The new version of a video encoder from Sorenson, Squeeze 9, provides HTML5 video in H.264 or WebM.

If the video is played on newer browsers, it will play the WebM file or the H.264 file. H.264 is a video codec standard that employs low bitrates. WebM is an open-source video format. Both are considered to have strong video quality.

Among its many new features and options is its Flash fallback. So a browser is not HTML5-compatible, it will use Flash to play a video file.

In addition, the technology can generate video files and HTML5 markup for multi-screen playback.

Also, the offering lets users make videos to be played on mobile devices or on desktop computers. Given the recent growth in popularity of mobile devices, this is a major benefit.

“The video should play on all iPads and iPhones, and it should play on pretty much every recently shipped Android (News – Alert) device, because they all support H.264 playback and they all support HTML5,” according to a recent review from StreamingMedia.com.

Another benefit relates to the quality of the video.

“Squeeze does a great job producing very high quality, very efficient files, meaning they meet the target data rate, and the video quality is generally pretty competitive against all other encoding tools,” the review said. 

It has better search and cleaner batch window than earlier options. And when it comes to speed, it is six times quicker than options. It also features multi-core encoding and adaptive bitrate encoding.

It lets users add branding or other content at the start or end of a video (known as pre- and post-roll stitching). Another plus is how it has support for EIA-608 and CEA-708 closed captioning, and has closed caption pass-through.