H.264 posts

Turbo.264 HD adds AVCHD transcoding savvy

by Michael Rose (RSS feed) on Mar 20th, 2009

When first we met the Turbo.264 hardware compression accelerator, it did a great job of speeding up video exports on older CPUs but didn't offer a tremendous boost on modern Intel hardware. True, it worked well with Elgato's EyeTV software to transcode TV recordings overnight for iPod or iPhone use, but not everyone needed to spend the money to recover that time.

Elgato's got an upgrade to the Turbo hardware now, the Turbo.264 HD. On the one hand, the new unit is limited to Intel Mac owners running Leopard -- leaving out the G4 and G5 users who benefited most from the speed boost of the older unit.

On the other hand, the widget has the ability to export in HD resolutions; you can do basic trim edits on clips and handle almost any input format under the sun. More importantly, the new stick brings a vital feature to HD camcorder users: on-the-fly transcoding of AVCHD video.

Mac users who have AVCHD camcorders have suffered long and loudly with the format, even though native editors like NeoScene and batch converters like VoltaicHD have simplified things a bit. While iMovie '09 and Final Cut/FCE can handle AVCHD, importing is a slow slog. The Turbo.264 HD promises to dramatically reduce importation time for AVCHD clips and offload the work of transcoding them from the computer's processor. If it works as advertised, it's going to be very popular with HD camcorder users.

The new unit is $150US and shipping now.

Tags: avchd, compression, elgato, h.264, intel, leopard, turbo 264, turbo.264, Turbo264, USB, video

Filed under: Software Update

QuickTime H.264 Compatibility Update is out

by Cory Bohon (RSS feed) on Nov 17th, 2008

Apple just released a software update for QuickTime. The update titled "H.264 Compatibility Update" claims to improve QuickTime compatibility with iChat.

You can download this update by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update), or by downloading the installer package directly from the Apple website (it should appear there shortly).

Thanks to Tony, and others who sent in this tip!

Tags: breakingnews, encoding, H.264, iChat, QuickTime, software update, SoftwareUpdate, update

Filed under: Hardware

WD TV provides subtle support for Mac-format drives

by Michael Rose (RSS feed) on Nov 13th, 2008

It wasn't the splashiest product introduction ever, but last week's launch of Western Digital's $130 WD TV high-definition media player may have caused a few smiles for Mac users. The playback unit -- a simple configuration of a USB2 port for connecting a hard drive, and either composite (SD) or HDMI signal output -- supports a veritable alphabet soup of audio, video and photo formats for playback, including the eminently Mac-friendly AAC and H.264 codecs (unprotected content only, so no joy with iTunes Store purchases).

The unit also supports drives formatted in HFS+ as long as you turn off journaling, which is a first for third-party media players as far as I know; while the Mac could easily write to a FAT32-formatted drive for media exchange (as long as file sizes stayed below 24 GB), enabling HFS+ is a very nice gesture towards detente with the Apple-loving world.

The WD TV is available now and should work with any TV that supports composite or HDMI inputs. Without network connectivity, iTunes sync and support for protected content, it's no Apple TV -- but at $100 less for a BYOStorage player, it may just fit the bill. We'll try to get our hands on a review unit and see if we can stump it with ancient QuickTime clips and legacy MP3 files.

Update: Our pals at dealnews.com report that Dell is discounting these handy units by $30 right now.

[via Macworld]

Tags: apple tv, AppleTv, h.264, playback, wd tv, WdTv, western digital, WesternDigital

Filed under: iTS, Multimedia, Rumors, Macbook Pro, MacBook

New MacBooks adding NVIDIA hardware H.264 decoding?

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Oct 21st, 2008

Something interesting has popped up with the new NVIDIA graphics hardware in the unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros: hardware H.264 decoding. MacRumors is reporting that owners of the new MacBooks are seeing considerably less CPU usage when playing high definition H.264 content on the new machines versus the previous generation. One user reported his new MacBook running at only 28% CPU utilization while playing a 1080p video versus 100% for his older MacBook Pro running at the same clock speed.

It's been known for some time that NVIDIA has been including hardware decoding in their chips, but this appears to be the first time that Apple has actually implemented support for it in OS X. Some are speculating that this signals big things for the future of QuickTime X in Apple's forthcoming Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) and future 1080p video content in the iTunes Store and may be connected to Steve Jobs' recent dismissal of Blu-ray. Of course, none of this has been confirmed by Apple, but it does appear to be the best explanation for the performance increase we're seeing in the new machines.

