Elgato Turbo.264

Elgato reports: [edited]

You have a collection of videos on your Mac. They’re movies you downloaded from your camcorder or digital camera, or perhaps projects you created yourself with iMovie. They could be short video clips that friends and family sent you by email, or TV shows, music videos, and movies that you recorded with EyeTV.

How do you make them iTunes-ready for your iPod or Apple TV? How do you put them on a Sony PSP? And how do you speed up an export process that can be agonisingly slow?

Turbo.264 is a powerful video encoder in the form of a compact USB 2.0 stick. Use the included software to convert your Mac videos one at a time or in a batch; The application drops the converted file(s) into iTunes for you, ready to sync automatically with your iPod or Apple TV.

Alternatively, plug in Turbo.264 while you use the iPod or Apple TV export command of popular Macintosh video applications. Turbo.264’s hardware encoder jumps in to take over for your Mac’s processor, and does the hard work of encoding the videos to an H.264 format. Not only does Turbo.264 help get the job done faster, it frees up your processor for other tasks. Think of it as a “co-processor” for your Mac.

RegHardware 's review gave it 95%, concluding:

"A couple more CPU generations and the Turbo.264 will be redundant, of course. But why wait three or four years for H.264 encoding speeds you can have right now, for a fraction of the price of a new Mac? And the results speak for themselves: Turbo.264 pumps out iPod, PSP and Apple TV-friendly video in a fraction of the time your Mac can. If you use one of these devices for video, Turbo.264 is a must-have."
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