Speed Up MP4 Video Encoding

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:06:05 +0000

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

http://live.pirillo.com/ – If you do any video encoding, you know how long of a process it can be at times. Before I went to Germany, I used Visual Hub to encode several videos, and it literally took days!

I wish I had known about the Elgato Turbo.264 back then. This little USB-like device takes much of the work out of encoding, and significantly speeds up the process. While in Germany, I used iMovie to encode some videos I threw up on YouTube, including the one where Ponzi speeding around the GM test track.

Videos can take a surprisingly long time to encode – sometimes longer than the actual playing time. What’s more, video encoding can demand a sizeable chunk of system resources. How long and how much depends on the processor speed of your Mac, the length and complexity of the source video, the size of the video file, and the amount of video compression required for the desired end result

Turbo.264 accelerates video encoding up to four times faster on Macs with Intel Core processors.

You have a collection of videos on your Mac. They’re movies you downloaded from your camcorder or digital camera, or perhaps projects you created yourself with iMovie. They could be short video clips that friends and family sent you by email, or TV shows, music videos, and movies that you recorded with EyeTV.

How do you make them iTunes-ready for your iPod or Apple TV? How do you put them on a Sony PSP?

The solution is Turbo.264, a blazingly fast and easy-to-use video encoder with a high-perfomance engine. Use the included software to convert your Mac videos one at a time or in a batch; The application drops the converted file(s) into iTunes for you, ready to synch automatically with your iPod, Apple TV or iPhone. Alternatively, plug in Turbo.264 while you use the MP4 export command of popular Macintosh video applications. Not only does Turbo.264 get the job done faster, it frees up your processor for other tasks. Think of it as a “co-processor” for your Mac.

The software application that comes with Elgato Turbo.264 offers an easy-to-use choice of five presets: iPod High, iPod Standard, Sony PSP, Apple TV, and iPhone. For Apple TV content, the quality of videos encoded with Turbo.264 software is unrivaled: Turbo.264 converts standard definition television recordings without scaling so that recordings appear on Apple TV in the same resolution they were recorded.

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Formats Available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4) Flash Video (.flv) MP3 Audio (.mp3)

Speed Up MP4 Video Encoding

MP4 Support in WMP11

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 20:02:25 +0000

MP4 Support in WMP11

Don’t count on MP4 playback out of the box in the next version of the Windows Media Player. I filed this “bug” a few months ago, but apparently not supporting MP4 (by default) in WMP11 is a feature: “Spend the money. Pre-install the codec. The PSP relies on it, the iPod relies on it, and Microsoft should have had its hands in one MP4 spec or another. Drop the political bullsh*t and just do it for the sake of your users who don’t know what’s going on.” Their response this morning was simple: “This is currently expected behavior.” Expected behavior? Language barrier. Perhaps Microsoft is hoping that more people install and use iTunes. I’m not sure why? Meanwhile, I’m looking at my iRiver Clix and wondering… why can’t it support the leading video format?

MP4 Support in WMP11

Chris Pirillo » h264

Speed Up MP4 Video Encoding

MP4 Support in WMP11