[via I, Cringley]

Tags: h.264, iTunes Store, ItunesStore, MacBook, MacBook pro, MacbookPro, nvidia

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

Adobe adds H.264 support to Flash Player 9 beta

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Aug 21st, 2007

This video on the web thing is going to be big I tells ya! Read/Write Web is reporting that Adobe will be releasing an updated version of their Flash Player 9 beta tomorrow which has some new features aimed squarely at video on the web. The two biggies are:

H.264 playback support. You might recall that Apple is a big proponent of H.264, which every video sold in the iTunes Store encoded in it, and working with YouTube to encode their videos in H.264 for playback on the Apple TV.
Hardware accelerated fullscreen playback.

The beta will be available later today, with the final product shipping sometime after September. No word yet on if this release will be Intel only.

Update: The new beta is now available, and it is a Universal Binary.

Tags: adobe, h.264, movie play back, MoviePlayBack

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Software, Video

Turbo.264 update brings iPhone formats, customizable encoding settings

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Aug 7th, 2007

Erica took a first look at Elgato's Turbo.264 USB video encoder last month and found it to be a mixed bag. While it is indeed a powerful accessory to many Mac user's video encoding efforts, it's only compatible with apps that use QuickTime for encoding and export, so HandBrake and VisualHub die-hards are out of luck. Still, if you use QuickTime itself, Elgato's products (such as EyeTV) or any other QuickTime-compatible video encoding apps, the Turbo.264 is a fantastic companion that is sure to make your G4, G5 or even Intel Mac jump for joy when encoding video.

While I personally don't own one yet, a new v1.1 software update from Elgato is motivating me all the more to save up and squeeze every penny out of the living room couch. One of the big-ticket new features is an iPhone-specific video setting, supporting both standard 4:3 (480 x 360) and 16:9 (480 x 270) formats. While that is definitely a cool feature, I'm more interested in another new feature (which, might I add, the rest of Elgato's video conversion software desperately needs): customizable settings for video conversion, including being able to edit the presets for devices like the Apple TV. Until now, the software included with the Turbo.264 simply offered choices like "high quality for iPod," with no ability to set things like data or compression rates. Now, finally, users have complete control over the quality of the video they output with the Turbo.264's software, and I can only hope that it's coming to their EyeTV 2 software as well.

As I said, I don't own a Turbo.264 yet, but I had the chance to test one out myself and this customization was the only major complaint I had. Now that they've fixed this issue, this $99 video encoding accessory seems more appetizing than ever.

Tags: Elgato, encoding, H.264, QuickTime, Turbo 264, Turbo.264, Turbo264, video

Filed under: Software, Video, Internet Tools, Apple TV

Image Gallery: YouTube on Apple TV

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Jun 20th, 2007

Now that YouTube has arrived on the Apple TV, an image gallery of all the new features seems only fitting. Apple has done quite a nice job with the debut of this custom YouTube UI, and it is surprisingly feature-packed. In terms of video quality, I can comfortably say that most videos that started out in a decent quality to begin with (TV show clips, CG videos from design students, etc.) look *worlds* better in YouTube on the Apple TV (re-encoded to H.264 from the original, mind you; Apple thankfully doesn't put up with the dreadful quality of Flash video) than YouTube online. If you can't get to an Apple TV to take a ride for yourself, check out our YouTube on Apple TV image gallery to get a decent idea of what's in store for this clever new Apple TV feature.

Gallery: YouTube on Apple TV

Tags: apple tv, AppleTv, flash, h.264, h264, quicktime, videos, youtube

Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Video

Connect360 updated with H.264 support

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on May 14th, 2007

A while back in our TUAW Guide to Xbox 360 and Mac we mentioned the forthcoming Spring Dashboard update on the 360 was to bring updated video codec support. Well that update dropped last week and Nullriver has correspondingly updated their Connect360 software (which we've mentioned before) that allows streaming video (and audio) files from a Mac straight to a Xbox 360. The newly supported codecs include full HD (1920x1080) H.264 in both the MPEG-4 and QuickTime containers (in addition to the previous WMV). This, of course, is substantially higher than Apple TV's support for 720p video, making the Xbox 360 likely the best full HD video extender available (though the Xbox is disappointingly loud compared to the Apple TV).

