. In both cases, the Cinepak compression took the
same amount of time. With the G4 processor, the Sorenson Video codecs were over twice
as fast as Cinepak on both G3 and G4 processors.
Conclusions
For $500, average users probably won't gain much from the developer version 
of
Sorenson Video. The features are there, but for just video tinkering, it's not worth
it. The software is ideal for Web authoring and CD-ROM development. If your video
work requires a lot of control in these area, Sorenson Video is definitely a solution
for you.
For users looking for greater control over video compression, I suggest also looking
to Media Cleaner Pro from Terran Interactive. Media
Cleaner coupled with Sorenson Video Developer Edition creates a very powerful compression
tool with a very powerful user interface.
Pros: Extends QuickTime Pro by offering greater control over QuickTime compressions.
Ideal for Web and CD-ROM video authoring.
Cons: Price and features make it not for everybody.
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