Posts tagged H.264 at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Posts with tag h.264

Adobe adds H.264 support to Flash Player 9 beta

Posted Aug 21st 2007 12:30AM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

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.

Turbo.264 update brings iPhone formats, customizable encoding settings

Posted Aug 7th 2007 11:00AM by David Chartier
Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Software, Video

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.

Image Gallery: YouTube on Apple TV

Posted Jun 20th 2007 12:15PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Video, Internet Tools, Apple TV

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

Connect360 updated with H.264 support

Posted May 14th 2007 1:30PM by Mat Lu
Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Video

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!

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

Posted Apr 2nd 2007 7:30PM by Mat Lu
Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, Peripherals, Video, Apple TV

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]

First impression: buying a movie from the iTunes Store

Posted Sep 12th 2006 10:30PM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: iTS, Video, iTunes, Apple

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

Easy iPod/PSP movies with Instant Handbrake

Posted May 2nd 2006 2:00PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Audio, Software, Video

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.

ffmpegX has gone Universal

Posted Apr 28th 2006 6:00PM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: Software, Video, Universal Binary

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.

H.264 gains on Windows Media

Posted Mar 1st 2006 3:00PM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: Software, Video

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.

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Cory Bohon	89	1
2	Robert Palmer	65	45
3	Steven Sande	59	22
4	Scott McNulty	40	0
5	Mat Lu	40	10
6	Dave Caolo	38	0
7	Erica Sadun	28	2
8	Brett Terpstra	24	0
9	Mike Schramm	20	1
10	Michael Rose	11	32
11	Christina Warren	10	38
12	Joshua Ellis	3	2
13	Lisa Hoover	2	6
14	Chris Ullrich	2	2

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Adobe adds H.264 support to Flash Player 9 beta

Turbo.264 update brings iPhone formats, customizable encoding settings

Image Gallery: YouTube on Apple TV

Connect360 updated with H.264 support

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

First impression: buying a movie from the iTunes Store

Easy iPod/PSP movies with Instant Handbrake

ffmpegX has gone Universal

H.264 gains on Windows Media

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