Elgato Turbo 264

[tkilian]

Using a Powerbook G4

Will this work on a Powerbook G4?

I see that it needs a bus powered USB port, and I know that the G4's port don't put out as much power as a standard powered USB port.

Also, does anyone use this with iMovie?
How are the speeds there?

 

[h00ligan]

Will this work on a Powerbook G4?

I see that it needs a bus powered USB port, and I know that the G4's port don't put out as much power as a standard powered USB port.

Also, does anyone use this with iMovie?
How are the speeds there?

it should work fine, i'll test it this weekend on my mom's if you can't find info on their site. As far as imovie, works great - for h264 exports. If you own a pb - i would DEFINITELY recommend it - my previous 'meh' reiew was based on owning a new LED macbook pro... different ball of wax.

btw - pc3's idea of multipass is FIVE passes - that's just ridiculous. At least let us choose how many passes, personally anything over 3 is a waste of time imho... and most of the time 2.

 

[Shoesy]

I have the Turbo 264 and I'm quite impressed with it, but using the bundled software I don't seem to be getting chapter marks in my converted movies. Anyone know if Popcorn would preserve the DVD chapter marks?

I use 'Metadata Hootenanny' to add the chapters afterwards, it can either read them from your dvd or download them from the web (a bit hit and miss).

I'd also advise using 'fairmount' to save you the bother of mac the rippering.

I say again- 'mac the rippering'.

Dont forget to use 'meta x' first to add those tags tho- as it doesn't like adding tags to mov files, and you might be stuck without them afterwards.

 

[h00ligan]

I use 'Metadata Hootenanny' to add the chapters afterwards, it can either read them from your dvd or download them from the web (a bit hit and miss).

I'd also advise using 'fairmount' to save you the bother of mac the rippering.

I say again- 'mac the rippering'.

Dont forget to use 'meta x' first to add those tags tho- as it doesn't like adding tags to mov files, and you might be stuck without them afterwards.

lol @ rippering.

I have been looking for something like dvd42 for mac forever, thanks so much for posting about fairmount.

 

[grahamlucas]

Not so good with iMovie

Also, does anyone use this with iMovie?
How are the speeds there?

I bought the Turbo 264 specifically to speed up iMovie exporting to AppleTV.

With iMovieHD (v6) it doubled the export speed on my iMac 24" however it has a serious bug where it ignores any audio volume adjustment in the iMovie timeline. This has been acknowledged by Elgato but never fixed.

Imovie '08 (v7) is really bad news. Turbo 264 doesn't work with it at all. Again acknowledged by Elgato very soon after iLife '08 was released but no sign of a fix.

In conclusion, I'd consider the Turbo 264 to be incompatible with iMovie.

 

[h00ligan]

Ah, thanks for the correction - I hadn't realized that those issues existed!

 

[h00ligan]

you know, i just ripped something from dvd using the ipod high setting adjusting for widescreen @1500, and i have to say, the quality absolutely sucks. Doesn't much matter if i get 50 fps if the end result stinks. The more i use the product, the more I think it was a waste of money... i'll continue ot update the thread if anyone cares about lasting impressions, but as it sits now, for anyone on an intel mac, i'd say set things to rip with handbrake or visualhub overnight and save your money.

They REALLY need to implement a 2 pass, single isn't cutting it.

 

[boer]

you know, i just ripped something from dvd using the ipod high setting adjusting for widescreen @1500, and i have to say, the quality absolutely sucks.

Well, it I don't think it's fair to say the quality sucks even though it is not what you can expect from the best software encoders. Anyway I hope they will keep improving this product with future software updates.

 

[h00ligan]

Well, it I don't think it's fair to say the quality sucks even though it is not what you can expect from the best software encoders. Anyway I hope they will keep improving this product with future software updates.

well sucks i subjective. I am preparing now a 30 second sample encoded with various methods for people to compare. The other thing about the software is dealing with season discs is almost impossible it seems.

I'll probably end up giving my mom the turbo 264, unless i decide i want to do double encodes for everything - appletv / ipod regular.... both of those are ok, it's the one in the middle that stinks (ipod high)

 

[Shoesy]

Rope for old money

I'll probably end up giving my mom the turbo 264

Wow your mum has got both a mac and an appletv? She's pretty cool.
My mum has got a dvr I guess, but she still has to get dad to set it for her.

Still, got any other brand new technology you want to ditch to whoever is nearest without giving it a proper try? I don't know if I can wait a month for my iphone really. I would gladly swap one for my scratched up (but reliable) 30gb ipod.

 

[aki]

Subjective

Ok well reading these posts, different people see differently...!

I got the turbo for my older G5 and the speeds (and lower CPU use) are definitely worth the money for me.

Yes its tru the quality is not the same as if you tweak in something like handbrake; but i use mine to watch stuff on portable devices and its great for that. I did even use it once to do a higher quality encode for something I wanted to keep and I think it did a good job. Again, the time saving was a big thing for me.

Im very happy with the turbo, much cheaper than a new iMac. I wouldnt agree with people who are saying "quality sucks", thats not true, its more what you are encoding for and how perfect you need your video. If you have an older mac i think it is definitely worth considering. love mine.

