Faster Than Real Time h.264 Encoding

I spend way too much time making h.264 quicktime outputs from Final Cut Pro. Pretty much every show I work on uses quicktime movies delivered via FTP for approval and screening. I usually encode in h.264 at 640×360, 700k per second. That seems to create a reasonable quality movie with a moderate file size. But here’s the trouble – those exports can be anywhere from 4-12 hours for a 100 minute sequence. On my old G5 warhorse, its usually closer to 12 hours, depending on the renders. Quicktime approval via Internet is supposed to save a day over Fedexing a DVD, but the long exports end up happening overnight, so I don’t really save anything because the client still has to wait until the next day to screen it.

I waited forever for Black Magic Design to release the Video Recorder, but then they ditched the SDI version and made it analog input only, making it a consumer product. I began to think that I was the only one who cared about the goal of real time h.264 encoding, but then my friends at New Media Hollywood introduced me to the Matrox Compress HD. Its a PCI card h.264 accelerator that allows faster than real time encoding of h.264 quicktimes in a variety of settings. This is a dream come true for me or anyone who has ever screwed up a 12 hour h.264 export and had to do it again the next day. Now if someone would just make a Flash video encoding accelerator, I could die happy.