PAGE
1, 2,
complete, home
Sorenson Video 3 Basic
[Page 2 of 2]
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 http://www.sorenson.com.
Post
a comment or question in the Digital
Media Designer User Forum!
Stephen
Schleicher is the producer of DMNTV,
Digital
Animators and Digital
WebCast and is the host of the Digital WebCast forum at
the World Wide User Groups. He has taught at Fort Hays State
University in Hays, Kansas, and at the American InterContinental
University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he also ran his own
animation company, Thunderhead Productions. Stephen also freelanced
in the Atlanta area as a producer/editor for five years working
on everything from training videos to live shows.
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