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I gave my Elgato turbo.264 HD a real test today, encoding an entire season of Doctor Who from the native MPEG2 Eyetv recordings I made from BBC One on Freeview into h.264 iPhone Quicktime movies.
Thirteen episodes took just over two hours, about four times faster than realtime. Each episode was taking under ten minutes to convert. The turbo.264 HD software then automatically added the episodes to iTunes which is useful (and not useful).
I am impressed with the turbo.264 HD
Having been impressed with Windows 7 RC I have gone and ordered the full version of Windows 7
I do like BBC iPlayer, I like the fact that I can catch up with old BBC programmes that I have missed that week or can catch up on series that I may have missed. I like the fact that I can watch BBC iPlayer on an iPod touch and that I can connect the iPod touch to my TV and watch that way.
However there are a few things I don’t like, some of this is down to BBC iPlayer, and a lot down to my poor ADSL connection.
I don’t like the fact that not everything on BBC is on BBC iPlayer. I know that ITV and Channel 4 content won’t be on iPlayer, but their versions are nothing like as good as iPlayer and as easy to use. They also don’t work as well on the Mac and there are no iPod players either. Of course though a lot of BBC content is on iPlayer, not all of it is. Films I understand, however why isn’t The Day Of The Triffids
I don’t like the fact that some of the BBC content is on BBC iPlayer and is available through a web browser, however that same content is not available on the iPod. For example 12 of the 13 episodes of Robin Hood
are available on my iPod touch at the time of writing, however episode 13 is not available!
Why?
Well I know it’s probably a rights issue or something. The same thing happened with Outnumbered
series two, again with the final episode.
I have mentioned my slow ADSL connection before, as broadband has got more popular my connection has got slower and slower. I did once have nearly 4Mbps, today my speed is less than 1Mbps! The other problem is that BBC iPlayer is quite popular and so at peak times it is almost impossible to watch!
I was though quite intrigued to see that BBC HD is now on BBC iPlayer in HD!
So tried to watch Torchwood – Children of Earth on BBC iPlayer HD and got this message:
Well my > 1Mbps connection is way too slow for this HD content, not even close!
I guess I could download it, but it’s large at 1.3GB.
Of course I then have the issue that my ADSL connection has a bandwidth cap, which is another problem I have with BBC iPlayer.
I do like BBC iPlayer, I have issues with some of the rights issues, however most of the problems I have with BBC iPlayer are mine and my ADSL connection.
Maybe I just ought to get Torchwood on Blu Ray
BBC reports on Intel and Nokia working together.
The world’s largest chip maker has teamed up with the world’s largest mobile phone maker to create what they say will be a “new exciting industry”.
Intel and Nokia said their “technology collaboration” would deliver new mobile computing products – beyond existing smartphones, netbooks and notebooks.
But both companies added it was still too early to talk about product plans.
I realise that I don’t write about my digital cameras much on this blog, I have talked about other cameras, but not mine.
I originally had a film Canon SLR and about six or seven years ago I got a Canon EOS 300D Digital SLR which back in 2007 I upgraded to the Canon EOS 400D.
One of the original reasons for going for the Canon DSLR was that I hoped to use my Canon accessories with my new camera. The lenses seemed to work fine, but I could never get my Centon Flash unit to work with my Canon EOS 400D. I just put it down to new camera, old flash!
Today I was going through a box and I found the Centon Flash and I thought, why not have another go, so I did and yet again it didn’t work.
So… I know lets use Google!
Found this blog entry which though talking about a different Centon Flash unit made this useful comment.
I had to tape over the four communication pin contacts on my 400D with electrician’s tape – it won’t fire the flash otherwise when it is mounted on the hotshoe.
So using a bit of tape I taped over four of the contacts and tried the flash…
It worked!
Simple.
When you know how.
Back in October last year my EyeHome stopped working. I assumed has had happened before that the transformer had broken again.
What I did back then was ask Elgato and they replaced the transformer for me, however according to their website they can no longer provide replacements.
I was hoping to find a replacement for my EyeHome, but after having a good look around, trying even to use the PS3, in the end I decided that the only possible replacement was a Mac mini and even that was a compromise and not a real replacement.
I did try and find a replacement transformer, but though I thought I had found a potential supplier, it wasn’t clear which transformer I should buy for the EyeHome.
So for most of this year, the EyeHome was sat in the office and I waited paitently for Elgato to make a replacement…
Yesterday I started tidying up the office and I “found” the EyeHome and started to pack it into a box when I looked at the power supply input, noticed it said 5V and started to wonder…
The PSP power supply looked like it could fit…
It does fit…
It does power the EyeHome…
It lives!!!
So far I am pleased with my purchase of Elgato’s turbo.264 HD that I have been using to speed up H.264 encoding times.
Having edited some EyeTV recordings I was quite pleased by how fast the encoding was (and how it doesn’t impact significantly on the speed of the computer).
I am a great fan of Elgato’s EyeTV and have been thinking for some time about buying their turbo.264
As I was near an Apple Store today I decided to pop in and see if they had one. Thought I found it and checked the price, wow, £139.95.
I know that buying retail can sometimes be a little more expensive, but the price seemed ridiculous, I had expected it to be around to £80-£100 mark.
Well, at least with the Apple Store with all their computers and free wifi I thought I would just recheck the Elgato website, and there on their website was the device for £139.95.
At this point I noticed the name, the turbo.264 HD read a little more and realised that this was not the turb0.264 I thought it was, but a new product, one which would also do HD. Released back in March I had missed the release.
Are you frustrated by the amount of time it takes to get the video out of your new HD camcorder and into a watchable format?
Do you want to watch your videos and EyeTV recordings on your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV?
Do you wish it didn’t take so long for your EyeTV recordings to be ready for Wi-Fi Access?
Want to put your videos on YouTube and take advantage of their new HD features?
Do you own a Sony PSP® and need a way to export videos to it?
Are you a video professional and need an efficient and inexpensive way to compress your video for streaming or the web?
Yes?
Turbo.264 HD is right for you.
As well as speeding up my EyeTV recording conversions I can also use it for other video conversion. Shall be interesting to see how much faster it does work.
Initial tests seem to show that it does work faster.
So there I was messing about with Windows 7 when I thought I would give the DVD burning a go. In the past on Windows PCs I have relied on third party applications such as Nero. Even on the Mac I don’t use the in-built burning tools and use Toast.
So I started DVD Maker and got the following error?
Hmmm.
Not quite sure why I need a fast graphics card to burn a DVD.
I can imagine if the drive was too slow (or I had the wrong kind of disc) or my hard drive was not fast enough, however a graphics card which was too slow…
Why?
