Flip4Mac Telestream Interview
Flip for Mac Windows Media components for QuickTime involves 5 different products: the free Player which has had 10 million downloads. From the player one can upgrade to allow import and export and then there are further export options. These products add support for Window Media directly within QuickTime applications on the Mac.
Episode Pro, by Telestream, is a multi-format transcoding tool. With Flip4 Mac one gets Windows Media support within QuickTime applications - Episode is a separate application which has a broad range of input and output support. Episode supports Windows Media, Real, QuickTime, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, Flash, MXF, IMX.
If one needs to make only Windows Media files then the Windows Media components by Flip for Mac will do the job, however if you need to encode to other formats that's where Episode comes in.
Episode also integrates with Compressor - providing the means to encode to formats not supported by Compressor such as Flash or MPEG transport Streams. One can choose to access Episode settings from within Compressor. If one needs compression ability beyond QuickTime that is where the benefits of Episode become apparent.
Pipeline is a hardware encoder with SDI in and RS422 for deck control. Pipeline has hardware compression inside of it enabling encoding to various formats. Using Pipeline enables one to effectively outside compression tasks and free up the Mac for other jobs, such as editing.
