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Matrox MXO released
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“Hours of conforming during realtime playback”
I am not sure I understand what that means? Anyway, Greg Mulvey was also on the beta and he used it extensively with HDV, maybe he could post some more details. I used it with P2 and various flavors of SD. It worked very well in every case. There is no compromise required to do what it does.
Tony
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Mitch
“They are first and foremost a PC company and that will not change”
so its bad that htey have a working multiformat, multistandard editor that actually DOES multiple streams of realtime? and its bad that they have no interest in selling computers, just SOTA video cards?
I used a pc edit system, with matrox cards, for a long time and had no qualms with any of it. rock solid 24 7
so lets not make it sound like a “pc” company is a bad thing, ok?
especially when fcp still cant mix 8 bit and 10 bit ntsc on the same timeline (better stop here, or it’l just get ugly)
btw sorry if you had a bad experience w matrox in the past. I think you would find them a different company to-day
bee eph
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
[bob flood] “btw sorry if you had a bad experience w matrox in the past. I think you would find them a different company to-day”
A LOT of people had bad experiences with Matrox in the past. They have a long history with FCP and not a whole lot of it was good. They abandoned FCP altogether so you can understand why there is so much negative feedback towards the company with this latest product.
Again, AJA and Blackmagic both have very similar products so given their support of FCP through the years and proven track record of both companies with FCP, you can understand why people would want to stay with these two.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Tony,
Each sequence has to be conformed back to an MPEG GOP – it’s called “conforming” before you lay it back to tape, or create a QT movie for any purpose… and it can take a very long time. I’ve written an article coming in the next issue of the COW magazine about editing HDV in Appleland, and was amazed by how much time you could spend “conforming”… I used a 5 minute sequence that was identical in HDV, the Intermediate Codec (now there’s an odd duck deal), and in DVCPROHD. The article is about how to handle HDV, and my conclusion is worth reading I think.
The HDV sequence took 43 minutes to conform so I could lay it back to tape… same time would have been used to prepare a QT movie for compression… This same sequence in DVCPROHD (converted from the HDV) took 5 minutes to render, and I couldn’t see a difference in quality at all. The conversion is fast too… can be done as you capture with the right gear.
If you needed to deliver an SD DVD of a feature length program… we are talking DAYS to get it there from the time your last edit is made on a dual 2 gig machine.
HDV isn’t easy in post in FCP at all. Just rendering effects can be painfully slow.
But I digress… the Matrox MXO has it’s place, and it’s a winning product as far as I can see. There’s nothing quite like it out there. Sure, you don’t need it if you’re running a Kona, but hey, it’s a lot less expensive than any other solution from AJA or Decklink and it’s portable. NO card slot needed. Not just for HDV either, works with any flavor of HD.
In Matrox’s defense (which I’m the first to agree they really dropped the ball with the RTMac from any perspective) Apple didn’t make things easy for them. When FCP 3 was introduced, it did as much RT as the RTMac did, which made the product really only an A/D/D/A DV converter. There were a lot less expensive solutions for that. They sort of got bit by Apple’s RT Extreme technology. So did Cinewave… It’s RT additions became more and more ho hum as the computers and software advances took place. Seeing the product manager screaming at the top of his lungs at the international User’s group at NAB a couple of years ago that you just had to have RT was embarrasing… At that point, CineWave really wasn’t giving much more than a fast G5 would do… it was pretty sad.
Where Matrox made a big mistake was not only NOT delivering on the drivers for current users past Jaguar (and indicating they were going to), but really didn’t make public the fact they had no intention of supporting the product after FCP 3. They shouda said that…
Quite frankly though, all of that is pretty old news, and if they do support the MXO (and I’ll bet they do), it’s going to be a winner…
Jerry
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Hi Jerry,
I have been using the MXO for a few months with HDV footage shot with a Cannon XL H1. I edit in Final Cut pro in HDV 1080i60 and using the MXO I downconvert to SD in REAL TIME in anamorphic widescreen. My signal goes out of the MXO box into another system which captures the footage directly to MPEG2 and is ready to go to DVD. All I have to do is hit play on my timeline in Final Cut. This thing has saved me DAYS of conforming.
Greg Mulvey
Designer:Animator
https://www.gregmulvey.com -
Hey gang,
There’s some very enlightening (Jerry, Greg, Mitch etc.) comments here, and taking a closer look at this is making me curious about a couple of things. First, I notice it has DVI in and out, so does that mean you don’t lse one of your monitors if you have two?
Second, would this thing preview Compressor and/or DVDSP to an NTSC monitor? If so, that makes it worth the price of admission to me, I’d be sold.
Have a wonderful day.
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Hi Chris,
You will be glad to hear the answer is YES to both of your questions.
You won’t loose your 2nd monitor AND the MXO will output from Final Cut Pro and other QuickTime-based applications such as DVD Studio Pro, Soundtrack, Combustion, and even Motion!
Greg Mulvey
Designer:Animator
https://www.gregmulvey.com -
Well well,
This IS looking better all the time, thanks Greg!
Now here’s a good one, I bought two RTmacs way back with FCP v. 1.2, and I paid a thousand bucks for each, and I think it was about the time of v. 3 that they CUT THE PRICE IN HALF! Boy was I pissed, but at about the same price today for the MXO, think they will lower the price of this one too?
Have a wonderful day.
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Quick question, how did you set this up? (Cycling it back out to encoder, or otherwise. Took a look at the specs, and think I missed a few things, for instance they mention an S-Video out, but did not see it, figured since you have one, you may be able to fill in the blanks)
Sounds perfect, looking to get this (MXO) for my MacBook Pro to keep things moving when Tower tied up or when traveling about
Thanks!
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