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This is our second in a series of enterprise encoder reviews; in this review, we test Telestream Episode Engine. By way of background, Episode Engine is the highest performing option in the Episode family, with unlimited parallel batch encoding, Split-and-Stitch encoding (more later), extensive input and output file support, and simple clustering with other Episode installations on the same subnet. Available for both Mac and Windows, Engine costs $3,995.
In our tests, Engine proved to be a fast and competent H.264 encoding tool. It's slightly behind Rhozet Carbon Coder in VP6 quality and far behind in WMV encoding performance and quality. Engine proved stable in all testing, and it offers simple clustering, which is a great way to share multiple encoding resources on the same subnet. In an enterprise environment, this might be the product's most unique strength.
Episode operates around the concept of a workflow, which includes sources, encoders, and deployments, the three buttons next to Workflows in the button bar near the top of Figure 1. Sources can be a file, file location on local or network drives, or FTP locations. Encoders are encoding presets, while deployments are the locations to which Engine will deliver the encoded files, which can include local or networked drives, FTP locations, or YouTube.
You create workflows by dragging sources, encoders, and deployments into the flowchart shown in the dark gray area in Figure 1. Once created, you click the Submit button to start the encoding, which starts immediately unless there are existing jobs in the queue. If there are, you can prioritize jobs by assigning each job one, two, or three stars to control encoding order.
Once you've created a workflow, you can save it for later reuse, including assigning it to a watch folder for automated operation. You can drive Engine manually via its GUI; set up watch folders on local, network, or FTP folders; or use a command line or XML-RPC interface. There's also an Episode Developer API kit that's necessary for some advanced output formats, including Microsoft Smooth Streaming and Apple HTTP live streaming (HLS).
Overall, the GUI works well, but several minor aspects could definitely be improved. First, as you can see in Figure 1, if the name of the encoder is...