Filed under: Video
Elgato Turbo.264 Graphics Accelerator: First Look
A few months ago, TUAW posted about the new turbo.264 USB h.264 encoder from Elgato. Recently, I've had the opportunity to test out the t.264 and metaphorically kick its tires. Here's a quick summary of what I found.
What is it? The turbo.264 is a graphics co-processor in the form of a USB dongle. You connect it to a spare USB port and use it to speed up video conversions to h.264 files. The t.264 produces h.264 video optimized for iPod, Apple TV and PSP.
How fast is it? It's pretty fast. However, newer Macintoshes are also pretty fast. It took about 3 hours to rip my copy of Serenity using t.264. It took Handbrake about 5 hours on my 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo Mac Mini with 1 GB memory. Keep in mind that QuickTime conversion to h.264 is notoriously slow. Handbrake and MPEG Streamclip provide much faster results but the off-loaded t.264 encoder beat them handily and freed up a large chunk of the main Mac's CPU cycles.
Will it make Handbrake faster? The accelerator only speeds up exports from QuickTime compatible applications. Handbrake doesn't export using QuickTime so it can't take advantage of t.264
What about other QuickTime-compatible apps? Any QuickTime application that lets you select one of the export components installed by the Turbo.264 software into /Library/QuickTime/Elgato Turbo.component can take advantage of the t.264 coprocessor. The components on offer are "Movie to Apple TV (Elgato Turbo.264)", "Movie to iPod (Elgato Turbo.264)", and "Movie to PSP (Elgato Turbo.264)". Further, the iPod export allows you to select from 640x480 and 320x240.
Can I use it to rip DVDs? Not directly. You'll need another program, like Mac the Ripper, to handle the removal of CSS, however you can use t.264 to convert unencrypted VOB files.
Can I use it with EyeTV? Yes. When installed, EyeTV automatically uses the turbo.264 unit to compress data rather than normal (and sloooow) QuickTime export.
I compress everything overnight anyway, so why use t.264? For some people with older machines, a 2-hour movie isn't an overnight task, it's a multi-day task. It's not a matter of whether everything finishes at 2 AM or 5 AM but rather will it get done while I'm away so I can use my computer when I get back?
Is it reliable? The first few software updates had some issues, but Elgato has been responsive to user problems and issuing bug fixes. The biggest problem that remains is the t.264's unwillingness to work on the same USB bus as some external USB hard drives. Elgato continues working on this problem.
How much does it cost? The t.264 costs $99.95.
Who should buy it? Anyone with an older, slower Mac (especially laptop users) might be able to take advantage of the t.264 speed advantage. It's particularly a good match for anyone who does a lot of video editing of short YouTube-like projects and wants to get from the edited product to the finish line as quickly as possible.
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Aron Trimble said 7:51PM on 6-21-2007
Screw the Turbo.264...!
What mac is THAT in the background!?
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Invader J said 7:56PM on 6-21-2007
"What mac is THAT in the background!?"
Seriously? It's a MacBook.
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kubi said 8:58PM on 6-21-2007
Here's my question: is it fast enough that it'd be worth switching from Handbrake to Elgato's software for conversion (assuming that I don't need any of the additional conversion options available in handbrake)?
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Ryan Carter said 9:20PM on 6-21-2007
Wow, that is hot, and I don't even own a Mac.
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Tony said 9:54PM on 6-21-2007
I have the device and I love it, however:
I had it shipped and started to encode my collection. Got through the first movie and played it back...it would play fine for a little while then the video would stutter like crazy for 20+ seconds, then magically go back to being fine for a while, until it stuttered again. Depressing! Moreso because I'd have to wait for the whole thing to encode to find out that it's garbage. So I angrily emailed them, and said why pay for something that sucks when handbrake is free?
To my pleasant amazement (in this day and age), they emailed me back with a new build of the encoder program! I tried it, and it worked. Now I love it because despite having to image the DVD with Mactheripper, it's still faster than a 2-pass H.264 on handbrake, and it looks better, in my opinion.
My advice would be to email them for the new build. I don't know why they don't put that out ASAP. It also bewilders me why they'd put the product out fatally buggy, but to their credit, they did rectify the problem in an great way. Even if that build hadn't worked, I'd have given them the benefit of the doubt and waited for an update that works.
My two cents. It does work and is really nice, but I had to raise hell to get it to do so, and you should wait until the software actually works to get one.
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Dalton said 10:02PM on 6-21-2007
@Phil:
"I suspect It would really be up the Handbrake developers to address the H264's hardware rather than the other away round, ditto Visual hub.. but anyhow the best £70 I've spent in a long while ."
Doesn't look like it's going to happen. I was visiting the HandBrake forums, and it seems that the admins over there HATE this device. I have no idea why, but they've made it explicitly clear that this is an amateur device and they won't support it in any way. I suspect one reason is that it's Quicktime only, and HandBrake doesn't use Quicktime at all.
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Twist said 10:05PM on 6-21-2007
There was a bit of talk about this thing on the HandBrake forums and the HandBrake developers have choosen to basically pass the buck to the developers of the x264 encoder saying that they are the ones who need to add support for it. Basically all the HandBrake guys are doing is putting a pretty package around other peoples work.
My big question is what if I don't want to use the presets to convert DVD's into h.264 videos? Are custom settings supported?
