SCO0195 - HD Video encoding with turbo.264 HD

A must have gadget for anyone doing HD video encoding (or any video encoding for that matter)

The new Elgato turbo.264 HD USB device has just been launched and I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of the first devices in the UK. This is a small USB stick containing a dedicated H264 encoding engine that allows your Mac to offload processor intensive video encoding, to the USB stick. This both frees up your main processor, but more importantly, supercharges the encoding process resulting in much faster encoding, even on underpowered machines.

I was hugely impressed by the original turbo.264 (as featured in SCO0100) and saw some pretty significant increases in video encoding speeds. The only downside was that the original turbo.264 was limited to standard definition with no support for HD.

Well that's been resolved with this new updated device as it now supports H264 video encoding at 720p all the way up to 1080p.

As the turbo.264 HD is accessible via Quicktime, any application that uses Quicktime can benefit for a huge increase in encoding speed. iMovie 09, Final Cut Express or even Final Cut Pro can all hook into the turbo.264 HD.

Not only that, but Elgato has also added in support for AVCHD, the defacto standard for video on most modern camcorders, allowing you to directly access, edit and encode your HD video directly off your video camera at stunning speeds.

With an even greater support for most standard video formats (including the direct conversion of MKV files) the Elgato turbo.264 HD allows you to re-encode virtually any video for most popular devices including the Apple TV, iPhone or iPod, Sony PSP and even supports conversion and direct upload to YouTube and YouTube HD.

Did I mention that it also speeds up encoding within EyeTV and it is fully AppleScriptable allowing you to setup scripts or folder actions to process your videos automatically, all under AppleScript control.

This weeks show shows you how to use the turbo.264 HD and gives you an insight into the potential performance increase by comparing various encoding tasks both with and without the turbo.264 HD. The show covers:

• Using the turbo.264 HD
• Exporting from iMovie 09 with and without the turbo.264 HD
• Directly accessing, editing and encoding your AVCHD files
• Converting other Video files
• Comparing Video Monkey and turbo.264 HD
• A quick look at AppleScript and turbo.264 HD

Links: ScreenCastsOnline Show on UseNet, GigaNews, Elgato

Discussions: Forum

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