Fed up with Sorenson

[Alex_Manifest_M]

Okay....end of my rope with Sorenson....has so many problems they are "working on patches for" that it is nuts. What is another compression package I should try. I use it on the mac and it is the only program that consistantly crashes and STILL has not gotten the watermark issue taken care of. Email customer support has been really bad the past month.

so folks....what do you recomend I try next?

[gaybucks_chip]

Canopus Procoder is the most commonly mentioned competitor to Sorenson. I haven't used it but have heard good things about it.

I don't know about the Mac versions, but on the PC side, I've found that 4.1 is actually a lil more stable than 4.2, you might try it...

[Alex_Manifest_M]

Thanks...I will check it out!

[nicedreams]

Okay....end of my rope with Sorenson....has so many problems they are "working on patches for" that it is nuts. What is another compression package I should try. I use it on the mac and it is the only program that consistantly crashes and STILL has not gotten the watermark issue taken care of. Email customer support has been really bad the past month.

so folks....what do you recomend I try next?

What are your problems with sorenson? I've been looking at getting it recently. I've been using the trial version and its been working just fine. Are your problems mac related problems?

Jimmy

[gaybucks_chip]

also, for what it's worth, I spoke with a tech at Sorenson when I was at macworld who was very helpful and knowledgeable and offered up his email address if I had issues... PM me and I'll provide you with it if you want.

I've also played with Canopus in the meantime, as we were also having some issues with Sorenson. Honestly, my opinion on Canopus is it seems very bloated and a resource hog, and doesn't seem nearly as intuitive or, after an hour's use, as flexible as Squeeze.

So while Squeeze might be buggy, right now, I'm inclined to stick with it.

[steven619]

What is your end goal with using Sorenson?

I may have some other ideas that are hardware and/or software related.

[Alex_Manifest_M]

The problem I have with Sorenson is that if I try to compress WMV and MOV in the same session it always ALWAYS crashes. Additionally the watermark feature (of HUGE importance is not working at all and they tell me that they hope to have that fixed in the next version). So when I have to compress video I can not just set it and go...I DO have to sit there so that when it crashes, I can reload and start over from the clips that have not yet been completed. It was supposed to make things easier.

[gaybucks_chip]

Sorenson is a little buggy and annoys me, but I tried using Canopus and thought it was a complete piece of shit. Seemed like it was a MUCH bigger resource hog than Sorenson, and wasn't really any more reliable, plus it wasn't very intuitive.

Here are some tips I've found that help with Sorenson

-- Use the "watch folder" rather than the "import clips." For whatever reason, it's more prone to crashing when you load a bunch of clips.

-- Sorenson is a LOT less stable on Athlon processors. I have no idea why, but I've noticed on at least four different machines in our office that the Intel machines never seem to have problems with Sorenson while the Athlons almost always do.

-- As for the watermark feature, I'd say just add the watermark in whatever your editing software (Premiere, Vegas) is. As part of our workflow, we routinely output a non-watermarked version (which we save for future uses) and a watermarked version (which we encode to WM and put up on the websites.) Also, as I understand it, Sorenson will only do a plain text watermark anyway, so if you want one with a logo, you'll need to do it a different way anyway, unless that feature has been upgraded.

[Alex_Manifest_M]

sounds good to me...will give that a shot. Thanks!