Elgato is one of the tech brands I hold in the highest esteem.
Its EyeTV television tuners and software are my primary means to watch TV (via my home iMac computer and other Macintosh machines) given a TiVo-like ease of use. It's a real treat to queue up a high-definition episode of "Smallville" or "Frontline," recorded via a cable hookup or over the air using an indoor antenna.
But there's a big problem: Exporting those high-def recordings to iTunes for use on a video iPod, an iPhone or an Apple TV set-top box takes forever. Oy. This is not Elgato's fault; even recent-model Macs take their sweet time with this stuff.
But now Elgato has the solution: Its new Turbo.264 HD stick (being announced today at elgato.com).
Plug this hardware accelerator into any USB port and watch those videos export (into a universal format called H.264) in less than half the time. (An older Turbo.264 performed a similar role on G4-class Macs but doesn't make much of a difference on newer Intel Macs; that's what the Intel-only HD stick is for.)
In my Turbo.264 HD testing with my EyeTV setup, I came to adore the video-encoding stick. And that's only half of Elgato's story.
Its stick also is designed to be paired with newer video cameras that store their high-definition footage (in a format called AVCHD) on flash-storage cards or hard drives. This footage transfers to a computer via Universal Serial Bus connections rather than the FireWire hook-ups used by older tape-based vidcams.
The problem? Getting footage from the camcorder onto the Mac and into editable form takes a while. So does exporting it from a video-editing program such as Apple iMovie for use on a video device, such as a PlayStation Portable, or sharing via YouTube.
The Turbo.264 HD has several ways to speed up these time-consuming chores.
It lets users bypass iMovie, if they're not interested in complicated video editing, by yanking the footage quickly into the device's own software. This program is leaner but very elegant and easy to use.
There, it's easy to blend multiple clips and edit out unwanted hunks of footage. Video is then ready for export in high-definition formats or lesser variants. Video can also be uploaded directly to YouTube.
Exports from iMovie and other apps, like QuickTime Pro and Final Cut Pro, also are zippier courtesy of Elgato hardware acceleration.
The Turbo.264 HD is a must-buy for any Mac user, amateur or pro, who dabbles heavily in video and does lots of footage converting. Ditto for heavy EyeTV users like me; it's already saved me tons of time.
It's a shame Windows software isn't bundled with the $150 stick, too, since PC users would also find it useful for AVCHD processing. Think about it, Elgato?
(My thanks to Mike Evangelist, a Minnesotan formerly of Apple, and now a Twin Cities-based...evangelist for Germany-based Elgato, for setting me up with review hardware and for giving me a killer demo today.)
