Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I have to compress video for a news agency. And It's has to fast and clean. This is the fastest way to compress a MP4 file. Almost faster then realtime.
What I like about the Elgato is I can compress while I'm editing another video. On the down side, You can see minor color shift on your compress file.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I am a audio video professional, and if you encode H264 you need this little gem! It cuts encoding time for me 99% I Love this thing. Great quaility for all your H264 needs.l

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

Converts.avi files super fast. It compressed QT movies quickly and easily, and the interface is very user friendly. This gear works great !

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

Ipad even streams better, I can convert files much faster
Speed =$. It's not the cheapest but the best I've used

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I own both the standard and HD version of the turbo.264 usb encoders. I would definitely say the HD version is faster. Unfortunately the quality isn't on par with software like Handbrake. Video is a little more fuzzy in comparison. Although i believe elgato has improved quality a bit, the real reason to own one of these is for quick compression often shaving 50% or more off my CPU compression times.

Hardware:
Mac Mini 2.66 w/ 8GB RAM

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

With todays computers and QT X the turbo 264 is not needed the same file renedered to H264 in QT X was 3 times faster than the Turbo 264. Waste of money if you own a new Mac with QT X.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I previously owned the non-HD version of the Elgato turbo, which improved video encoding speeds for older Macs. I got the newer HD version to take some of the CPU stress of my home theater mac.

The HD version adds a considerable speed bump to my multimedia/tv computer, a Core2Duo 2.33GHz Mac mini with 4GB of RAM. on average encoding with the turbo.264 is up to 100% faster than say Handbrake, depending on the source material and takes 50% load of the CPU, which makes the computer run cooler and more efficient. The video quality is just as good as Handbrake on a 42" HDTV. excellent value for a small price.

on a side note, the encoder does not show any gain on a faster Mac (I tested this with a 2.93GHz Quad Xeon machine, 12GB RAM)

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

Video editing for iPods and distribution.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I mainly use this product to encode HD videos edited in Final Cut Pro. On most of these HD videos, the audio becomes out of sync after encoding the video with the Turbo.264 HD. When I play the original QuickTime file output from Final Cut Pro, the audio is fine. Again, my input file is an HD video, and the output is an HD H.264 video. The video files range from a few minutes to a couple hours in length. The audio in the encoded output file is out of sync by about 1-2 seconds toward the end of the videos.

I've reported this to Elgato and uploaded a sample video file for them to analyze. As of December 11, 2010, they still do not have a version of the software that synchronizes the audio properly on these HD videos. I'm using the production release version 1.1.1.

Standard Definition videos never seem to have audio sync problems, so this product is good for SD. But I've had very low success rates with HD video encodes.

Be warned that you could encounter this problem too. I saw other reviewers on other web sites talk about this audio sync issue, and now I know what they were talking about. I only use this product for SD video encoding. HD video audio sync is totally unreliable.

I've used this product for several months now, and it is worthless for HD video encodes due to the audio sync issues. I am seeking a different H.264 hardware encoder now.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

The Turbo.264 works great in streaming video to the iPad and iPhone. I now have a constant signal and can watch without restarting.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I use the turbo 264 to transcode my eyetv recodings to my appletv and ipods. It speeds up the process considerably, probably about 2x. Also takes a bog load off my Macbookpro, so it is freed up for other tasks.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

The elgato performs as advertised. It will quickly turn your video files into H.264 and they'll be playable on your iPad, iPod or iPhone. It will process a 1GB file in about 12min.

Enjoy.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I first read about in a video magazine. I love my Mac and this little tool helps keep my Mac from working harder than it has too. It's great!

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

Works as advertised and has very good quicktime integration. Having said this, compression to H264 is slower than my 2 year old intel mac. Might be useful to someone with an older machine who needs a speed boost.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

Works well as standalone encoder or within Apple Compressor. Great for quick encodes that rival 2-pass quality in half the time. Easy to install and run, frees up processor power for other tasks while encoding. All of my PCIe slots are full so it's an excellent alternative to an internal card like the Matrox CompressHD, which costs much more.

Great, simple software features allow for tweaking of settings, as well as combining or editing clips.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I am a vlogger with a Mac book with Intel Core 2 Duo running 4G or Ram bought May 2009. I edit H.264 HD content and export to 1080p but only 3000kbs. A 5 min clip would, on average, take me 50min to an hour to export it now takes me 8-9 minutes!!

I bought it just to increase my export time, which I am 5 star's happy with!!

But I edit in FCP and I when I specify 1980 x 1080 it exports it as 1440 x 1080. It worked fine for a while but I can't seem to get it to switch back. BUT I can export to perfect specs in iMovie. I'm hoping I'll be able to figure out why when I put in specific dimensions it sometimes chooses to do 1440 x 1080. Thankfully I don't have to wait very long on the export to figure it out. AND it is only 5% of my clips that require multiple channels and the rest I can get by np in iMovie.

I'm sure eventually I'll understand the exact right set of circumstances out side of the export settings that cause it to change to 1440 rather then 1980. I have faith because even with this glitch it has completely changed my work flow!

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

[...] The h264 HD Turbo is proving pretty good, I'm currently using a BETA software release from the nice folks at Elgato because the official current version of software is having a few issues with .MKV encodes with audio going out of sync, but this seems to have sorted that issue out.I get around 90-120 FPS on .AVI around 80 FPS on MKV and HDV I'll be trying out shortly, I output using the standard AppleTV preset straight to my AppleTV and the HIgh Def looks great not alot different than the source material, I'm using a slightly older MacBook Pro from early 2007 (core2duo 2.33gHz) I'd recommend buying this is a great price and you'll have a nice experience with this company Elgato, great support and you'll soon become a fan of B&H Photo, if you're not already - fantastic company trust me, I'm hooked.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

After reading many positive review of the Elgato Turbo HD, I went ahead and purchased one but have now returned it after a very unsatisfactory experience, not helped much by Elgato themselves.

To cut a long story short, the Turbo HD was to provide a replacement for my much loved VisualHub software, which I use to convert material for my Apple TV. Basically it's now unsupported and I wanted something faster and which would be future-proofed.

The Turbo HD proved completely unable to consistently convert HD MKV files to the ATV format (.M4v) without producing all manner of audio sync issues, often with differing results from encoding the exact same file. There seemed to be no difference whether or not it was the only app running, or whether the source and destination files where on external or local drives either.

Elgato simply blamed the 'variability of the MKV format and the wide variety of audio/video the MKV format may contain', however VisualHub, a $20 bit of shareware manages to encode the exact same files perfectly time and again, although obviously slower.

Sadly Elgato have not been any help, or even willing to discuss the matter, which is a shame given that this is not a cheap product, which just doesn't feel 'finished'.

Comments about Elgato Systems turbo.264 HD USB H.264 Video Encoder for Mac:

I use this to convert movies for viewing on the iPhone.

This saves so much time compared to Handbrake. Converts just about every file out there. Great for Flip content which was always a nightmare. Converts AVIs too.

The software loses the hardware sometimes, but finds it again if you unplug, then plug in again. When you do this the software picks up where it left off so you don't lose your place :)