 - Convert widescreen DVD (VIDEO_TS) video files without black bars.
- Tweak video resolution and frame rate;
- Adjust the video settings so it plays on your smartphone;
- Pick the audio track you wish to go with the main feature when converting VIDEO TS folders.
- Turbo264 supports 4 - 3 and 16 - 9 aspect ratios as well as widescreen
List Price: $99.95
Lowest Price: $77.99 
Product Description: Are you frustrated by the amount of time it takes to export video to the H.264 format? Are you unable to use your Mac for other purposes while you are converting videos to the H.264 format? Introduce yourself to El Gato Turbo 264 Video Encoder that converts videos for play on iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, and Sony PSP.
Videos can take a surprisingly long time to encode to the H.264 format - sometimes longer than the actual playing time. What's more, H.264 video encoding can demand a sizeable chunk of system resources. How long and how much depends on: the processor speed of your Mac, the length and complexity of the source video, the size of the video file, and the amount of video compression required for the desired end result. Turbo.264 accelerates video encoding up to four times faster on Macs with Intel Core processors. On an older Mac like a PowerPC G4 or PowerPC G5, the acceleration is exponentially faster - some users report up to 10 and 15 times faster.
Turbo.264 comes with an easy "drag and drop" application. The application converts unencrypted videos one at a time or in a batch, and drops the converted file(s) into iTunes, where they automatically synch with a connected iPod, Apple TV or iPhone. Turbo.264 also supports the H.264 (MPEG-4) export command of popular Macintosh video applications, including EyeTV's Wi-Fi Access feature. Not only does Turbo.264 get the job done faster, it frees up your Mac for other tasks while video encoding is in progress. Think of it as a ?co-processor? for your Mac. The software application that comes with Elgato Turbo.264 offers an easy-to-use choice of presets for the iPod, Sony PSP, Apple TV, and iPhone. For Apple TV content, the quality of videos encoded with Turbo.264 software is unrivaled: Turbo.264 converts standard definition television recordings without scaling so that recordings appear on Apple TV in the same resolution they were recorded. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-24
Very Unstable in DivX Conversion
Have owned the turbo.264 for about 3 weeks. I have an iMac Intel on the most recent version of OSX, and an Elgato EyeTV which is terrific.
I upgraded the Turbo.264 software to version 1.3 as soon as I got it and it has worked well in converting EyeTV files to Apple TV format.
BUT it has been virtually useless in converting AVI (DivX) files to Apple TV h.264. It continually crashes during the conversion process - and it's not being caused by the file format, because in subsequent attempts it will successfully complete a conversion. I have reinstalled the software and the hardware but to no avail. I am going to send it back to the vendor for a refund.
I've read other reports of software crashes in quite a few forums.
And it's not all that quick at converting.
Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-14
Quick and nice
I've tested this little gadget for a while and once I downloaded version 1.3 I got a few more options when encoding videos. I encode them with the "iPod High" profile at 1000 kbps for video and 44100 kHz/128 kbps for audio, which is the combination that has given me the best results for size and quality. I play the videos on a regular 24-inch TV using an Archos 605 and it works fine. However H.264 at a 1000 kbps on HandBrake will give you a higher resolution and a notably better quality.
If your purpose is to encode your videos more quickly while you use your Mac for other things, this will be good for you. But if picture quality is more important to you than that, check again after a few software updates. I like it and I will hold on to it, as I'm not too obsessed with picture quality myself. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-06
Elgato Turbo.264 & YouTube - NOT!
I just received this from Amazon just because I read that it makes encoding video for YouTube easy. That it does, but if you are concerned about quality, do not get this device. The quality is terrible and there are no settings to change. I also have VisualHub and did some research and found recommended settings and encoded the same video with VisualHub and it's 100 times better. A little slower yes. Takes a little more thought, yes. But if you are concerned with quality and are buying this to encode videos for YouTube, I do not recommend this at all! I give it one star for ease of use only. Rating: 
Date: 2008-05-16
Fast easy quality
First, this a Mac type product. No moving parts, no manual needed, no complicated install. Drag and drop an application, plug the device to USB, and use it. This is how things should be; it's why people buy Macs.
Even on the latest 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, the Elgato Turbo.264 hardware encoder makes a difference. It's not 5x faster as some G4 or other older Mac users are raving here, but even on this laptop, it's 20% faster when transcoding from the 3ivx files made by a Flip Video Ultra.
More impressively, while the Turbo.264 is boosting the speed, the MacBook Pro remains completely responsive for other tasks, not bogging down Mail, browsing, or office work as happens when using pure software solutions for transcoding. The laptop doesn't heat up and the CPU fan doesn't kick in.
The software install is dead simple: drag and drop into Applications, then run once. Or visit the web site and download the latest version, and drag and drop that. As of this review, that's 1.2 which is Leopard compatible (the older v1.1 from the CD had worked on my Leopard as well). Batch transcoding is as easy as dropping a collection of vids onto the app and clicking start, and the apps progress is more interesting to watch than Quicktime Pro's export dialog. (Speed is the same whichever interface you use.)
Resultant file sizes using Quicktime Pro encoding and Elgato Turbo.264 encoding are virtually identical, and visually almost indistinguishable.
Even if you have the latest most powerful Mac CPU, this widget makes encoding faster while letting you use your Mac for other tasks. If you have an older Mac, and your time's worth money, there's no question this pays for your time after the first few uses. Rating:
Date: 2008-04-03
A great time saver
I bought this product because I have been trying to move all of my movies and TV shows from DVD to AppleTV, and H.264 encoding takes too much time even on a Mac Book Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33 with 3GB ram. I was concerned that people with newer macs were reporting little improvement, but most people still reported that even if the speed did not improve much, resource utilization did.
For the price I was willing to pick up a little speed bump even if it meant the computer will stay usable while the video conversion is taking place.
I have pushed over 20 hours of video (99% of it started as .divx) and so far I am extremely pleased with the results. It is almost impossible for it, at least in my case, to average less than 40fps, and resource usage is half what I was getting from using Handbrake or VisualHub. The videos look identical to what I am used to see from Handbrake or Visual Hub.
Setup was a no-brainer: drag an application from the CD, then plug the dongle into a USB 2.0 port. The unit comes with a 6-inch USB cable, which is nice if you are afraid of bumping the dongle and breaking the USB port.
The built-in application is much nicer, even if it has limited tweaking capabilities, than Roxio Popcorn (which can take advantage of this) and Handbrake (which can't).
It has one thing that I don't like: as far as I can tell, TS_Video sound is converted to AAC instead of passing it through as AC3. That is the only one thing I am not crazy about.
Except for that, it is perfect. |
