The important underlying issue that some people take for granted, and some are completely unaware of:
Most h264 encoders suck. If you take an h264 recording from your camcorder / phone / ip camera / blu ray rip, and push it through x264 (and no special configuration), you usually get 30% bit rate reduction with no loss of quality. With tweaking, you very often get 50%-75% bit rate reduction with no loss of quality, but you have to actually tweak. (e.g., I'm getting ~65% bit rate reduction on h264 streams coming out of Axis IP cameras by running through x264 with -tune slow ant no other change).
Beamr's claim to fame appears to be that they automate this tweaking. Diaz' claim seems to be that "--crf 18.5" is a tweak that can consistently deliver better bitrate reduction than Beamr.
My opinion: If you can use the x264 commandline, Beamer is probably overpriced for you. But if you're a professional photographer with no serious computer skills, Beamr might be useful for you. (Assuming they actually deliver something better than --crf 18.5 ; a claim of which I have no knowledge, but I will assume for the sake of argument)
Most h264 encoders suck. If you take an h264 recording from your camcorder / phone / ip camera / blu ray rip, and push it through x264 (and no special configuration), you usually get 30% bit rate reduction with no loss of quality. With tweaking, you very often get 50%-75% bit rate reduction with no loss of quality, but you have to actually tweak. (e.g., I'm getting ~65% bit rate reduction on h264 streams coming out of Axis IP cameras by running through x264 with -tune slow ant no other change).
Beamr's claim to fame appears to be that they automate this tweaking. Diaz' claim seems to be that "--crf 18.5" is a tweak that can consistently deliver better bitrate reduction than Beamr.
My opinion: If you can use the x264 commandline, Beamer is probably overpriced for you. But if you're a professional photographer with no serious computer skills, Beamr might be useful for you. (Assuming they actually deliver something better than --crf 18.5 ; a claim of which I have no knowledge, but I will assume for the sake of argument)