What is Digg?85 Comments
- drlha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17There are rumors that Apple will be including a H.264 encoder in their future hardware as well.
- SLKR, on 10/12/2007, -12/+27they should add a delete comment button.
so please bury. - OandA, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Handbrake is software. This is a hardware encoder. Which should mean significantly quicker encoding times. Then again this is usb so not sure how that will affect it.
- samadam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8it is. It is part of the next gen codecs, such as h.264 and microsoft's vc9.
- countersoldat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I am pretty sure VLC plays h264 fine...I know it plays my HD movie trailers using less cpu than quicktime
- robbh66, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Is there any reason why they didn't make this firewire? Are firewire "sticks" possible?
- trenskow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Actually, I think it's not that far fetched, that Apple would choose to include hardware H.264 encoding. Think of the possibilities this could have in combination with an Apple TV. You would be able to stream any video, directly to your Apple TV, because it would just recode it on the fly, without disturbing the CPU.
+ The benefit of putting your DVD collection quickly and sufficient on your iPod. - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Unless you're encoding tons of video it's not a big deal to put the dual cores to work now and then.
- zydeco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@edzieba: How about video chats over H.264 with your iPhone? The less bandwidth used over a cell net, the better.
H.264 has lots of uses besides HDTV. - scabbers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I think the old skool "turbo" button was to make problematic older software work (by turning it off and running at a slower bus or whatever)
- NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5No, quicktime works fine with hardware acceleration with the appropriate QT component and drivers.
-jcr - tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I can obviously see the benefits of hardware over software, but my Intel iMac converted a whole movie to H.264 in around 20 minutes, that's pretty reasonable in my opinion. Hardware would be quicker, but I'd only prefer it if it wasn't an added cost. Otherwise, I'll stick with software.
- edzieba, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Anything that uses directshow or VFW can play h.254 with the correct codec (ffdshow with x264 is free, coreAVC isn't, but is much more processor efficient). VLC and mplayer use their own internal codecs to decode it.
- scabbers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Intel Outside"!
- drlha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Anything to back up these rumours?"
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/03/10/crazy-cringely-rumor-apple-to-do-h-264-hardware-in-every-mac - zioxide, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3They could add it so you could delete a comment only while it's in the 2 minute edit period.
- iSeven, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Why is there a Turbo button or feature. Thats as useless as the Turbo buttons during the 25Mhz Processor days. Just make it go fast all the time.
Tell me a time when said "Oh no! The computer is going too fast, need to turn off that 'turbo' button" - Ub3rg33k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Um, specs/profiles/levels of said device?
If this is an SD encoder, who cares? Just about anyone out there using an Intel based Mac can do SD conversions of any material to H264 real time or better. - pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Are you sure about that? Sounds like you used ffmpeg to me.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Ever play Excitebike?
- Codee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Taking over the encoding of H.264 is what it does.
That should happen once everything is installed and the device is connected.
Just choose H.264 as the type of MP4 to encode in Handbrake. - wo1verine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3>> Um, specs/profiles/levels of said device?
Irrelevant from what it looks like. From some of the German sites it looks like any application which uses QuickTime for encoding will be able to automatically take advantage of this. - bradleyland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What are the chances that someone will hack this to work with Handbrake?
- adc89, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Quicktime looks best. VisualHub, iSquint and Handbrake are faster. Take your pick.
- jwdav, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4From Wikipedia:
Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 standard. Xvid features MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices.
Xvid is a primary competitor of DivX (Xvid being DivX spelled backwards).
While DivX is proprietary software, Xvid is free and open source software and, unlike DivX, can be used on many different platforms and operating systems.
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Quicktime is a container format like AVI. Like AVI, it can contain many different codecs, Unlike AVI, it can also contain many different data types, which makes it more useful in multimedia environments.
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MPEG-4 is also a container format that can contain many variations of MPEG-4 codecs.
DivX/XviD 4 (the older codec that is normally used), is a non-standard Microsoft 'adapted' version of MPEG-4-Part 2
MPEG-4 to everyone else normally means the standard MPEG-4-Part 2 (aka MPEG-4 simple profile)
H.264 is the latest version of MPEG-4 - MPEG-4-Part 10 - pplante, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Too bad its USB still. USB is a processor intensive task.
- NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The device in question is being supplied to El Gato by ADS tech, which has been selling this as an iPod accessory on the Windows side for several months. It's an H.264 baseline encoder, capable of VGA and QVGA resolution, and it's pretty snappy. My company is using the same ASIC for our own products, but we're going after a rather different market.
-jcr - mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The hardware encoder they are talking about performs a different function than Handbrake. Handbrake tells the CPU to encode a DVD. This will be used for encoding instead of the CPU, and should be much faster.
- gaervern, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If I shold ripp DVDs or convert movies to the best h.264 format playable by quicktime, what settings should I use?
- ketha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2did someone say 'appletv'... ahem... could have it's real use, good timing!
- cubbieco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You know I don't normally use the block button, but you're a prime candidate for it.
- edzieba, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Anything to back up these rumours? A decoder, maybe (though with core2duos they don't really need one) but an encoder would have little use to justify the expense, especially encoding non-HD (moreso to something as small as the iPod or iPhone).
- atticus8, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2This is just my belief from what good bit I know about Apple / H264 encoding tech, but you must have been either:
1) doing this on some ungodly 8core MacPro that came out recently
OR
2) like the other person earlier said, you are using ffmpeg, which is INCREDIBLY faster (and I NEVER use due to significiant image degradation
OR
3) your definition of movie is like an Aqua Team episode
OR
4) you're lying (and no, i don't think you're lying)
Either way, something smells weird about a whole 100-150 minute move being ripped in 20 minutes. Very weird. - ij00mini, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4http://duggmirror.com/apple/H_264_hardware_encoder_for_Mac_encode_movies_for_iPod_Apple_TV_iPhone
People still ask? - macslut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is pretty simple. Here's a device that's going to sell for about $135 right? It's USB and encodes h.264 via hardware. For some of us paying $135 is trivial if it provides pretty much any level of acceleration with high quality, ease of use and reliability.
Like any specialized product, this isn't for everyone, but for those of us doing a lot of batch h.264 encoding, this could be a really great tool to have. - EagleTG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Here's a link to what NSResponder is talking about... http://www.adstech.com/products/RDX-160/intro/RDX-160_intro.asp?pid=RDX-160
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Firewire actually eliminates that 10-15% CPU usage on a 3GHz Pentium 4.
- cvk_b, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, let's hope it doesn't suck (as other HW 264 encoders do so far). H264 encoding is about the only thing I wish my Dual G5 did better. I will save big bucks if I can wait to go intel. Leopard will be optimized for G5 (64bit) too.
- CrankyMcGuy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Way too much information, buddy. Waaaay too much information.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Too bad its USB still. USB is a processor intensive task."
The real question is how this thing is implemented. If it's like a flash drive, it could live on its own; write the video to encode to the Flash chip, run it through whatever ARM9-with-encoder chip they've got on board, write back to system RAM or to the flash chip. It's fairly self contained, the software doesn't take a rocket scientist to write, and it's fast. - ilgaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You should ask On2 people who stupidly doesn't offer a quicktime encoding/decoding codec too. They don't even help opensource people to make SMP aware encoders.
- bad80shair, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Can we get something similar for On2 VP6 flv encoding? Flash video is not only taking over the web, but encoding the damn stuff is taking up my entire work day as well...
- jeffaz480, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What do you think of this from ADS Tech, the only reason I didnt jump on it is because I don't think it encodes high enough Quality, I am a Club DJ and need something that encodes High Quality Audio, more important than Video Quality...
http://www.adstech.com/products/RDX-160/intro/RDX-160_intro.asp?pid=RDX-160 - SVPirate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Handbrake'd stuff looks superb if you use Main Profile H.264 and beef the bitrate up to about 2048kbps. It's all in how you have it setup. Mind you at that setup 25mins of DVD is 3-400MB. Kinda heavy on diskspace!
- cubs2234, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2you're completely missing the point.
- 3vno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1handbrake has problems ripping copy protected dvds.
- NiyazK, on 02/08/2009, -0/+1Nice Article..
You got to check the latest upcomings of the hardware news - http://techb.net/category/hardware/ - MyNameIsJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I'm sick of reading "oops wrong thread" messages. A delete button would be nice.
- NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Apple's not going to include a hardware codec in every mac, although I wish they would.
-jcr - SVPirate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I see no point. It's USB so any transfers on or off the stick will choke the computer anyway, and for me at least Handbrake only uses about 50% of my available CPU power.
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