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mentalsticks said 10:17PM on 6-21-2007
@Dalton:
No matter how much I love HandBrake, some of the developers there have a HUGE attitude problem - the turbo.264 isn't the only thing they hate...
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blessingx said 10:41PM on 6-21-2007
Is there subtitle support then (unlike VisualHub)?
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Kichigai Mentat said 2:40AM on 6-22-2007
@20: A black MacBook, the likes of which has been around for a while.
I'm actually quite interested in this product, since my 1 GHz iBook has shown its age when it comes to encoding 640x480 H.264 content. I mean, sure, it can play back 29 FPS 1024x768 H.264 content (like a resized version of the PotC:DMC trailer...), but encoding is a whole other story. $99 is a bit of a price, especially when I've got a bad job and am in desperate need of a new hard disk. And after hearing it doesn't work with HandBrake, I'm a little less enticed to get it, but not totally surprised. I rarely use QuickTime for any encoding stuff, especially projects that I'm exporting to my PSP (ffmpegX is the only thing I know that produces files that'll play in full res on that thing). And considering that I'm aiming to buy a new MacBook Pro in about a year, I'm not sure if it's worth the investment right now. Not to say it's a bad product, just that it doesn't fit my slightly unusual specifications.
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mnit said 5:15AM on 6-22-2007
800x600 max? How lame.. I was considering getting one of these for my mac mini-come-server, but without HD support it is dead to me...
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blip said 8:41AM on 6-22-2007
I've had it for a few weeks and there's one single problem that bothers me more than anything else: Lack of fullscreen resolution for the PSP... Don't have a VideoPod nor an AppleTV yet so it's the PSP for me.
Why anyone would hate a device such as this is beyond me I can encode in almost realtime with my 1.25GHz G4 iBook. Even though, VisualHub, which I normaly use, produces better quality files at smaller size (almost half of what t.264 produces) I can live with that as software H.264 encoding might take up to three hours/25mins of video so not even night encoding isn't a viable option to me. Just give me fullscreen PSP resolution and I'm set.
Now, I understand that the lack of options is what turns most people away from this but here's hope for future hacking of the t.264... Right now it's the only option I have for encoding H.264, so it's either that or nothing. (Tyler@Techspansion if you're listening: Pretty please with sugar on to make this work with VisHub even if just rudimentary...?)
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PatrickBateman said 7:32AM on 6-22-2007
Tony,
How recently did you get the new version? I have recieved new versions from them but I still have serious issues when encoding to Apple TV. It works great when encoding to iPod, but any ultra widescreen content (i.e. newer ripped DVDs) results in an audio/video syncing problem. The picture quality is great, but you get the old Godzilla movie effect. Anyone else have this problem?
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mentalsticks said 7:32AM on 6-22-2007
@28: nope.
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Tony said 10:13AM on 6-22-2007
Patrick,
The build is called '1.0.2b9'. It fixed all the sync/choppiness issues. They need to send it out to the masses who own these devices ASAP!
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jeep said 12:13PM on 6-22-2007
I've had my T.264 for a few weeks and have been using it to transcode files for my Apple TV. Yes, it’s fast — but my main problem is that files it creates are huge, on average about 70% larger than H.264 files created using VisualHub (Good setting), yet the quality is slightly inferior. (Example: a 350Mb Xvid file turned into a 394Mb VisualHub H.264 file, but a 672Mb Turbo.264 file.)
It’ll be fine for bashing out H.264 files that will be watched and discarded, but for anything you want to keep it’s not a good option (at the moment?).
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Tom said 1:17PM on 6-22-2007
I bought one of these for use with my G4 PowerMac but ended up returning it. For Standard Definition, this thing screams. It's really impressive. Encodings that would have taken 50 minutes with quicktime now take only 3-4 minutes. The problem for me is that my camcorder is HDV (Canon HV10 1080i), which is rapidly becoming a consumer format.
The Turbo 264 could not handle the fact that HDV is anamorphic. The Apple TV Quicktime export option outputs 540p from HDV so I thought that if pushed anamorphically that this file size would fit the 800 x 600 limit. Unfortunately it stretches the video instead and exaggerated the interlacing.
It's a shame too because it really does work for other video types. If you are ripping DVDs or converting standard DV for your Apple TV, this is great but if you need to work on HDV you're out of luck.
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Aron Trimble said 1:21PM on 6-22-2007
@29 Really? Can you tell me which Apple store carries the Black-on-white(or silver?) Macbook? Boy would I sure love one!
/sarcasm
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Mike A said 12:51AM on 6-30-2007
I have the Turbo.264 and it is only OK. Since it only works with QuickTime, it does not help with Handbrake. What i usually do for 1/2 hr tv shows is pull the shows off with Handbrake and save them as full resolution MPEG4 files with no compression. Then I take those files and process them using the Turbo.264. It take about 22 minutes to do a normal 22 minute tv show. Using VisualHub on a 4 processor Intel MacPro, it only takes 10 minutes to do the same thing. Turbo.264 is really only good for people with older Macs. A new Mac is fast enough to make it unnecessary.
If you are processing something from iMovie, it helps more since you can use QuickTime to compress but it is still not much of an improvement over a fast mac.
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JeffDM said 1:16PM on 7-30-2007
Aron; I am almost certain that the "white" or "silver" that you are seeing is the result of flash photography making the front edge "shine". It's just a black MacBook. I am not sure why this would throw someone off.
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