The developers of video compression and publishing software DV Kitchen make a bold claim . . . they call it the best solution in the world for publishing professional quality video on the web.
So how does it measure up?
First, DV Kitchen uses the highest quality H.264 encoder on the planet. Being an open source codec, H.264 has spawned a number of variants, and x264 has emerged a clear winner among the contenders. While DV Kitchen also encodes to flash (.flv), windows media video (.wmv) and 75 other formats, the makers are rightly proud of the fantastic x264 sample clips they make available for download on their site.
Next, DV Kitchen is the only software on the market that includes tools to help you determine the ideal encoding settings for your video. The brilliantly designed SampleLab allows you to easily compare encoding receipes and quickly zero in on the ideal encoding settings for each video you encode. It’s an extremely valuable tool you’ll find yourself using everytime you encode video . . . and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
DV Kitchen will also upload your video to your server automatically when it has finished encoding. You can have as many remote folders as you want and select them with one click. There’s even an integrated FTP browser that makes choosing directories, creating folders and deleting files on your remote server as easy as on your local hard drive.
Finally, the Bitrate Budget Calculator will give you a bitrate in kilobits per second to keep your videos under to save bandwidth costs and avoid having your viewers wait unnecessarily.
You can see a tutorial on how to use the calculator at the bitrate calculator demo here.
