wade walker : flash developer

Elgato Systems has recently released Turbo.264, its h.264 hardware video encoder accessory for Mac computers. Some may be asking why should I buy a video encoder when my Mac can already encode videos with h.264? Well, whenever you use Quicktime, for example, to encode a video, it is using the Quicktime software and your processor to render out and encode the video. When videos are being encoded it pretty much uses 100% of your processors power, leaving you with next to no room to do anything else(browse the internet, listen to music, etc).

This is where Elgato’s new Turbo.264 device comes in. It is the same size as a USB pen drive and even plugs into your computer through USB. The Turbo.264 device’s soul purpose is to render and encode videos using Apple’s H.264 codec and to take the stress off your processor. Elgato is listing the device as being able to encode videos up to 4 times faster on an Intel-based Mac, and is even higher than that on older PowerPC based Mac’s.

The device is only $100 and for that amount of money, this hardware video encoder is well worth it and I will definitely be picking up this new toy.