 

[alric]

You rip with MTR then drop the folder into the 264. I use it all the time. Quality isn't as good as Handbrake, but for me, it doesn't matter. I'd rather have the conversion speed of the 264... I only use handbrake for my favorites.

You can use Fairmount to bypass the MacTheRipper step. Just encode directly from the DVD.

 

[theviceofreason]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A110a Safari/419.3)

I have the Turbo 264 and I'm quite impressed with it, but using the bundled software I don't seem to be getting chapter marks in my converted movies. Anyone know if Popcorn would preserve the DVD chapter marks?

I use 'Metadata Hootenanny' to add the chapters afterwards, it can either read them from your dvd or download them from the web (a bit hit and miss).

I'd also advise using 'fairmount' to save you the bother of mac the rippering.

I say again- 'mac the rippering'.

Dont forget to use 'meta x' first to add those tags tho- as it doesn't like adding tags to mov files, and you might be stuck without them afterwards.

cool, I'll give that a try. Thanks for the tip.

 

[h00ligan]

El Gato is losing more points now. I submitted a ticket 48 hrs ago - haven't heard a peep back yet.

 

[haoqfu]

El Gato is losing more points now. I submitted a ticket 48 hrs ago - haven't heard a peep back yet.

I usually get reply with an hour or two.

 

[h00ligan]

i just checked to make sure they aren't on my block list - haven't even received a confirmation for the support account i just created (never made the account before, just used an email addy as allowed). very odd...

you know i am going to find something free to dl from itunes. maybe i have been looking at apple tv settings so long, ipod settings just look like crap. i'll see how apples encodes stackup. I do contend that handbrake rips look quite a bit better.... still testing stuff.. i guess at the end i should put up clips and screenies for others considering@

edit -

as expected, the handbrake rips look pretty much just like the itms rips - the turbo 264 showing a great deal more artifacting. Obviously the result of lacking either a refined algorithm for single pass or a 2 pass option.

boo.

 

[kagharaht]

Ok well reading these posts, different people see differently...!

I got the turbo for my older G5 and the speeds (and lower CPU use) are definitely worth the money for me.

Yes its tru the quality is not the same as if you tweak in something like handbrake; but i use mine to watch stuff on portable devices and its great for that. I did even use it once to do a higher quality encode for something I wanted to keep and I think it did a good job. Again, the time saving was a big thing for me.

Im very happy with the turbo, much cheaper than a new iMac. I wouldnt agree with people who are saying "quality sucks", thats not true, its more what you are encoding for and how perfect you need your video. If you have an older mac i think it is definitely worth considering. love mine.

I just picked up the turbo.264, and I must say I'm quite impressed with the output for Apple TV at HIGH setting (150%) The file size are about 1.09 GB, but the quality of the output is amazing. I guess version 1.1 of the software has made some serious improvements. I believe it outputs it out to anamorphic since the size of some of the DVDs I've converted are at 814x344 for Apple TV. I believe it used to be 800x600. On my old iMac G5 at 2.0Ghz I get about 24fps at Apple TV High settings. On Handbrake it would crawl at 2 or 3fps. If I set to anamorphic on HB even less than 2. On my MBP at 2.1GHz the iMac G5 can encode at similar speeds. So for older Macs its awesome and for freeing up CPU on new Macs its a great device to have.

 

[h00ligan]

I just picked up the turbo.264, and I must say I'm quite impressed with the output for Apple TV at HIGH setting (150%) The file size are about 1.09 GB, but the quality of the output is amazing. I guess version 1.1 of the software has made some serious improvements. I believe it outputs it out to anamorphic since the size of some of the DVDs I've converted are at 814x344 for Apple TV. I believe it used to be 800x600. On my old iMac G5 at 2.0Ghz I get about 24fps at Apple TV High settings. On Handbrake it would crawl at 2 or 3fps. If I set to anamorphic on HB even less than 2. On my MBP at 2.1GHz the iMac G5 can encode at similar speeds. So for older Macs its awesome and for freeing up CPU on new Macs its a great device to have.

again, why would you output at 814 when the original is 720 - why would you want to upscale. I don't understand/?

 

[kagharaht]

again, why would you output at 814 when the original is 720 - why would you want to upscale. I don't understand/?

I don't know, and I don't really care why. My files are ranging from 1.09 GB to 1.5 or so on longer movies and they look great.

Perhaps it has something to do with making them anamorphic automatically? Anyway for what it does and unless your a high quality maniac this thing gives me 24fps on my old iMac G5 2.0Ghz at excellent video quality.

I also got Popcorn 3 to try out. I'll give that a shot and see how it comes out on AppleTV setting at high setting. It's also suppose to output DPLII. I don't think the Turbo.264 outputs to DPLII.

 

[pjarvi]

I just did my first encode last night using iPod High. The quality definitely does not compare to using a software 2-pass encoder, but damn it sure is fast. I'm going to try encoding the same video tonight with the AppleTV setting to compare. I'll try to take some screenshots and post a comparison.

