Turbo.264 HD review

The original Turbo.264 saved time creating H.264 video, particularly on PowerPC Macs that struggle to cope with software encoding.

The latest Intel Macs can encode in a fraction of the time, but this version is faster, can convert AVCHD footage, and even creates HD movies up to 1080p.

The USB hardware is accompanied by an application that couldn't be simpler: drag movie files onto it, select a preset for your device and hit a button to convert the files. New presets convert HD footage, keeping it at 720p and 1080p, while the YouTube preset uploads movies directly, and lets you keep them private for family and friends. Chapter markers and captions from your self?€'authored DVDs can be retained, and contents of AVCHD cameras are detected and queued, with an option to encode to separate files or concatenate as one.

Customisable presets were added to the original Turbo.264 after we reviewed it, and are present here, too. It's an impressive turnaround with useful settings such as trimming edges to eliminate junk in the overscan area of analogue recordings.

Professional use is also catered for, right down to H.264 profiles and levels, GOP (Group of Pictures) size and structure, interlace mode and entropy coding. Unlike software encoders, there's no option to perform more than one-pass encoding.

Video can be trimmed by clicking its thumbnail to open the editing window, then marking the offending segments and making fine adjustments with the cursor keys.

One of the smartest parts of the design is that it's built around a QuickTime component that's available to other applications such as iMovie and Final Cut, so you aren't forced to bring movies into Elgato's software. We converted a 135-second, 1080p movie on a 1.66GHz Mac mini. Using the iPhone preset, Turbo.264 HD had a clear edge over QuickTime Pro's software-driven export, taking one minute 45 seconds compared to two minutes 47 seconds. It was even faster than the original Turbo.264, which took two minutes nine seconds.

Importing a four-minute collection of six AVCHD clips into iMovie 09, which converts to Apple Intermediate Codec, took four minutes 56 seconds, plus a further five minutes 51 seconds to export it back to an iPhone-compatible movie. Converting a rough cut made with in-camera editing functions directly through Turbo.264 HD took four minutes 35 seconds.

Elgato told us that a forthcoming update to Toast 10 will allow it to use this version, while EyeTV 3 worked just fine. Exporting a 63-minute recording from our 3.06GHz iMac saw a significant reduction to 10 minutes 41 seconds, compared to 18 minutes three seconds without acceleration. We also saw a welcome reduction in CPU usage, which fluctuated between 165% and 180% without the hardware, and 135% to 145% with it.

Savings depend on your source material and chosen preset, and our AVCHD conversion saved 23% of encoding time over iMovie, while EyeTV to iPhone saved 41%.

Turbo.264 HD manages to improve on its predecessor and even more so on software encoding, even on Intel Macs, yet the higher price tag is off-putting and only worth it if you need to convert your HD footage.