Product Reviews

Encoding H.264 for iPod, Apple TV and Sony PSP is painfully slow on older Macs, so Miglia's hardware encoder aims to ease some of the burden. The slightly bulky USB dongle is supplied with an extension cable so that adjacent ports aren't blocked, while the accompanying software, currently on version 1, must be downloaded - the bundled CD includes a link and electronic documentation. Miglia also provided us with an early beta of an update that adds proportional iPod presets that allow video to keep its aspect ratio rather than being cropped to a 4:3 display.

A QuickTime export component is also installed to allow iMovie, Final Cut Pro and other applications to use it. EyeTV 2.5 can't leverage it directly, so recordings first had to be exported as a program stream and dropped onto VideoExpress. The Tube doesn't have an equivalent option nor direct integration; recordings had to be converted to DV first.

There are several presets for each device. iPod users can export at 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixels, with widescreen sources cropped to 4:3. The beta update also has proportional

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presets that retain the aspect ratio. Their inclusion is welcome for converting widescreen TV recordings or home movies that might lose important action when cropped. No such presets are provided for the PSP but VideoExpress isn't alone by not using its 480 x 272-pixel display to the full. These and the web preset produce 320 x 240-pixel output, again cropped if the source is widescreen.

Encoding a file is as simple as dragging it onto VideoExpress' window, selecting a preset and clicking on a button to begin encoding. You're asked where to save the output. The process is undeniably easy, but lacks batch encoding, so you're effectively tethered to the Mac until multiple files have been converted. This also has an impact on DVD conversion, as VOB files must be converted individually, rather than choosing a whole Video_TS folder and selecting which parts are converted. Converting from VOB files doesn't require Apple's Mpeg-2 QuickTime codec.

Saturation, contrast, and colour reproduction were very close to the original and were better than QuickTime Pro's washed out results.

Speed improvements, probably the key reason for buying a hardware encoder, were good when using a PowerBook with the iPod Proportional preset and a 10-minute, anamorphic QuickTime DV file. It took 22 minutes, while Mpeg Streamclip took longer at 60 minutes. As expected, there was less benefit on a Core 2 Duo Mac mini, which took 8 minutes using VideoExpress compared to 13 minutes from Mpeg Streamclip.

While the biggest issue with the software - the lack of a batch encoder - can be easily addressed, the hardware performance is mostly of benefit to owners of older Macs.