When encoding ripped DVDs to AppleTV or iPhone format, the Turbo.264HD produces files that are easily three times as big as those produced by Handbrake.

Handbrake encodes a 1 hour film into AppleTV/iPhone in about 2 hours. Turbo.264HD encodes a 1 hour film into AppleTV format in about 1 hour.

I see no difference in video quality between Handbrake and Turbo.264HD. Is this the price we pay for the quicker encoding?

Recently, through experimentation, I found that if I convert my TS files stored on a local harddisk instead of on my network’s RAID drive with Elgato Turbo HD, there are less audio sync problems. It appears that Elgator’s sync problem cannot deal with files stored on networked RAID drives. The same files stored on networked RAID drives can be converted with Handbrake without sync problems.

Elgato;s engineers do not take the sync problem seriously as they always assume that the problem is caused by mal formed video files. That is why they have not solve the problem so far.

The soft that come woth Turbo HD is poor, yes, but Road Movie is competible with this Hadrware…

It was Better with Leopard, Elgato must review software and give more options.

Turbo does support AppleScript. The queue is locked during encodes, but I’m not surprised, considering you can merge several files, they probably do some preparation work. And last I checked, Handbrake didn’t let you enqueue anything while it’s encoding either. There’s probably a technical reason for that. I *can* edit it in real time though, why would I not be? I click add and it adds a file, that’s as real-time as it gets.

And you’re contradicting yourself: First you say it shouldn’t use so much CPU, then you ask for it to use OpenCL (which balances out stuff on the CPU and GPU). OpenCL is used for decoding if the codecs support it (but none on the Mac do, it seems). Since encoding happens on the frigging encoder chip, it would be *nonsense* to try and drag that out into the GPU or CPU again.

And I haven’t had sync issues. Maybe your files are damaged? VLC can play any garbage you give it, but most players don’t. So I’m not surprised if the Turbo has problems playing stuff you just grabbed from /dev/random.

1. Subtitles - don’t use subtitles, so never tried to keep them with it.
2. I set my queue and double check it before I start encoding.
3. You can only run one copy of the software at a time, what makes you think you’ll be able to run multiple to encode more items?
4. Snow Leopard has only been out for a few months. Not every developer has added features to their software that complement SL’s features.
5. No, it doesn’t have 2-pass encoding, but on my 720P HDTV, it looked just as good as a copy of the movie encoded by Handbrake with 2-pass encoding.
6. Audio has been in sync with all the items I’ve encoded.
7. I didn’t have any issues with it losing connectivity. All my encodes were at 70+FPS, usually over 120FPS.
8. I agree here, CPU usage was still epically high.
9. Audio encodes? I’m sorry, I thought I was reviewing the Turbo.254 HD, for video, as a video encoder. I didn’t know I was also supposed to attempt to re-encode my iTunes library to see if a VIDEO encoder could re-encode my music.
10. My sources already had the audio track that I wanted to keep with them, so I didn’t attempt to try to select a different audio track

Bottom line: It handled everything I threw at it very well, other than the epic CPU usage. The movie files it output were good enough for me and my media center, which is what I’d be looking for if I were to purchase one.

I ASKED FOR A PONY!

- audio files can’t be accepted an input source - which will be a disappointhent for people with a large iTunes library of mp3’s that they want to transcode to AAC.

- no control which audio track will be selected/designated as the master input source (eg mix-down from dss or 5 1 etc), and …

- no control over the output format for the mixdown.