Matrox CompressHD
 

Has anyone purchased this card? If so what are you finding for rendering quality and speed at H.264?

Hi Paul

I've got a Matrox MXO2MAX I/O box which has the same compression hardware built-in as used in the CompressHD card. Whilst H264 compression is not my primary use for the box I'm still very happy to report that the quality and speed of its encodes are second to none, so if fastest compression with maximum versatility (including encoding H264 for Blu-ray) is your aim then it really can't be beat. Craig Seeman, who knows a thing or two about compression, wrote a nice review of the CompressHD which was posted recently over on the COW website ... heres the link: Matrox CompressHD races to the H.264 finish line : Matrox Video Systems

That said, whilst you are looking at such H264 hardware compression devices, there's also the extremely cost effective Elgato Turbo 264 HD which is a usb based hardware encoder that does a very nice job. Not quite as versatile or as fast as the CompressHD, it doesn't offer H264 for Bluray encoding nor will it encode at quite such a high bitrate as the CompressHD (but do you really need such very high bitrate encodes?) it nonetheless packs a great punch for its price and is a very worthy contender.

If you've any specific question about the CompressHD then please just fire away, if I don't have the answers myself then I dare say I can get them. If you've questions about the Turbo 264 HD then fire away with those too, as I'm sure their owners club will be more than happy to chime in.

Hope it helps
Andy

Thanks Andy,

Great information. Looks like this could fit the bill for my system to expand my options in the direction I am headed.

Also, I was just reading the Snow Leopard technical specs. Quicktime is listed as being able to use the NVIDIA 9400M graphics chip to accelerate H.264.

Just for clarity Michael, the hardware acceleration noted in the Snow Leopard / Quicktime X specs is relating to hardware assisted video playback of already encoded H264 files, leaving your computer’s CPU free for other tasks.

The CompressHD / Turbo 264HD devices offer dedicated hardware encoding of H264.

Best
Andy