We love Elgato's original Turbo.264 dongle for its ability to speed up the conversion of video from a variety of sources into the H.264 format favoured by the iPhone we use as a PMP.
Elgato Turbo.264 HD Elgato's Turbo.264 HD: now with a red LED for visual feedback
The first Turbo.264 was focused entirely on standard- …
I do a lot of transcoding of stuff for my iPod and iPhone, so something to speed that up would be great. It's a real pity they don't do something for Windows as I'd buy it in a shot.
I'd like to know how this compares to the previous generation Turbo.264 transcoder hardware, is there any chance of opening the thing nonviolently to see what powers it?
I guess people haven't been overly curious about this, so I finally pulled my own t.264 apart and found a Mobilygen MG1264 working behind the scenes. (http://greyghost.mooo.com/turbo264/)
As for the burden on the main system CPU, I've noticed that with my previous generation t.264 as well--on Intel or PowerPC it always pulled about 50% processor time whenever it was converting video to h.264 format.
@AC - you might try asking about Windows support on the elgato forums. They do have developers and company staff participating there. However, as far as I know, the previous generation t.264 doesn't work on Windows either.
It's free, for Windows and Mac, and can transcode a 45 minute BSG episode to iPod touch compatable format in about 7-10 minutes on my year old quad core machine, I'm not sure 140 quid is worth the speedup?
Paris because she can't think of an original way to end a comment either.
Hmm. Recently upgraded to a Core i7 920 (my 6yo AMD Athlon64 finally gave up the ghost), and that encodes divxvid to H264 using Handbrake/MediaCoder at >350f/s. I suppose it might be worth it for under-specced Mac owners.
Wow really? Clever boy. Yes I can see it now - rather than buying a little usb stick, people will run out and buy a whole computer to do the same thing. Yes, it will be very popular......
I have the original T.264 and I don't really use it any more since I did some straight comparisons against HandBrake 0.93 and found that H.264 encodes are about half the size from HB and don't have all the blocking and artefacts that the T.264 produces with the AppleTV preset. I'm really disappointed with it since the picture is clearly sharper from HandBrake and the encodes are reasonably quick on my Core Duo MacBook Pro. I expect to get a faster machine at some point anyway and I think the extra encode time is well worth the disc space saving and better picture. Oh, and I can preserve the 5.1 DD audio with HandBrake too.
Skull and cross-bones despite it not being piracy if I'm ripping my own DVDs.
Yes, only an iLoon would pay so much for a USB dongle that DOESN'T do much of the encoding leaving the host system still highly occupied, instead of reusing the old parts you have left over after using that money to upgrade or start a new build.
This device is simply madness. Might as well totally soft encode on a quad core system. Que it up at low priority level and forget about it, a hardware encoder isn't all that good if it's not doing all the hardware encoding.
I might be considered a partial iLoon but even I can see that if the output quality is gash you may as well use Handbrake and leave it overnight to do the job. It would be good though if you could get something like this as some sort of co-processor that Handbrake et al could control as they all seem to have a better grasp on settings for transcoding.
no PPC!! -- plus, elgato trashes subs, dubs, CC-
#
1) I can't believe the reviewer failed to mention that elgato has orphaned PPC from its new products!
yet ppc is precisely the platform that most needs a hw boost.
FAIL.
2) audio files (mp3) are still not available as an input source! ...
so no conversion of your legacy CD library that was already roped into itunes :-(
FAIL.
3) no explanation (by the reviewer) for why the new driver architecture consumes so much of the CPU cycles!?
kinda defeats the purpose of off-loading, doesn't it!? ... unless it anticipates the changes in the MP execution model in snow leopard.
FAIL
4) despite years of complaints, elgato adamantently refuses to respect the integrity of users' source data -
the turbo264 throws away the complete set of subtitles, audio tracks, closed captions, karaoke, etc etc.
moreover, elgaro insists on using raster subs instead of generating proper vector subs.
and the turbo264 burns the subs into the main video track, instead of alpha-blending them from a separate track!
mega FAIL!!
5) elgato insists that they will not make any effort to work with the opensource lib264 community - which is the key codebase for both VLC and for HANDBRAKE.
whuch shows an unbelievable contempt for their customers needs!
*total FAIL*
bottom line: until elgato fixed it's attitude problem, tbd turbo264 products will remain over-priced & under-featured :-(
"Tweak the encoding settings to your heart's content"
#
...with some 10 parameters?
