Aug
29
2007
Elgato Turbo.264
Posted by luna6 3 Comments
Elgato Systems, the maker of the very impressive EyeTV, has released another cool nifty device for the Mac platform. The Turbo.264 is a thumb size USB stick video encoder that accelerates encodings for the iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, or PSP formats. Turbo.264 also comes bundled with its own elegant software to manage those encodings. The unit is especially well suited for Mac Mini, MacBook and iMac owners that encodes video often but would like to free up resources for other tasks. Not bad for a suggested retail price of $99.
Installing the turbo.264 was about as easy as it can get. Drag & drop the Turbo.264 application into the applications folder, plug in the turbo.264 usb stick and away you go. On my first generation 2.0 Ghz Black MacBook I consistently achieved encoding speeds of 35-45 frames per second with the Turbo.264 at iPod High Quality setting. When encoding the same file, using Handbrake (a software only solution) I would get 18-20 frames per second for encoding. What that translates to is for a 2 hour movie, you can expect Turbo.264 to encode the file in about 70 minutes, while without Turbo.264 it would take about 180 minutes. Furthermore cpu usage hovered around 25% while using Tubro.264 vs. 85% without Turbo.264.
Actually using the Turbo.264 software application was just as simple – drag & drop a video file into the Turbo.264 software. Power users may find the lack of fine tuning settings to be a flaw, but for most people I would think it would be a non-issue. After all, the video is being compressed down to a much lower resolution for play back on smaller iPod / iPhone / AppleTV / or PSP device – not exactly high definition. Yet the video quality looked as good as expected for its respective video resolution and bit rate settings. The Turbo.264 software does offer real time thumbnail previews of the encoding process. There are also readouts for the encoding speed and remaining time left for completion. For the file format selection, if you select “Custom” rather than one of the preset formats there are basic options to adjust size, aspect ratio, overscan, frame rate, data rate, and audio quality.
Video formats supported for the Turbo.264 are any of the codecs supported within QuickTime. Output format options are Apple TV (H.264 – 800×600 & 5 Mbps max), iPod Best Video (H.264 – 640×480 & 1.5 Mbps max), iPod Small Video (H.264 – 320×240 & 768 kbps max), and Sony PSP Video (H.264 – 368×208/320×240 & 512 Kbps). Obviously with the bigger video formats the more file space the recordings take up.
Furthermore you can use the Turbo.264 with third party applications that exports via QuickTime, like iMovie, QuickTime Player Pro and Elgato EyeTV. As an example, in iMovie when you’re ready to encode, select “Share” and choose the “Movie to iPod (Elgato Turbo.264)” option and the encoding will be done through turbo.264. Export options in EyeTV that used Turbo.264 were :
1) iPod button at the top of the EyeTV Programs window (if H.264 iPod exports are chosen in the EyeTV General Preferences)
2) Apple TV button at the top of the EyeTV Programs window
3) A scheduled recording set to export to Apple TV
4) A scheduled recording set to export to an H.264 iPod format
5) The “for Apple TV” export option, from the File menu > Export
6) The “for iPod (Best)” export option, from the File menu > Export
7) The “for iPod (Smallest)” export option, from the File menu > Export
8) The “for PSP (H.264)” export option, from the File menu > Export
What I loved the most about the Turbo.264 was the no hassle manner in which the device worked. I never actually had the incentive to export videos to my iPod before, but with the Turbo.264 I actually encoded tons of music videos, music dvds and feature films for my iPod. If you regularly record tv shows with EyeTV then Turbo.264 makes exporting those files even easier. The speed improvements while encoding is blazing as well. If you own a Mac Mini and regularly encode video the Elgato Turbo.264 is a must have device. For older G4 owners and new MacBook & iMac owners, you will also see a significant speed improvement in encoding time and furthermore your computer will have none of the overheard associated with encoding via a software only solution. New PowerMac and Powerbook owners would see less benefit but it may still be worthwhile to checkout if you encode video files heavily. Elgatgo’s Turbo.264 is a one trick pony, but it does that one trick very well. Sweet job Elgato.
System Requirements :
- Macintosh computer with PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5 or Intel Core processor
- 512 MB of RAM
- built-in USB 2.0 port
- Mac OS X 10.4 (or later)
- QuickTime 7.1.5 (or later)
- iTunes 7.1.1 (or later)
Included in Package :
Turbo264 video encoder hardware
- Turbo264 video converter software (CD-ROM)
- USB cable
- Quick Start Guide
Pro’s :
Speed improvements encoding video files are very good.
Frees up the computer to handle other tasks while encoding video files
Works well with EyeTV, iMovie and QuickTime Pro.
Con’s :
Not a lot of options for tuning encoding settings.
Does not encode real time video with programs like iSight.
Works only with QuickTime enabled exports, Handbrake won’t work with turbo.264.
Users Rating: 7.17 
(6 votes)
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Comments
3 Comments so far
turbo.264 should shine on old hardware. If you have an Intel Mac though, VisualHub is the best software encoder I’ve ever used. On my 2.16GHZ Core 2 iMac, any video will encode in amazing quality h.264 in 1/5 the length of the video or better!!!! Plus it works pretty much flawlessly with other formats such as WMV, FLV, even Real video! It was the best 20 or so dollars I’ve ever spent on software [that, and DVDpedia, another lovely app].
On my MDD G4 (dual 1.42’s), I get around a hundred frames per second encoding with my turbo.264.
I’m really gonna hate switching when the time comes. Intel blows, and bites.
I reviewed this a few months ago:
http://tuxtops.com/node/1645
It is based on the SAME exact hardware as the ELGato one, but it doesn’t have Mac support, only Windows.