[jamesbritt]

"So, i didn't get what exactly $600 piece author referring to. i dont know any sw that costs $600 and can be replaced by these 100 lines."

Sorenson Squeeze. It's right in the article.

Now, whether this Ruby code replaces all of what Sorenson Squeeze does is another matter. (I'm betting the answer is "No." http://www.sorensonmedia.com/quality-video-encoding/details/)

ffmpeg is pretty sweet, but I've run into problems converting one or another video (swf, for example) so as you've noted it won't solve everyone's conversion issues.

[robconery]

No - it doesn't replace all of it. Just the parts that I need. As I mention Squeeze is a fine tool but I don't need integration with Sorenson's hosting platform, and you can pretty much write whatever workflow you need in Ruby.

So I take it back - I do think this replaces Sorenson pretty handily :)