 

[kagharaht]

I just did my first encode last night using iPod High. The quality definitely does not compare to using a software 2-pass encoder, but damn it sure is fast. I'm going to try encoding the same video tonight with the AppleTV setting to compare. I'll try to take some screenshots and post a comparison.

Agreed. It's not as good as Handbrake, specially with no 2 pass option. I wish they can add that on there and allow subtitles. Then it would be an awesome product. My old iMac G5 2.0 can do one movie at 33fps instead of the usual 2-5fps. I could use my MBP 2.1, but I'm using it for too much work and always on the go. I can cue up a bunch on Elgato and it goes right through it.

For what I need it for, its good enough. The video is a lot better than what our digital cable network is spitting out.

I also tried Popcorn3 since it was so cheap someone said you can do two pass. Not true. Anyway I tried it the files are huge and the quality was crap. Turbo gave out a much cleaner picture and smooth playback. So far P3 is a bust.

 

[h00ligan]

Agreed. It's not as good as Handbrake, specially with no 2 pass option. I wish they can add that on there and allow subtitles. Then it would be an awesome product. My old iMac G5 2.0 can do one movie at 33fps instead of the usual 2-5fps. I could use my MBP 2.1, but I'm using it for too much work and always on the go. I can cue up a bunch on Elgato and it goes right through it.

For what I need it for, its good enough. The video is a lot better than what our digital cable network is spitting out.

I also tried Popcorn3 since it was so cheap someone said you can do two pass. Not true. Anyway I tried it the files are huge and the quality was crap. Turbo gave out a much cleaner picture and smooth playback. So far P3 is a bust.

Interesting, i have been using popcorn as well, adn i would actually say i think the results are superior - but also, apparently when you set a bitrate, it's not an average, it's cbr - so that was my quality problem. Letting it handle it on its own is much better... the quality between hb and this now is pretty minimal - and the turbo.264 def. spits out much better one pass encodings than hb...

So apparently i have trashed the product unfairly - it seems to be pretty good.. but transcoding isn't anywhere near visualhub quality - not sure why. And in teh case of transcoding mkv files.. visualhub is about 10x faster than the turbo.264!

 

[pjarvi]

Here's my comparison shots. The dimensions of each shot aren't perfect, since I was using Cmd-Shift-4 to take each shot. The most obvious difference can be seen in all the detail missing from the wall with the shelves in the background.

iPod High


AppleTV High


Original DVD


(Edit) I just noticed that the Turbo264 cut off a portion of the frame on the sides and bottom. I was just using all automatic settings, so I'll have to do some testing to figure out what happened.

(Edit2) I've got another encode going right now, and it looks like it was overscan cutting off some of the frame. I turned that off and I saw the missing part of the frame in the little preview box this time (I tried an encode just before this one with Overscan On, and saw the frame appeared cut in the preview box). I'm also trying some of the settings I used to use years ago when I did xvid encodes. 640x360 size, and 1200kbps bit rate. I don't own an AppleTV, and don't watch movies on my iPod, so I just need to find the settings i'm happy with for playback on my MacBook.

 

[kagharaht]

Here's my comparison shots. The dimensions of each shot aren't perfect, since I was using Cmd-Shift-4 to take each shot. The most obvious difference can be seen in all the detail missing from the wall with the shelves in the background.

iPod High
View attachment 86982

AppleTV High
View attachment 86983

Original DVD
View attachment 86984

(Edit) I just noticed that the Turbo264 cut off a portion of the frame on the sides and bottom. I was just using all automatic settings, so I'll have to do some testing to figure out what happened.

(Edit2) I've got another encode going right now, and it looks like it was overscan cutting off some of the frame. I turned that off and I saw the missing part of the frame in the little preview box this time (I tried an encode just before this one with Overscan On, and saw the frame appeared cut in the preview box). I'm also trying some of the settings I used to use years ago when I did xvid encodes. 640x360 size, and 1200kbps bit rate. I don't own an AppleTV, and don't watch movies on my iPod, so I just need to find the settings i'm happy with for playback on my MacBook.

LOL.. Thats my favorite movie. Bachelor party, you should post the sample shots of the scene where all 4 were taking their pictures. I'm sure we'll all be happy to study that in detail.

Anyway the quality is pretty good for a single pass. I hope Elgato adds two pass on future updates and DPLII. I'm sending them a note for that feature and I hope others do the same.

 

[pjarvi]

While it doesn't look too bad in a paused frame, in motion the colors shift quite a bit causing some weird flickering. At low bit rates, there's heavy macro-blocking as well. The encode I did at 1200kbps wasn't very good, I did another encode at 4000kbps that looks great, but also came out at over 3GB! It looks like somewhere right around 2000kbps will be the sweet spot to fulfill my own needs.

All in all, I would have to say that I'm happy with the purchase. Encoding an entire movie in a little over an hour, versus the 8-12 hours I used to wait for, is worth the loss of some detail. Hopefully Elgato will continue to improve the software, right now I wouldn't trust leaving everything on Automatic (such as the issue with it not turning Overscan off with Bachelor Party), and we need a way to select individual episodes for multi-episode discs.