Connect360 remains $20 and a demo is available.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Tags: Connect360, H.264, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Xbox 360, Xbox360

Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, Peripherals, Video, Apple TV

Elgato announces turbo.264, USB stick H.264 encoder

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Apr 2nd, 2007

According to the folks over at iPhone-Scene, Elgato, makers of Mac based TV tuners and the EyeTV PVR software, has announced the turbo.264 USB H.264 hardware encoder. When plugged into a Mac, this device will allow any application that uses QuickTime to export H.264 video two to four times faster than before. Of course, H.264 is the video codec favored by Apple for the iPod, the Apple TV, the forthcoming iPhone, as well as Sony's PSP and other video playing devices.

Apparently, Elgato "hopes to release the stick at the end of April 2007 for 99 Euros" (~$132). Unfortunately, there is no mention of this product yet on Elgato's main site, but a few more detail are available at iPhone-Scene.

[via Digg]

Tags: elgato, h.264, tubo.264, USB hardware encoder, UsbHardwareEncoder

Filed under: iTS, Video, iTunes, Apple

First impression: buying a movie from the iTunes Store

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Sep 12th, 2006

First off let me say that I'm glad Apple finally changed the name of the store to something 'music neutral.' With that said, how is the movie buying experience on the iTunes Store? Pretty good. Thanks the the 'CoverFlow' implementation I was able to look through the 75 movies available and find one I was interested in (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I am a geek after all, plus it was only $9.99).

Buying it was just like purchasing music from the iTunes Store, though the downloading took about an hour. However, I was able to start watching the movie after about 10 minutes. The video looks pretty darned terrific on my 20 inch iMac (thanks, Apple, for fixing the dog that was video playback in iTunes) and the sound is great.

One thing to note, movies downloaded from the iTunes Store do have chapter markers, as pictured above. A more detailed picture of the chapter markers themselves after the jump.

Continue reading “First impression: buying a movie from the iTunes Store”

Tags: h.264, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy, itunes video, ItunesVideo

Filed under: Audio, Software, Video

Easy iPod/PSP movies with Instant Handbrake

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on May 2nd, 2006

When it comes to turning a DVD into a movie file, Handbrake's name is hailed far and wide for its ease of use, speed and overall quality. Recently, Handbrake's developer took these praised aspects and raised the bar by releasing Instant Handbrake (beta), a one-stop, brain-dead-easy app for converting a DVD to iPod/PSP-compatible video.

By default it's set to crop the video when necessary (4:3 for iPod, 16:9 for PSP), depending on which device you specify, but you can elect to maintain the video in its original size. Video formats are MPEG-4 or H.264 for the iPod, and MPEG-4 for the PSP.

Like its big brother, Instant Handbrake is free and available here.

Tags: copy, DVD, file, H.264, H264, Handbrake, Instant, iPod, movie, mpeg, mpeg-4, PSP, QuickTime, rip, video

Filed under: Software, Video, Universal Binary

ffmpegX has gone Universal

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Apr 28th, 2006

ffmpegX, my video encoder of choice, has released a new version (0.0.9w) that is a Universal Binary (I bet it encodes like lightening on one of the now Intel Macs). This version only supports OS X 10.3 or higher, so you pre-Panther folks will need to use an older version.

Other than the Universal goodness that this release brings, the other big news is that ffmpegX can now encode Flash video for use on blogs (or anywhere else that supports it).

The price? ~~Free~~ $15 (turns out it is shareware. Who knew?).

Thanks, Ultim8Fury.

Tags: dvd, encoder, ffmpegx, H.264, iPod mp4, IpodMp4, mov, PSP, sdvd, XviD

Filed under: Software, Video

H.264 gains on Windows Media

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Mar 1st, 2006

I'll be the first to admit that I am no streaming video expert, but I have used H.264 for some personal projects and I really like the results I get. It looks like, according to a report by StreamingMedia.com, the H.264 codec (which is the bit that you use to encode videos into H.264) is more efficient than the Windows Media codec, however, both fall behind RealVideo (yes, you read that correctly).

RealVideo may be 'better' than H.264 but the Quicktime player doesn't make me cry, so I think I'll stick with H.264.

Tags: h.264, quicktime

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