Elgato Turbo.264

i just got one of these too, and I have to say that I am underwelmed!

ipod high quality setting I am getting 22FPS using the turbo.H264 app
apple tv setting I am getting a tiny 15FPS!

with the app unhidden I can see it consumes 50% of my G4 mini processor
with the app hidden i can see it consumes 30% of my G4 mini processor

I as expecting far less processor useage and far higher FPS performance.

Bearing in mind its only using the baseline profile, single pass and isn't de-interlacing I'm not sure that FFMPEGX is much slower!
😟

anyone else got any experience?

sulking.....
Steve

Strange how elgato doesn't have any forums set up. Unfortunately, the ONLY way to encode with it is using the presets. Not sure if this is a hardware limitation or something they'll be able to update to include.

You should try FFMPEGX. I'd figure (and other benchmarks have shown) that it should be FAR slower than the T.264 on a G4.

I was considering getting one but haven't taken the plunge as yet.

My understanding is that this device only encodes the stream sent to it by the Elgato software - the original file would still have to be loaded and decompressed frame by frame by the host CPU (controlled by the Elgato software).

If for example you just played back that movie file how much CPU use would register normally? If similar the apparent high CPU use could just relate to processing the stream to send to the Elgato encoder in the first place.

I started another thread about this device but some users theer were saying their CPU usage was nearly zero when encoding.

AC

with the app unhidden I can see it consumes 50% of my
G4 mini processor
with the app hidden i can see it consumes 30% of my
G4 mini processor

I as expecting far less processor useage and far
higher FPS performance.

sulking.....
Steve

When I use my Turbo.264 I see around a 5% CPU usage only.
It has greatly speeded up conversion of TV shows recorded on my EyeTV device.
It also works great in iMovie for my home movies.

Ian

I use FFMPEGX almost daily!

I suppose I was exadgerating a bit 🙂 the turbo stick is quicker, but I suppose I may have been expecting too much.

The quality of the video is well so so, not too bad on the apple tv setting, but from an eyetv captured MPEG2 I'm only seeing a comression of about 25% to 30 %.

when I use FFMPEGX I can get way better compression and better looking video (using 2 pass encoding).

one thing I was a little confused about was that the elagto software says that the appletv setting produces 800x600 video, yet I can encode some eyetv MPEG2 that is reported by quicktime as 720x404 but when encoded with appletv settings (using the turbo stick) I get 720x576. No wonder the compression ratio (of file sizes) isn;t great!!!!!

I don't understand how people can say that they get 5% CPU useage when exporting using the turbo stick.
From eyetv I get a CPU useage of about 60% when I export just the program recorded stream (MPEG2)!!!! I presume this must be the OS requirements and the disk handling calls because no transcoding is being done, MPEG2->MPEG2 in a different file location.
So its obvious that eyetv is never going to report 5% CPU useage when transcoding using the turbo stick because surely all of the "transport stream export" loading is applicable PLUS the extra OS loading for handling the USB2 calls to the turbo stick.

I'm pretty sure that using the TURBO app is never going to end up in a 5% processor useage. USB2 is CPU intensive.. right? (unlike FW which handles more of the protocol in hardware) it just doen't seem to tally that the TURBO app can open a file, spit it at the turbo stick and save the resulting stream in that little CPU useage.

I know one thing.. I for one am quite disappointed. I have seen some higher FPS encoding reported for IPOD high and IPOD standard settings, and if I were using the turbo stick for this purpose may be happy, but I'm wanting it for the appletv setting which so far I have only seen about 15 FPS as being the best for MPEG2 transcoding.

I'm sure I have seen 30FPS being batted around the internet somewhere, with people saying that we should see a 10X speed up for a G4/5

I supose I need to do some benchmarking against X.264 using FFMPEGX as by default I always use 2 pass encoding and de-interlace as part of my transcoding flow.
Has anyone done a direct comparison of turbo H.264 against X.264 for exactly the same settings?
whats the encoding time and file sizes like?
for the same settings the file sizes should be identical (by definition), but are they?

still sulking......
Steve

I bought the Turbo as well and I am underwhelmed. I did see a little bump in FPS rate, but the quality just isn't there. I wish they would let you use similar settings as Handbrake. My initial reaction was to put it up on eBay, but I'll wait another month or two and see if someone comes up with something that really makes it useful. I think Elgato shot themselves in the foot with the default settings.



2.1 Ghz G5 iMac (iSight) 1GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I'm very happy with mine. It does have some peculiarities:

1. Version 1.0 was able to drag and drop more videos from my home made DVDs at once once than version 1.1. Yet not all DVDs act the same way.

2. It won't let me drag and drop two VOB files of the same prefix number (i.e. 1_0 and 1_1) in some cases, while it will others. It just assumes they are both the same while.

3. It won't do protected DVDs. Probably best since doing protected DVDs is illegal in most parts of the world.

Most of the time it is twice as fast as Handbrake on my iMac Intel Core 2 Duo.

The resulting videos are always great on the AppleTV.

Given it is only $100, it certainly has made up for some lost time on a big project I have to do.

if anybody is wondering why it is that elagto isn't allowing custom settings for the turbo stick then the answer probably lies with the underlying hardware:

The turbo stick uses a mobilygeb MG1264

http://www.mobilygen.com/products.htm

the Mobilygen MG1264 only supports baseline profile H264 at
720x480/576 (NTSC/PAL) 640x480 (VGA)
720x240 (HVR) 640x240 (HVR)
352x480 (HHR) 320x480 (HHR)
352x240/288 (SIF/CIF) 320x240 (QVGA)
these resolutions.
although
- User defined resolutions also supported
seems to point towards maybe custom settings could be possible?

This answers the question as to why when I encode a 720x404 MPEG2 from eyetv I get back a 720x576 mp4 file!

Steve

ian:

what settings are you using to see 5% processor usage?

is it from eyetv or the turbo app?

ta

Steve

ian:

what settings are you using to see 5% processor
usage?

is it from eyetv or the turbo app?

ta

Steve

From the Turbo.264 app.

ipod export? appletv export?

whats the input file type? MPEG2? DIVX? WMF?

you're running a dual core intel right?


ta
Steve

I received mine tonight but i can't encode anything atm. I am trying to convert some .avi files I downloaded for AppleTV but I keep getting a 12345 error. I haven't been able to find any info on this at all, anyone have any ideas?

Steven,

This is the first mention I've seen of the specific encoder/decoder chip used in the Turbo device. Out of curiosity, did you find this on the web or by inspecting the device itself?

Anyway, I think the key spec is that the chip only supports baseline profile H.264, not the "Main" profile that would produce better compression vs. quality output. IOW, at any given bit rate, baseline encoding won't produce as high a quality output as would the more efficient main profile compression, since the latter can pack more detail into the same bits, so to speak.

For the most part, the baseline profile was intended for low bit rate applications like video conferencing & mobile apps like cell phones or iPods where computational resources are limited.

I would guess that the chip doesn't support custom resolutions higher than D1 -- basically, 720 X 480/576 X 30/25 fps -- although I don't see that specifically mentioned anywhere in the device literature.

Putting it all together, I think the chip is quite suitable for H.264 encoding for iPods but much less so for Apple TV, at least if you want the highest quality it can support. From what I've seen available on the chip market, more suitable hardware encoding for that application is going to require a somewhat more expensive device than the Turbo.