One thing that caught everyones attention with the recent release of Sorenson Squeeze 4.5 was the claim that it was up to 3x faster than the previous version. Jan Ozer took the new version (PowerPack edition) for a spin and his results seem to back up that claim. In his test he took a 1 minute source file and produced 4 output files in MP4, MOV, FLV and MPEG-2 format using an Intel core duo Mac:

• Squeeze 4.0 completed in 37 minutes 53 seconds
• Squeeze 4.5 completed in 11 minutes 45 seconds

That's a pretty hefty increase. Of course the speed increase means nothing if the quality suffers. The review compares Squeeze 4.5 to Windows Media Encoder, QuickTime Pro and Flix Pro. While Squeeze comes out on top against Windows Media and QuickTime, Flix Pro seems to have the edge with Flash encoding.

Sorenson has a pretty complete feature set that would fit in nicely with a large production site including batch encoding, watch folders, DVD creation, FTP and even adding output to iTunes. But remember that ugly little 1,500 video encoding limit that was discovered a couple months ago? According to this review Sorenson will be releasing an unlimited encoding version of the product at some point in the future.

It's a good review so go check it out. You can download a trial version of Squeeze 4.5 here.