Watch all red carpet interviews from Streaming Media West in San Jose.
I talked to Peter Csathy, CEO of Sorenson Media, at the Streaming Media conference. I’ve always used Squeeze, Sorenson’s encoding solution, during the editing part of our production workflow to compress video for online delivery.
While the company has historically focused on encoding (licensing & tools), a specific part of the production workflow, it is expanding to become more of a total solution in the video editing, uploading and sharing ecosystem, helping video producers solve more pain points.
Sorenson is now an encoding licensing, encoding and online video platform company. The online video platform is a new business initiative for the company, an interesting addition, in my opinion.
Most Online Video Platform (OVP) companies don’t have any roots or a legacy business. They are start-ups that focus on one thing and typically raise VC funding to tide them over until they build their technology, sign up customers and generate enough revenue to sustain themselves.
In Sorenson’s case, they already generate revenue from licensing and selling encoding solutions and are investing capital from those lines of business to launch the OVP capability, a logical, complimentary business.
The beauty is that they are introducing video producers to the OVP service, Sorenson 360, via Squeeze, the encoding solution. 360 is baked into the Squeeze workflow.
Let me explain.
Generally, when I edit video, I edit all day and then compress video over night. When I come back into the studio the next day, I upload the compressed video to a video platform (brightcove, ooyala, blip, vimeo, twistage, kaltura) for a customer to review online, or to our Amazon S3 account for someone to download and watch locally. But the videos are sitting on my local computer until I get back in and upload them so they are available to others.
Squeeze now has the ability, once the compression is done, to automatically upload a video to my Sorenson 360 account and send an email notification to me that it is ready to preview online. That means that while I’m at home eating dinner I am notified that my video is compressed and uploaded and can then send a link to a customer to take a look at the video. I don’t need to go back to the studio the next morning to upload and share. The video is not stuck on my desktop.
Now that I am introduced to Sorenson 360 through the Squeeze integration, I may like the platform so much that I decide to use it as my OVP. I’m using it. I get familiar with it. It does what I need it to do. It becomes a numbers game for Sorenson.
If 1% of all Squeeze users start paying a monthly Software-as-a-Service subscription for Sorenson 360, they can start to generate enough revenue to cover costs and recoup the investment they made to develop the platform. Those people tell their friends and the service grows.
From Sorenson (minus marketing adjectives) about Squeeze 6:
Sorenson Squeeze 6, a video workflow solution, gives video editors new tools – such as email and text notifications and a secure review and approval process – that simplify workflow and enable editors to more easily encode and publish videos on the Internet, discs and devices.
Integrated Review & Approval workflow. Email and SMS text message notifications are sent along with password protected videos when jobs are completed. Includes 1-year complimentary Sorenson 360 Review & Approval account.
H.264 quality, new professional pre-processing filters including timecode, blur, RGB and tint, and the highest quality output formats including VP6 in every Squeeze version.
Faster encoding. Squeeze 6 is up to 5x faster than before.
Fully integrated into your workflow. Squeeze 6 is now seamlessly integrated with AVID, Final Cut Pro, iMovie and QuickTime Pro Applications.
Seamlessly publish your videos to multiple destinations including Sorenson 360, YouTube, Twitter, Akamai, Limelight, FTP sites and more.
Here are some screen shots I took while encoding the interview you see above directly from Final Cut. First I can pick Squeeze.
Then I can pick my encoding presets:
