Elgato has released version 1.2 update for Turbo.264. Version 1.2 contains important performance and stability enhancements and works around a problem where Apple TV would reboot while playing back encoded files. New features in Turbo.264 1.2 includes support of transcoding entire transport streams (e.g. from set top box) or directly drag from EyeTV Recordings (for custom presets).
Antony's Turbo.264:
Turbo.264 is a hardware H.264 encoder. It offloads the system resource from the CPU to Turbo.264. Many of us like the quality of H.264 (see H.264 vs other codecs comparison page), but we all know the encoding of H.264 takes time.
Elgato Turbo.264 can take any video format that QuickTime understands, including codecs supplied by third-party such as Flip4Mac WMV Component, as well as MPEG Program Stream/System Stream (including unencrypted DVD/HD DVD content).
In version v1.1, Turbo.264 enables users to custom presets for any bitrate up to Apple TV quality (5 Mbps max., 800x600 max., 30 fps max.)
If your have a powerful Mac Pro, the advantage of Turbo.264 may not be that significant. For average users, offloading the CPU resource enables us to use our Mac smoothly doing other tasks.
Turbo.264 1.2 is a Universal application, it requires:
- a Macintosh computer with PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5 or Intel Core processor
- 512 MB of RAM
- a built-in USB 2.0 port
- Mac OS X 10.4 or later (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard recommended with all software and security updates installed)
- QuickTime 7.2 (or later) for accelerated export from applications using QuickTime export
- EyeTV 2.4 for accelerated one-click exports to iPod and Apple TV
- iTunes 7.1.2 (or later)
Download Turbo.264 version 1.2
see also:
A comparison of codecs in QuickTime (MacCentre701)
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