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When ProCoder made its debut a couple of years ago, Canopus billed it as something of a better mousetrap than the venerable media compression tool Cleaner. Discreet Cleaner was then five versions old and a solid product with a robust user base, but Canopus had an angle - with faster processing speed and a new take on workflow that wasn't encumbered by years-old original development. Now, in one way, ProCoder 2 is following Cleaner's lead again, with Canopus increasing support for shared workgroup encoding as Discreet did with Cleaner XL.
Yet while Canopus has expanded ProCoder 2's reach toward that automated bulk compression workflow, it also separates ProCoder more distinctly from Cleaner XL. Where Discreet completely retooled the old Cleaner to focus on higher-volume workgroup encoding, ProCoder 2 adds workgroup efficiency while retaining its now-familiar user interface and original desktop product orientation.
At $499, ProCoder 2 is now the default desktop-class utility for Windows-based encoding. As an upgrade, there's a little something for every level of user. If you use ProCoder regularly, the $149 upgrade price (free if you purchased ProCoder after September 2003) is certainly worth it. For others, the choice might be less obvious.
ProCoder 2's main interface and workflow are very similar to those of the past version, with a few subtle yet powerful additions. The three large tab buttons for Source, Target, and Convert still run down the left side of the interface and create an intuitive workflow. The right side of the interface changes according to which of those tabs is selected, providing source clip details, conversion status, or target encoding path, format, and filter information. You add one or more Source clips at a time, then set one or more target formats for batch-encoding those sources. And you can select those encoding target formats from presets or by setting parameters on the fly. (That's more straightforward for one-off encoding jobs than Cleaner XL, where you have to save any set of parameters as a preset...