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“Initially, I approached this utility from Elgato with some skepticism,” MacNN reports. “Why would you want to spend $49.95 on a utility when much of its functionality can be had in Apple’s own QuickTime X, which is built into to Snow Leopard?”
“You would expect it to be faster, right? Ironically, given its title, speed isn’t its forte; however, flexibility and ease of use are its strong points,” MacNN reports.
Read more in the full review, with screenshots, here.
I have the hardware version. It’s too bad the encodes look like garbage.
@bbock
I’m sorry to hear that. I have the hardware version too, and if you tinker with the settings a little, I think you can get excellent results. I’ve got dvds that I encode in HD on the elgato and they look just great on my HDTV with apple TV.
Use handbrake, the quality is much better and it’s free.
I find the quality of the encoded video good, then again I do not put it up on a large screen TV and stick my nose up to the screen looking for flaws.
Using other tools as well as the turbo hd stick-I can encode an entire 4 episode DVD in the time it takes Handbrake to do 1 episode.
Haven’t tried it without the hardware dongle.
Does VisualHub get a speed boost from Turbo.264 hardware? Would love to know this.
Nothing beats Handbrake and it’s FREE.
@ Wha,
No, VisualHub and Handbrake do not benefit from Turbo.264 hardware. Former is no longer developed, and Handbrake explicitly said they will not rely on specific hardware as they stay true to open-source and support various OS.
Besides, if you get the latest version of Handbrake for OSX, it is incredibly fast. My iMac is now 2 generations old (24″ 2.66Ghz C2D, 4GB ram), but can encode about 4 DVD movies into iphone format overnight.
Perhaps Handbrake will offer an OpenCL upgrade in the future to speed encoding?
Another vote for the Handbrake software.
I know this doesn’t fit here, but who makes the best car head unit for around $400? Apple doesn’t so I can’t do that.
Elgato seems to be going downhill with overpriced products, not to mention overpriced software updates — these should be free if you own an Elgato device. (Need to update EyeTV for recent version of MacOSX)
Rather than adding functionality few people need, clean up your act, Elgato, and deliver a proper GUI.
On my EyeTV I can’t even reorder the channels. Teletext support has improved (no more jittery reloading) but still doesn’t properly implement the colored buttons: many pages have no 4-color button bar underneath.
does this do DTS conversions to AC3 for MKV files?
My Samsung tv plays MKV but does not pass out the DTS audio even though it has a optical out port.
Currently I have to use a dreaded PC to do the conversions. I tried avidemux2 to convert, which works, but the program leaves a distorted sound.
Anyone have any clue or suggestions for an alternative?
thanks
Dreaded PC here as well… But 4media is faster than Handbrake on my MBP. Much faster. Both have 4GB of memory. Great quality options. Not pricey. But I agree… The cost of Handbreak is awesome.
Wow really Good info, and i am glad to read this article, so thanks for sharing it.
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/acai-complete-6-review-amp-free-trial-2187183.html
How can peterjam be a registered user?
If you have not used the Elgato hardware, please do not knock it. I used a handbrake-based workflow for a long time, but have found it is more efficient to pull media off DVD’s with RipIt, and then transcode them for iPod and iPad using The hardware version. If you know what you are doing, it can produce superb results in a fraction of the time it takes my MacBook to rip and encode using handbrake. It really is a nice piece of software and the only one I own that can easily insert chapter markers in to the finished files. Another bonus is that the hardware integrates with iMovie and FC Express, so I am able to speed up that encoding as well.
The thing to remember is that any consumer hardware will have it’s limitations. You cannot expect a $150 device to output H264 to the same level as a device that costs 10x that. Sure, handbrake is free, but the time Elgato saves in my workflow, and the quality offers me are well worth the cost. On my Blackbook, I can easily run through three or four encodes in the time it takes Handbrake to do one. This differential probably will not be as significant when my i7 iMac arrives, but for now it is the way I go.
Another advantage I have found to the Ripit + Elgato workflow is that the Ripit DVD file output gives me wonderful portable DVD disk images I can store on a hard drive.