A few weeks ago, Telestream, the developer of Flip4Mac (QuickTime WMV component) has updated its Mac-only applications Episode and Episode Pro to 4.3, respectively. So what do these Mac applications do? Episode is a compression suite. It’s similar to Sorenson Media’s Sorenson Squeeze. Episode contains many compression profiles. And it supports many multimedia formats such as MOV, AVI, MPEG and WMV.

One of the most useful profile set is NTSC <-> PAL Conversion. If you have a NTSC VOB file and want to convert it for PAL, for example, then you can use ‘dv_DV-NTSC -> DV25 – PAL’ and simply change export formats. Or use ‘dv_DV-PAL -> DV-NTSC to convert PAL VOB into NTSC VOB. Other useful profile sets include Apple TV, iPod Video and MPEG-2.

Telestream is the developer of Flip4Mac. So you can count on Episode for WMV support. Episode lets you import WMV and transcode it with a different compressor. Episode also allows the user to transcode video with WMV3.

There are currently four different products of Episode. They are Episode ($395), Episode with Flash 8 encoder ($495), Episode Pro ($895) and Episode Pro with Flash 8 encoder ($995). Episode Pro differs from Episode with several additional features plus a faster compression engine.

MacHouse recommendation: For personal uses, the standard version of Episode is good enough. And Telestream has a 20% academic discount. $395 is a little bit expensive for personal uses. For corporate uses, MacHouse gives a buy-it! recommendation to the standard version. Compared with Sorenson Squeeze, Episode lets you compress videos with WMV3, M2T… It even supports AC3 as an audio compressor.






Episode and Episode Pro are products of Telestream, Inc.

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