First look reveals basic very nice
By Stephen Schleicher
Producer
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The
100k Canyon test. S2, VBR, and S3 Basic.
The
100k Cloud test. S2, VBR, and S3 Basic.
The
100k Fire test. S2, VBR, and S3 Basic. |
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While it would be nice to believe that everyone in the world is happily
sitting at home with a fast connection, that really isn't the case as
many people are still on 56k dialup. Because of this, I wanted to see
how these same clips would look at a lower compression setting. In this
next set of compression tests, I left all of the settings the same, but
lowered the rate to 100kbs (56k dialup). This is where Sorenson Video
3 Basic shines.
Again, in the canyon and clouds test, Sorenson Video 2 Basic and Sorenson
Video 3 Basic are pretty close. Sorenson Video 3 Basic is slightly softer
in the canyon clip than 2, but artifacts and smearing show up in the cloud
sample when compressed with Sorenson Video 2 Basic, and not in the Sorenson
Video 3 Basic CODEC. When examining the samples compressed with Sorenson
Video 2 VBR, many artifacts, color deviations and softening of the videos
make these settings fall behind.
The best example of how much better Sorenson Video 3 Basic is over the
other two settings can be seen in the fire example. Sorenson Video 2 Basic
falls apart very quickly, and Sorenson Video 2 VBR compressed the sample
into pixelation hell.
100 kbs file size results
Canyon
Sorenson Video 2 Basic 358KB
Sorenson Video 2 VBR 291KB
Sorenson Video 3 Basic 290KB
Clouds
Sorenson Video 2 Basic 247KB
Sorenson Video 2 VBR 171KB
Sorenson Video 3 Basic 168KB
Fire
Sorenson Video 2 Basic 248KB
Sorenson Video 2 VBR 124KB
Sorenson Video 3 Basic 171KB
Final Thoughts
If you are someone who is working in streaming media,
then you owe it to yourself to do some Sorenson Video 3 Standard tests
yourself. I think you will be just as pleased as we were when we began
compressing video and audio for streaming at Digital Media Net. The best
thing for those working in streaming media with limited budgets is that
Sorenson Video 3 Standard is free. You can't beat the improved quality
for cost there.
If the results we have gotten with Sorenson Video 3 Standard are any indication,
the Sorenson Video 3 Professional CODEC should produce some excellent
results in VBR and other compression setting modes. When I review Sorenson
Video 3 Professional, I'll run these tests again and post the results
in the review. For more information on the Sorenson 3 Video CODEC, visit
Sorenson.com
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