This upgrade was so cool, I just had to write about it! I've been putting off upgrading my media encoding application for a while now, but when Sorenson Media offered a limited 40% discount on upgrades to Squeeze 8.5 Pro I jumped onboard. I'm a huge fan of Sorenson Squeeze and it's very much a mission critical part of my post setup.

Squeeze 8.5 Pro now supports Avid DNxHD and Apple ProRes output. That's right, it means you can encode edit-ready, native codec media from just about any source file straight into Avid Media Composer or Apple Final Cut Pro. No more lengthy file conversions and imports.

The Avid DNxHD workflow is really slick:

Step 1: import source media. In this case an H.264 clip filmed with a GoPro cam. Step 2: slap on a DNxHD preset and change the frame rate to 25fps. Hit Squeeze it! and don't go too far because this version of Squeeze is on steriods - I processed a 11:26 clip in just under 16 minutes on a laptop.

Step 3: Copy the .mxf files in the resulting folder to your Avid MediaFiles folder on your media drive.

Step 4: Launch Avid Media Composer, open a project, import the .aaf file into a bin and ta-da, you've got Avid media ready to edit.

Now that is quick!

Available at www.sorensonmedia.com