A while ago, I used Cleaner to encode our QuickTime videos with the
3ivx codec.
The thing I really liked about cleaner was the preprocessing prior to
encoding and the ability to FTP the completed files to the streaming
server.
As you rightly say, Cleaner is now rather long in the tooth and having
started to encode for H.264 and Flash I needed something better.
After scouting around, I chose Compression Master (now just renamed to
Episode since Telestream acquired Popwire):
It seems to do as good a job at preprocessing and supports all the
latest codecs as well as including a Flash 8 encoder.
Unfortunately, it doesn't have an FTP upload facility but I wrote an
AppleScript to do a similar job for overnight batch encoding.
It's a shame to have to discard Cleaner - not a cheap piece of
software - but it seems to have been roundly overtaken by others.
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At $599 (US$), Cleaner 6.5 (which includes Flash and DivX) seems a
bargain compared to Episode's $995 (Pro w Flash), or even their "sale"
price of $895 to existing Flip4Mac customers. Anyone done a
side-by-side feature comparison yet? (And then a side-by-side output
comparison?) What does $300 to $400 more get you?
FYI - any compressed comparison should include comparing hard-edged
diagonal lines - edges of desks, telephone wires, etc. That to me is
the telling tale of how well a tool's interlacing algorithm works.
