[Mike Evangelist]

Today we announced the Turbo.264 HD. It is available now.

The key new features are:

• All-new high performance USB hardware encoder for Intel Macs is dramatically faster than any other H.264 encoder (average speed increase is 2-3x).
• Output formats up to 1080P
• Built-in editor for trimming clips and removing unwanted sections before export
• Direct support for AVCHD camcoders allows direct editing and conversion of camcorder clips, without the time-consuming import process required by applications like iMovie
• Ability to combine all source clips into a single output file
• Powerful custom presets now accessible from other QuickTime-based applications as well as EyeTV and the Turbo application

More info can be found on the Elgato website.

For detailed operation information, you can download the user guide here: Turbo.264 HD Manual

[luke1970]

• All-new high performance USB hardware encoder for Intel Macs is dramatically faster than any other H.264 encoder (average speed increase is 2-3x).

Hm, it's the Turbo.264 HD faster then the old Turbo.264?

[Mike Evangelist]

Yes, much faster than the old one.

[hyteckit]

Is there going to be a trade-in offer for existing Turbo.264 owners?

Especially those who are having numerous problems with the current model.

[BJWanlund]

I'm actually intrigued.

Quick question, however: Is this a sign of things to come from the Elgato people (meaning if this is only the beginning with regard to HD devices, will the other EyeTV products be far behind)?

BJ

[KathleenBrown]

We are unable to offer hardware upgrades for free or at a reduced cost. You will need to purchase a new device and software bundle in order to upgrade to the Turbo.264 HD.

The only exception to this policy are those purchases made within the last thirty days. Please contact us with your receipt and purchase information - if you are within Elgato's standard thirty-day return period, we are happy to assist with a swap for this new device. Please note that there may be an additional charge for this item, to make up for the difference in cost between these two products.

NOTE!!!!: This applies ONLY to Elgato Online Store customers in the United States and Canada!! European customers and those located elsewhere are subject to the Terms and Conditions of the Elgato European Store described at http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainmenu/buy/terms.en.html.

Kathleen
Elgato Systems

[AlexTheStampede]

Couple of questions:
How does it fare against latest Handbrake, that supports multi core/cpu? (that kinda sucks all the Mac's life out, you try to even watch Youtube with a dual core used at 190%. but it's pretty fast to encode)
Back to SD content... how much faster than the older one? Can we have examples? Or let's say an iPhone conversion, how faster could that be?
Since i have the old one, could both of them work at the same time (on different files)? That would be cool.
Thank you


EDIT: oh, and about those damned subtitles? Do they work properly this time?

[Jermanowsky]

Back to SD content... how much faster than the older one? Can we have examples? Or let's say an iPhone conversion, how faster could that be?
Since i have the old one, could both of them work at the same time (on different files)? That would be cool.
Thank you

EDIT: oh, and about those damned subtitles? Do they work properly this time?

I have the same questions as Alex in regard to conversion speed comparisson (can you give us a percentage, or sample timings?) and having both the new and old Turbos working in parallel.

But my main question is: have you tried the Turbo HD with MKV HD 720p files? I guess you did, so please let us know how this new Turbo fared.

Thanks!

[Nick Freeman]

(Edit: Please note that this quick test is from the Elgato Support Manager, and not a normal Turbo.264 HD user. While we wait for true reviews with benchmarks, this is meant to give an idea about how Turbo.264 performs.)

We don't have official comparison charts to share yet, but here is a taste - I ran some quick tests.

My Mac is a iMac 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.5.6.

I took a 60 second long 1080i EyeTV recording (from an episode of Heroes).

••• Apple TV format •••

Exported from EyeTV (Quicktime) - 160 seconds to complete
Exported using Turbo.264 - 106 seconds to complete
Exported using Turbo.264 HD - 62 seconds to complete

••• 1080p format •••

Exported from EyeTV (Quicktime, "H.264" option) - 399 seconds to complete
Exported using Turbo.264 HD - 92 seconds to complete

Please note that the faster your Mac is, the faster Turbo.264 HD can export.

Also, export speed depends on the source material - my EyeTV recordings are MPEG-2 Transport Streams.

We look forward to more detailed comparisons from reviewers and users.

[Jermanowsky]

Exported using Turbo.264 HD - 62 seconds to complete

This is nice, thanks for sharing!

[Lycestra]

I'm curious. Is there any particular reason this is Intel-only? Does it have to be? My 4 year old G5 isn't that slow. Or should I have seen this coming, with the rumored Intel-only Snow Leopard just around the corner?

[sirnh]

I just ordered mine... and with a little web search I found this 10% off code you can use at check out when ordering at their online store:
W1A6-TCNX-JA7

[Mike Evangelist]

Is there any particular reason this is Intel-only? Does it have to be?

We wish we could have made it work with PPCs, but they just don't have the umph to move the data around fast enough. PPCs have a hard time with HD material, and H.264 is especially demanding.