Surely is an apple type definition of tweaking. Do "x264 --longhelp" sometime
I don't think that stick is a bad idea, but like others i'm somewhat not certain what the market is. It's certainly not a professional and on the consumer front it must be people who want to cling to old machines, not want to wait for an encode to complete and not care too much about quality (or is it quality-size-ratio).
Even with the naff visual quality it's obvious with an A/B comparison that this device sacrifices PQ for the sake of raw speed.
Urgh. x264 + custom matrices does the job very nicely, and keeps all the visual quality. There's a reason all the HD rlsgroups don't use these dongles (instead asking for cappers with quadcore machines!)
Paris, because she goes like the clappers with a dongle in her
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Elgato Turbo.264 HD hi-def H.264 encoder
We love Elgato's original Turbo.264 dongle for its ability to speed up the conversion of video from a variety of sources into the H.264 format favoured by the iPhone we use as a PMP. Elgato Turbo.264 HD Elgato's Turbo.264 HD: now with a red LED for visual feedback The first Turbo.264 was focused entirely on standard- …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 14:45 GMT
Anonymous Coward
Windows version? #
I do a lot of transcoding of stuff for my iPod and iPhone, so something to speed that up would be great. It's a real pity they don't do something for Windows as I'd buy it in a shot.
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 15:25 GMT
Jerome
Bit pricey! #
Crikey, I could buy a whole new computer for £140, and just leave that doing my video encoding.
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 16:43 GMT
David Wiernicki
Your source... #
...for those png shots, is hardly top-notch to begin with. It'd be more useful to see what the post-encode looks like with a good quality original.
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 16:43 GMT
The Unexpected Bill
So what's inside one? #
I'd like to know how this compares to the previous generation Turbo.264 transcoder hardware, is there any chance of opening the thing nonviolently to see what powers it?
I guess people haven't been overly curious about this, so I finally pulled my own t.264 apart and found a Mobilygen MG1264 working behind the scenes. (http://greyghost.mooo.com/turbo264/)
As for the burden on the main system CPU, I've noticed that with my previous generation t.264 as well--on Intel or PowerPC it always pulled about 50% processor time whenever it was converting video to h.264 format.
@AC - you might try asking about Windows support on the elgato forums. They do have developers and company staff participating there. However, as far as I know, the previous generation t.264 doesn't work on Windows either.
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 16:43 GMT
Anonymous Coward
Hmmm, I'll stick to Handbreak I think #
It's free, for Windows and Mac, and can transcode a 45 minute BSG episode to iPod touch compatable format in about 7-10 minutes on my year old quad core machine, I'm not sure 140 quid is worth the speedup?
Paris because she can't think of an original way to end a comment either.
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 16:43 GMT
Jared Earle
Blocking out #
Isn't the blocking out feature to remove adverts off EyeTV content?
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 17:08 GMT
Bad Beaver
Upscaling? #
Why can't it upscale SD to HD?
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 23:47 GMT
Daniel Moss
Only 120f/s? #
Hmm. Recently upgraded to a Core i7 920 (my 6yo AMD Athlon64 finally gave up the ghost), and that encodes divxvid to H264 using Handbrake/MediaCoder at >350f/s. I suppose it might be worth it for under-specced Mac owners.
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 23:47 GMT
Neoc
WTF? #
Quote 1: "Turbo.264 put in a respectable performance, [...] for an coding time of 11.78 minutes."
Quote 2: Turbo.264 HD [...] for an overall encoding time of 5.89 minutes. That's almost half the time the original unit took."
Now I may be stupid, but half of 11.78 is 5.89. How does that translate to "*almost" half the time"?
Posted Thursday 26th March 2009 23:47 GMT
Antidisestablishmentarianist
@Jerome #
Wow really? Clever boy. Yes I can see it now - rather than buying a little usb stick, people will run out and buy a whole computer to do the same thing. Yes, it will be very popular......
Posted Friday 27th March 2009 00:34 GMT
Shane Sturrock
I'll pass I think #
I have the original T.264 and I don't really use it any more since I did some straight comparisons against HandBrake 0.93 and found that H.264 encodes are about half the size from HB and don't have all the blocking and artefacts that the T.264 produces with the AppleTV preset. I'm really disappointed with it since the picture is clearly sharper from HandBrake and the encodes are reasonably quick on my Core Duo MacBook Pro. I expect to get a faster machine at some point anyway and I think the extra encode time is well worth the disc space saving and better picture. Oh, and I can preserve the 5.1 DD audio with HandBrake too.
