Hardware accelerated H264 encode

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Level 2

467 points

Hardware accelerated H264 encode

Searching around I can see there are various hardware based H264 encoder PCI cards, usually designed for windows based machines and usually aimed at the streaming media and IP markets I think.

As a long shot, has anyone designed a Mac PCI card which can integrate with a custom Quicktime H264 component for accelerated encoding?

I realise this is very unlikely, but it would be a great product. Perhaps even some form of USB 'dongle' with a small encoder chip inside - not sure how this would fit with standard QT software though. Would probably require a custom / proprietary software app to go with it.

Any thoughts?
Thanks

Posted on Mar 28, 2007 4:20 AM

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Answer 1

Ricktoronto

Level 6

11,560 points

Mar 28, 2007 7:44 AM in response to Mark.Burton

Maybe LaCie at some point might do something like this - they made an external hardware FW connected device that did real time encoding from DV to MPEG-2 called the Fastcoder. Same idea, new chip.

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Answer 2

Mark.Burton Author

Level 2

467 points

Mar 28, 2007 8:06 AM in response to Ricktoronto

That's exactly the sort of thing! Odd though, how there isn't any info on the Lacie site for it - did it get discontinued?

I checked an old article on Macworld about the product release and it sounded very good. It only accepted DV files for input and used a little known utility called Capty FastCoder to encode the files, but the idea was simple and effective.

Exactly the sort of product which would be great for H264 encoding! I hope someone takes this one on!

Thanks
Mark

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Answer 3

Mar 28, 2007 8:31 AM in response to Mark.Burton

You can try the Final Cut Forum. This is discussed in there from time to time.

http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=123

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Answer 4

Mark.Burton Author

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467 points

Mar 28, 2007 8:35 AM in response to David M Brewer

Thanks David. I'm aware of the FCP forum. Can you point to any specific threads there?

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Answer 5

Mar 28, 2007 8:45 AM in response to Mark.Burton

I would just make a post there...

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Answer 6

Ricktoronto

Level 6

11,560 points

Mar 28, 2007 5:54 PM in response to Mark.Burton

One thing though, the advantage of the FastCoder was real time MPEG-2 encoding. On my dual G5 I am doing H264 encoding faster than real time so slowing it down doesn't seem a good buy.

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Answer 7

Mark.Burton Author

Level 2

467 points

Apr 3, 2007 2:37 AM in response to Ricktoronto

It all depends on the source. If you are converting a DVD, then the likely hood is that its very clean image source, so the encoder has less work to do.

I work in offline editing and our working material is lower quality and often quite grainy compared to the full res source. As a result an H.264 encode take much longer.

I have since found two products which claim to offer hardware H.264 accelerated encoding through a USB 'stick'. One is PC only:
http://www.adstech.com/products/RDX-160/intro/RDX-160_intro.asp?pid=RDX-160

...the other is not yet out, but will offer Mac support and works directly with any Quicktime supporting app - perfect!!
http://iphone-scene.com/iphone-forums/iphone-software-forum/2007/apr/02/h-264-ha rdware-encoder-mac-encode-movies-ipod-apple-

MacBook Pro | 2.16Ghz | 2GB RAM | OS X 10.4.8 | FCS 5.1.4 | QT 7.1.5

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Answer 8

Ricktoronto

Level 6

11,560 points

Apr 3, 2007 8:14 PM in response to Mark.Burton

Elgato is good stuff (though not the horrible USB Hybrid thing they are selling now). A H264 encoder would be interesting for $150 or so. Looking at both links I suspect they are the same thing frankly. Some Elgato devices are sold under other brand names. I bet either will work, though you may only be able to get OSX software from Elgato.

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Answer 9

Mark.Burton Author

Level 2

467 points

Apr 4, 2007 1:34 AM in response to Ricktoronto

Yep, your probably right. I emailed them yesterday and they said they were working hard to get it ready for the end of April - if they are using the ADS hardware, then I guess its mostly software components they are working on - some kind of system kext or Quicktime component to allow this thing to help out with H.264 encodes

MacBook Pro | 2.16Ghz | 2GB RAM | OS X 10.4.8 | FCS 5.1.4 | QT 7.1.5

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Answer 10

Ricktoronto

Level 6

11,560 points

Apr 8, 2007 2:23 PM in response to Mark.Burton

I will keep an eye on this myself but it needs to encode faster than real time to be worth the effort. Maybe it is real time at full size. My G5 won't do real time 640X480 but close.

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