Vincent Ferrari
11-06-2007, 03:00 PM
<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/media/users/2256/vferrari_turbo264_fig0.png" /><br /><br /><b>Product Category:</b> H.264 Video Encoder Hardware.<br /><b>Manufacturer:</b> <a href="http://www.elgato.com">El Gato</a><br /><b>Where to Buy:</b> <a href="http://astore.amazon.com/digitalmediathoughts-20/detail/B000V1V4GC/104-8147914-2239126">Amazon.com</a> [Affiliate]<br /><b>Price:</b> $95.71 USD<br /><b>System Requirements:</b> Mac OS 10.4 or later, USB 2.0, PowerPC or Intel Processor, 512 MB RAM, Quicktime 7.1.5 and iTunes 7.1.1<br /><br /><b>Pros:</b><br /><li>Blazing fast encoding of H.264 video;<li>Simple to use;<li>Compact and unintrusive.<br /><b>Cons:</b><br /><li>Custom profiles don't work in other apps;<li>Mac OS only;<li>Somewhat pricey for a specialty device.<br /><b>Summary:</b><br />When the Turbo.264 was announced, I was immediately skeptical. How could a USB dongle make H.264 encoding faster? It had to be marketing spin. Was it?<br /><br />Read on for the full review!<!><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>What is the Turbo.264?</b></span><br />To put it simply, the Turbo.264 is an H.264 encoder that's slightly bigger than a standard thumb drive. It plugs into any USB 2.0 port on your Mac and increases H.264 conversion speed to 5x what your Mac can normally handle.<br /><br /><span><b>What is H.264?</b></span><br />Before you can really understand what the Turbo.264 does, you have to understand what H.264 is.<br /><br />H.264 is, without getting too technical, a variation on the MPEG-4 video standard. It's the format of choice for many new multimedia devices (particularly those from Apple including the AppleTV and iPod / iPhone) because it provides increased compression over other formats as well as increased video quality. I'm not such a close-looker that I can see that much of a difference, but the general consensus is that things are much improved.<br /><br />Along with the increased compression and quality comes a problem, of course, and that's actually producing H.264 content. Because it compresses more at a higher quality, production is extremely CPU intensive and can bog down even fast computers. This is where the Turbo.264 comes in.<br /><br /><span><b>How do you use it?</b></span><br />If there's a simpler piece of hardware to use, I really don't know what it is. You install the software, then plug in the device. When you run the included converter, you'll see a speedometer in the upper right corner of the window which will indicate whether or not the device is functioning properly. To encode a video, simply drop it into the window.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br />The UI for the included software appears below.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/media/users/2256/vferrari_turbo264_fig1.png" /><br /><i>Figure 1: The UI for the included software is very simple and uncluttered.</i><br /><br />Once the video is up on the screen, you can make any changes to your conversion preferences. The output type will always be H.264, but you do have the option of selecting other conversion profiles. In the newest version of the software, the biggest omission (the ability to add custom profiles) is now fixed, although if you're doing your conversions in QuickTime and not the included app, you can only use the included profiles.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/media/users/2256/vferrari_turbo264.fig2.png" /> <br /><i>Figure 2: The software includes profiles for the iPhone, iPod, and PSP, as well as the Apple TV.</i><br /><br />To create a custom profile, you select one of the included profiles to base it on, and click the + sign under the list. That will create a new profile with the same settings that you can then tweak to your heart's content. I often find myself using it to convert my videos for Vimeo, so I created a few custom profiles for my Vimeo files.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Turbo is Precisely The Word</b></span><br />My skepticism utterly evaporated after using the Turbo.264 for the very first time. I had a video I composited together as a tribute for September 11, 2006. In iMovie it took approximately 36 minutes to render. Using the Turbo.264, it took approximately 7. I'm not exaggerating at all, and my jaw nearly dropped as I started realizing just how powerful this device was.<br /><br />For this review, I wanted to do a side by side benchmark of three of the more popular ways to convert video on the Mac. Using QuickTime Pro, Visual Hub, and the Turbo.264, I compressed the same 7.7 megabyte AVI (XVID encoded) for my iPhone. Here are the results:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/media/users/2256/vferrari_turbo264_fig3.png" /><br /><i>Figure 3: The Turbo.264 nearly halves the conversion time of QuickTime Pro and Visual Hub.</i><br /><br />As you can see, the Turbo.264 was just a bit shy of shaving 50% off the time of the other two software-only solutions.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Two Caveats</b></span><br />Depending on your point of view, the fact that this is an Apple-only device is a minus. I, for one, don't care because I only use Apple computers for my media production needs, but others might disagree with me. For Windows users, ADS <a href="http://www.adstech.com/products/RDX-160/intro/RDX-160_intro.asp?pid=RDX-160">makes a piece of hardware</a> that looks similar to the Turbo.264 and makes similar claims. I imagine it's probably quite similar, but again I haven't tried it so I can't say if it works as well, but if you've used it, I'd love to know if it does.<br /><br />Secondly, there have been reports about the difference in performance between a slow machine and a fast machine. On my home iMac, a 1.83 Core Duo with 2 Gigs of RAM, the difference is quite pronounced. I've heard reports that the difference is even more pronounced on older G4 and G5 chips, and less pronounced on high-end Mac Pros, so your mileage may vary.<br /><br /><span><b>Conclusions</b></span><br />It's hard not to be skeptical when some tech company comes forward with a new "change the world" device. Logic would dictate that you couldn't speed up a really fast dual core CPUs processing video over a slow (comparatively) connection to a USB dongle, but the Turbo.264 does exactly that.<br /><br />If you find yourself downloading a lot of video on a regular basis, or ripping your DVDs for your AppleTV, iPhone or iPod, then the Turbo.264 might be the answer to your prayers. The amount of time saved is easily worth the price tag in my opinion.<br /><br /><i>Vincent M. Ferrari is a blogger, podcaster, photographer wannabe, digital media junkie, and Apple fanboy from the Bronx, New York. His most famous accomplishment is canceling his AOL account which got him an inordinate amount of fame, something he still brags about to all his friends. When he's not taking down multi-billion dollar corporations, he's writing on his own <a href="http://www.insignificantthoughts.com/">blog</a>, taking <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vincentferrari">photos</a>, and working as a Producer for the <a href="http://www.applephoneshow.com">Apple Phone Show</a> podcast.</i>