Turbo Charge Your Encoding with Turbo.264
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If you encode H.264 video for your iPod or AppleTV or if you are a podcaster, the ElGato Turbo.264 should be an essential tool in your workflow. This USB driven, thumb drive sized wonder, is designed to give you some of your life back when waiting for encodes by relieving your processor of the (extremely slow) burden of encoding H.264 video.
Although Intels “Core” chips are extremely fast number crunchers, it is designed to handle general computing needs and doesn’t particularly excel in any specific area. The Turbo.264, is highly specailzed to do nothing but encode video, taking the burden off the processor, and it really works.
Just plug the Turbo.264 into a free USB 2.0 port and drag the included application on an accompanying CD to your applications folder (See gallery for screenshot tour). The application, when launched, also adds the ability to use the Turbo.264 in QuickTimes export options, bypassing the eloquently designed and informative ElGato dashboard application.
This dongle helps you tear through encoding tasks, converting more then 32 frames per second on my test MacBook with 1GB of RAM, results are told to be even faster on G4’s and G5’s. As far as the output file is concerned there is no noticeable difference in between Apple’s H.264 codec and the Turbo.264. The result from codecs were also significantly lighter then the source material.
1080p Source
Apple’s H.264 Encoder
Turbo.264
If you encode video for a living and don’t have the latest eight core MacPro you can only benefit from the Turbo.264. Reclaim your life by encoding files at near real time speeds. Well worth the $99 price tag.
Available from ElGatos website, and select retailers.
This doesn’t encode in HD though, if Im not mistaken it scales it down to 720p. But still looks pretty damn good from the pics shown. I believe Fujitsu just released a HD encoding chip, found it on engadget. Which I’ve notice a few articles from here have shown up there. Congrats on the new success and keep up the good work guys.
I have a powerbook G4 and this would be really nice to have, only wish it could decode too. That way I could watch those 1080p movies on my G4. Now wouldn’t that be sweet. My guess is the hardware is there, just need the software to make that feature work.
Hmm, for the pictures i can say there is a big difference. Apple Quicktime actually encode videos better keeping fine details sharp and clear, while Turbo.264 creates soft and a little bit blurry videos…
The brilliance is brighter in Turbo.264.
What I’d like is a USB dongle that can encode videos of a LOT of formats.
Turbo.264’s software application offers a choice of four presets: High resolution for Apple TV (up to 800×600),
no excuse for being on a powerbook still