GTX 285 or Matrox RT.X2

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi,

The RT.X2 info is partially correct, but out of date in some areas. The RT.X2 card is a bit finicky about the motherboard and graphics card used, true. Maybe less so now that GPU effects are gone. Also, in the past, the Matrox codec was locked to the hardware.

With CS5, there are many changes for RT.X2. First, all the Matrox realtime GPU effects are no more, as Adobe has taken over using the GPU for the Mercury Playback Engine.

Earlier this year, Matrox released their Video For Windows codecs to the public, so captured files can be edited on other PCs, with VFW codecs installed. That said, if using any Matrox effects in the project, the effects would be unavailable when opening the CS5 project on a non-Matrox system.

With the loss of the Matrox GPU effects, and the new native power of CS5, the RT.X2 hardware has been “crippled” down to being little more than an I/O device, and a dated one at that since it does not have HDMI ports. Also, being older hardware, I wouldn’t expect much more going forward where drivers are concerned.

I would recommend the Matrox MXO2 Mini hardware, which has analog and HDMI connectivity, for capture and playback (monitoring). Even if you don’t need capture capability, it sure is nice to connect to an HD display while working. Also offers hardware-based up-down-cross conversion on capture and playback. A new feature is direct to .m2v capture for archiving older tapes to DVD. You still get Matrox Color Correction and Keying effect plug-ins with the hardware also.

Being external, the MXO2 device can also be moved from computer to computer easily, with just an inexpensive interface card required.

My experience has been that the MXO2 will provide smoother preview than CS5 alone can. For instance, when working with a couple layers of 1920×1080 AVCHD, and previewing on an LCD connected to second DVI out of GPU, playback stutters. The same material plays back perfectly through the MXO2 output via HDMI.

Whether you get Matrox hardware or not, you will definitely want an nVidia GPU to use the Mercury Playback benefits of CS5.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Andrew Devis]

Hi Daniel
My system is an Intel q9550 (I think) quad core with 8G RAM, Intel motherboard and gtx265 with 1.5G RAM. It is a basic system but it has created some great multi-cam projects etc. and for most of my motion graphics works it holds its own very well.

I also have separate hard drives for my system, audio and video and a raid mirror external hard drive to archive my projects.

I tend to work mainly with hdv footage PAL.

Hope this helps
Andrew

… because it’s all about stories …

[Andrew Devis]

Sorry, its a gtx260 not 265 …

… because it’s all about stories …

[Chin yee Lim]

Hi Andrew,

so if i want to work with HDV project.

What system that you recommended ?

Xeon? Dual Xeon ?
12GB ?
GTX 470 ? quadro ?u

[Andrew Devis]

Hi Chin

What a question! I think it all comes down to what you want to do with your system and what you can afford! I also think you need to bear in mind how long you will have to stick with the system and that you will probably upgrade your camera or end up working with other footage in due course.

So, there are a few things that I think are important, plenty of processing power to cope with footage that may be compressed and needs to be uncompressed and recompressed for editing such as AVCHD and HDV etc. For example, if you have a few streams of AVCHD with Picture in Picture unless you have a lot of processing power it will struggle to cope.

The other thing is disc drives both a solid state drive for the system (windows, Adobe etc) and then some drives that will cope with high bit-rate footage. Say for example you get to work with RED footage and you want to do some picture in picture work with that … then what will slow you down won’t be the processors but the data rate of your disc drives! So, having a RAID system with 2 or more disc that can give a good high through-put of data would be very important.

As for RAM, the murcury engine will use all you give it and so I would always try and get as much in as I could afford. I only have 8G because that’s what my motherboard supports, but if I could I would go for 16 or 24 if I had the chance.

As for a graphics card, again get as good as you can. However, if you go for a quadro card don’t go for the lower spec ones (FX1800 etc) as I found that my gtx260 was as good if not better than a FX1800 I tried. Go for the best you can afford, but I would think that if I was specing something now I would be looking at the very least at the gtx400 series (460/470/480) and if I wanted to do lots of 3D then a quadro 4800 .. as always, money is the final decision maker as it isn’t what you want so much as what you can afford!

So, in short, quad core min (pref i7 which I have in my laptop) but as many cores as you can afford! Then a solid state hard drive for the system (windows adobe etc) and a RAID array for my data discs, a reasonable graphics card and as much RAM as I can afford!

Hope this helps
Andrew

… because it’s all about stories …