Time is Money: Using the El Gato Turbo.264 in Your Post Workflow

Cameras
Posted by Admin on 27, January 2012 with 5 Comments
Twitt

When you are working in a fast paced corporate environment every second counts. With all the work I’m doing in this space lately I’ve found that the El Gato Turbo.264 really helps when you have to deliver on time and on budget. Each week I’m tasked with directing a couple of short marketing videos. In order to meet the requirements we have to shoot and edit the first 2 days of the week. Part of keeping your clients happy is by keeping your process very transparent. Often times you’ll run into clients who get frustrated when they don’t have a clear understanding of what point you’re at in the production process. To combat this, I have the assistant editor log all the media and create a rough assembly of the selected takes based on my story producer’s notes. Using the El Gato turbo.264 accelerator you can out put full 1080 copies of rough assemblies of 5 minute videos in under real time. These review copies are then air dropped to the story producer for immediate feedback. The encode quality is not up to spec for deliverables but it works great for pumping out a super fast draft for client review, especially if we’re in the field working off a laptop. They only cost $99 and I’ve used it more often than I expected. Check out this video that was encoded using the 1080 HD high quality preset. Encode time was less than a minute and a half. Sample Encode

Now keep in mind that I’m speaking from a low budget point of view. This tool comes in handy if you’re on the go with a laptop the majority of the time like I am. To use it you simply install the plugins that come with the USB device. Export a quicktime reference of the project you are working on in Avid or FCP and export using the Turbo.264 options in QuickTime Pro 7. There are a variety of options but the speed to quality ratio of the 1080 preset is perfect for the majority of what I need to share with clients.

Admin
Visit My Website / View My Other Posts
Jared Abrams is a cinematographer based in Hollywood, California. After many years as a professional camera assistant he switched over to still photography. About two years ago a new Canon camera changed the way the world sees both motion and still photography. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  • Pingback: Wide Open Camera: Using the El Gato Turbo.264 in Your Post Workflow | Kelly On A Tangent

  • Anonymous

    How does it fair in higher quality web delivery. Would it speed up final encode without losing quality? Looks like an amazing asset for for quickly delivering proofs but just wonder what other gains it can offer. Looks like your final export was roughly 10000kbps, does it allow you to adjust that or is it locked in at 10000kbps?

    Export only from QT7 or can you use it straight out of FCP7?

  • Acondax

    How does this hardware/software compete with say Compressor 4?

  • Alex Walker

    Turbo hands down for speed. Have a look at the 1080 file from it. It’s not the best so Compressor is still better for final delivery. 

  • Alex Walker

    I don’t have FCP7 on this machine anymore so I can’t comment to how it works with it. You can dial in your own kbps. You may be able to get a decent web encode but I prefer to use Sorenson for web delivery. If it needs to be rushed, I’ll use the Turbo, then replace later with a proper encode.