[pseniura]

Is there any particular reason this is Intel-only? Does it have to be?

We wish we could have made it work with PPCs, but they just don't have the umph to move the data around fast enough. PPCs have a hard time with HD material, and H.264 is especially demanding.

Does anyone on your programming staff know how to do pure Altivec assembly code properly? (Never mind Apple’s vecLib frameworks & such.)

I no longer have my Dual G5 2.7GHz, yeah the liquid–cooled one, due to personal disaster, but I still sense it would beat this 24" C2D iMac in many feats and certainly did have plenty of “oompf” for HD when I did have it.

These kinds of blanket statements usually are based on ignorance, laziness, not wanting to learn how to program things for full effect, etc., no matter who told you to say that or even if it is your own personal experience. I would certainly take him/you to task over this issue, someone needs to do it. PPC machines are far from dead esp’ly the bigger ones. Treating them as lowest–class Mac users will always bring me to this kind of reply.

Study how open–source projects are using direct Altivec code in e.g. ffmpeg and mplayer and x264 (VLC) just to name three such projects. [Note I said “study”, not “plagiarise” which might cause legal trouble with (L)GPL.]

There is no reason to relegate PPC Mac users this way.

[Mike Evangelist]

Thanks for your thoughtful and heartfelt comments.

My earlier response was a simplistic explanation of the reason for the decision to go Intel-only on the new Turbo. There are technical details that I'm not at liberty to explain, but those details aren't really relevant anyway. The bottom line is that the benefits of the new hardware would be greatly diminished on a PPC machine, and would likely result in less satisfaction for the user. We don't want that.

[Leo Park]

I'm curious. Is there any particular reason this is Intel-only? Does it have to be? My 4 year old G5 isn't that slow. Or should I have seen this coming, with the rumored Intel-only Snow Leopard just around the corner?

A slightly more detailed explanation is that the Turbo.264 HD uses an intermediary encoding step to feed to the encoder, which then encodes to H.264. On slower macs, this intermediary encoding step was enough of a gating factor to eliminate a lot of the gain seen from the hardware encoder.

Obviously we want to bring our products to as wide an audience as possible, and would not exclude PPC users for no reason.

[HealeyGuy]

Can the Turbo.264 HD encode directly from Final Cut Express?

[jpow112]

iMovie 09 has a problem with deinterlacing 1080i video - extensive posts in the apple support forum - will turbo264HD have the same problem in deinterlacing?

or is it impossible to predict without testing?

many thanks

[DtFan1]

Sorry to ask, but what kind of speed increases will be seen with the turbo264 HD over the original turbo264 for a Standard Def MPEG2 to h264 encode? It would be nice if I could stop using my power hog quad core Ubuntu box that smokes the turbo264.

Thanks.

[Mike Evangelist]

Sorry to ask, but what kind of speed increases will be seen with the turbo264 HD over the original turbo264 for a Standard Def MPEG2 to h264 encode?

What Mac do you have? What output format do you want?

[Nick Freeman]

(Edit: Please note that this quick test is from the Elgato Support Manager, and not a normal Turbo.264 HD user. While we wait for true reviews with benchmarks, this is meant to give an idea about how Turbo.264 performs.)

We don't have official comparison charts to share yet, but here is a taste - I ran a quick test.

My Mac is a iMac 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.5.6.

I took a 395 second long DVD recording, 4:3 aspect ratio, (from an unencrypted VIDEO_TS folder).

••• Apple TV format •••

Exported using Turbo.264 - 380 seconds to complete
Exported using Turbo.264 HD - 109 seconds to complete

Please note that the faster your Mac is, the faster Turbo.264 HD can export.

Also, export speed depends on the source material.

We look forward to more detailed comparisons from reviewers and users. We will also have official comparisons posted soon.

[evstratios]

will it make the iPod Touch 2G crash
just like the original does?

It makes me soooooooo happy
when I have to wait for that extra-long boot
after Turbo.264-encoded video crashes my iPod

will this new product crash it the same way
or will it have a NEW bug you'll refuse to address?

[Nick Freeman]

This earlier thread gives more information about what we've found out about this unusual crash.

http://forum.elgato.com/viewtopic.php?f ... 2190#p2219

Re: Turbo.264 videos crashing

Postby Tuan Vu » January 6th, 2009, 7:11 pm

After investigating this issue, we've discovered this is an Apple issue that only affects 2nd generation iPod touch units with firmware 2.2.

We've had reports that firmware 2.1 did not have this problem on the 2nd gen iPod touch.

Also, the 1st generation iPod touch models do not have this problem regardless of the firmware version.

....

We are actively working with Apple to resolve this problem which does not happen on the 1st gen iPod touch regardless of firmware revision.

The bug has been filed with Apple - once we get more information from them about the cause of this issue, we can act accordingly.

This issue does not happen with Turbo.264 HD and the iPod Touch.