Skull and cross-bones despite it not being piracy if I'm ripping my own DVDs.
Posted Friday 27th March 2009 00:34 GMT
JC
@ Antidisestablishmentarianist #
Yes, only an iLoon would pay so much for a USB dongle that DOESN'T do much of the encoding leaving the host system still highly occupied, instead of reusing the old parts you have left over after using that money to upgrade or start a new build.
This device is simply madness. Might as well totally soft encode on a quad core system. Que it up at low priority level and forget about it, a hardware encoder isn't all that good if it's not doing all the hardware encoding.
Posted Friday 27th March 2009 11:34 GMT
Antidisestablishmentarianist
@JC #
This isn't aimed at people with quad cores is it. It's aimed at those with wheezy machines - not new spankers who could soft encode in their sleep.
Admittedly it's a small market, but still a market.
Posted Friday 27th March 2009 11:34 GMT
Mark
iLoon #
I might be considered a partial iLoon but even I can see that if the output quality is gash you may as well use Handbrake and leave it overnight to do the job. It would be good though if you could get something like this as some sort of co-processor that Handbrake et al could control as they all seem to have a better grasp on settings for transcoding.
Posted Friday 27th March 2009 11:34 GMT
zahadum
no PPC!! -- plus, elgato trashes subs, dubs, CC- #
1) I can't believe the reviewer failed to mention that elgato has orphaned PPC from its new products!
yet ppc is precisely the platform that most needs a hw boost.
FAIL.
2) audio files (mp3) are still not available as an input source! ...
so no conversion of your legacy CD library that was already roped into itunes :-(
FAIL.
3) no explanation (by the reviewer) for why the new driver architecture consumes so much of the CPU cycles!?
kinda defeats the purpose of off-loading, doesn't it!? ... unless it anticipates the changes in the MP execution model in snow leopard.
FAIL
4) despite years of complaints, elgato adamantently refuses to respect the integrity of users' source data -
the turbo264 throws away the complete set of subtitles, audio tracks, closed captions, karaoke, etc etc.
moreover, elgaro insists on using raster subs instead of generating proper vector subs.
and the turbo264 burns the subs into the main video track, instead of alpha-blending them from a separate track!
mega FAIL!!
5) elgato insists that they will not make any effort to work with the opensource lib264 community - which is the key codebase for both VLC and for HANDBRAKE.
whuch shows an unbelievable contempt for their customers needs!
*total FAIL*
bottom line: until elgato fixed it's attitude problem, tbd turbo264 products will remain over-priced & under-featured :-(
Posted Friday 27th March 2009 11:34 GMT
MacRat
HD is only for Camcorders? #
"If you already have a Turbo.264 and you're not an AVCHD camcorder owner, the Turbo.264 HD is more 'nice to have' than 'must have'."
HD is not only about camcorders..
It might be a bit useful for a home system using EyeTV recording HD shows for export to iTunes to view on a television via an AppleTV.
Posted Friday 27th March 2009 22:10 GMT
F Seiler
"Tweak the encoding settings to your heart's content" #
...with some 10 parameters?
Surely is an apple type definition of tweaking. Do "x264 --longhelp" sometime
I don't think that stick is a bad idea, but like others i'm somewhat not certain what the market is. It's certainly not a professional and on the consumer front it must be people who want to cling to old machines, not want to wait for an encode to complete and not care too much about quality (or is it quality-size-ratio).
Posted Monday 30th March 2009 20:49 GMT
A J Stiles
ffmpeg #
What exactly does this do that ffmpeg doesn't do?
Posted Wednesday 8th April 2009 22:03 GMT
Christopher Woods
Christ on a bike #
Even with the naff visual quality it's obvious with an A/B comparison that this device sacrifices PQ for the sake of raw speed.
Urgh. x264 + custom matrices does the job very nicely, and keeps all the visual quality. There's a reason all the HD rlsgroups don't use these dongles (instead asking for cappers with quadcore machines!)
Paris, because she goes like the clappers with a dongle in her
This topic is closed for new posts.