the Crow Digital Media Blog

The Elgato Turbo .264

So here’s the story.  A friend recently asked me what tools I used to compress my High Definition video files down into Flash FLV or Quicktime H.264, both of which are excellent compression formats for presenting online video.

Both formats produce files that are a small fraction of the original file size yet still manage to maintain a good looking image.

The tool I actually currently use is called VisualHub version 1.34.1 and it converts most any video format to most any other video format with excellent results.  I think it cost me $20 or so but it was actually worth much more.  Here’s the problem, the developer behind this great piece of software just a few days ago called it quits and basically shut down his site.  So no more VisualHub.  You can probably find a trial version still online at sites like CNET downloads but the problem I think will be that once the free trial period runs out you won’t be able to pay for and register it, it will then effectively become a dead piece of software sitting on your hard drive; all potential, no compression. (or put another way “all hat and no cattle”)

So what should you do now?  A recent Leo Laporte podcast reminded me of the Elgato turbo .264 which is both a hardware and software device.  But get this….the hardware is a simple USB device that looks like an ordinary thumb drive.  Inside is actually a chip that offloads your computer’s CPU of the heavy task of compressing large video files into smaller files suitable for playback on the Web.  For around $100 or less Elgato does it faster.  Unlike VisualHub it only compresses video into the H.264 format but that’s an excellent codec which most Flash players (like the ever popular JW FLV Media Player) can play back.  The Web site says the Elgato can “Quickly and easily export content to iPhone™, iPod®, Apple TV® and PSP®” and I don’t doubt it from everything I’ve read and heard about it.  In fact it comes with sofware that makes it easy to upload videos directly to YouTube once you’ve compressed them (YouTube switched from Flash to H.264 compression for all their videos some months back.)

If it hasn’t been clear so far, I don’t actually own nor have I ever used the Elgato device but read the reviews and you will see why I don’t have any problem recommending it.

This is the first of a two part introduction to the technologies empowering both embedded and subscription-based VideoCasts and how your organization can start taking advantage of them today. Don’t worry, I tried hard to make the content understandable to anyone with basic computer knowledge. In part one, I start by introducing data from a February 2008 study published by eMarketer showing some encouraging numbers about how many millions of people are already actively interacting with both audio and video “podcasts” today and what the future holds. Then we dive right into the technology, specifically:

• embedded video versus VideoCasts
• video compression and encoders
• Adobe Flash and Quicktime from Apple including an introduction to H.264
• how to add embedded video to your site

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