New product under development? Looks like Elgato are making a h.264 encoder (USB 2.0) for high speed conversions.
http://www.macnews.de/news/98679
http://blogs.sun.com/seapegasus/entry/turbo_quicktime_encoding
Looks promising
"I just wanted to show this (macnews) and this (MacWelt) to a colleague of mine, but noticed that there are no English articles to be found describing this new piece of hardware, so I just write one myself.
Elgato Turbo 264 is an external CPU in a USB stick. When you encode a lot of H.264 Quicktime movies (for iPod or Apple TV), you know how it maxes out your Mac's CPU(s), and still takes between 4h and 20h to encode one movie? Right, so the idea is to let this specialized additional CPU do the encoding for you, and take off the load of the main CPU.
The main advantage is of course speed: The tested prototype's statistics for encoding a 1 min long 640x480 video on a Mac with 2 G5 CPUs are: 3.5 min (without turbo), versus 46 secs (with turbo). Presumably, if you already have an uber-fast Mac Pro, the speed gain is less noticable, but for everybody else it should make a big difference.
The included software comes with a plugin that adds the hardware encoding option to the Quicktime Exporter menus, e.g. in EyeTV, iMovie and Quicktime Player Pro. It also support a video format compatible with Sony Playstations somewhere. If you don't have Quicktime pro, you can get the functionality (*) included in the stand-alone version of the product.
And why am I advertising it? Let's say I might know someone who may or may not possibly have had a hand (or two) involved in the development of the software's spiffy GUI. ;-) (Sources: MacWelt and MacNews)
PS: (*) To be more clear, the stand-alone version does not contain a QuickTime Pro license, but something with equivalent functionality by Elgato."
http://www.macnews.de/news/98679
http://blogs.sun.com/seapegasus/entry/turbo_quicktime_encoding
Looks promising
"I just wanted to show this (macnews) and this (MacWelt) to a colleague of mine, but noticed that there are no English articles to be found describing this new piece of hardware, so I just write one myself.
Elgato Turbo 264 is an external CPU in a USB stick. When you encode a lot of H.264 Quicktime movies (for iPod or Apple TV), you know how it maxes out your Mac's CPU(s), and still takes between 4h and 20h to encode one movie? Right, so the idea is to let this specialized additional CPU do the encoding for you, and take off the load of the main CPU.
The main advantage is of course speed: The tested prototype's statistics for encoding a 1 min long 640x480 video on a Mac with 2 G5 CPUs are: 3.5 min (without turbo), versus 46 secs (with turbo). Presumably, if you already have an uber-fast Mac Pro, the speed gain is less noticable, but for everybody else it should make a big difference.
The included software comes with a plugin that adds the hardware encoding option to the Quicktime Exporter menus, e.g. in EyeTV, iMovie and Quicktime Player Pro. It also support a video format compatible with Sony Playstations somewhere. If you don't have Quicktime pro, you can get the functionality (*) included in the stand-alone version of the product.
And why am I advertising it? Let's say I might know someone who may or may not possibly have had a hand (or two) involved in the development of the software's spiffy GUI. ;-) (Sources: MacWelt and MacNews)
PS: (*) To be more clear, the stand-alone version does not contain a QuickTime Pro license, but something with equivalent functionality by Elgato."
TV and hard drive upgrade is a tipping scale in my decision to go from Mac Mini to Apple Tv for a media center...
