[Andy Taplin]

Derek

I thought I’d chip in here as MPEG-2 encoding was always a headache for me from M100 until I discovered Cinemacraft.

It’s really fast, recognises the M100 colourspace and gives the best MPEG-2 quality I’ve evers seen. It runs on the PC only but I’ve now got it working on an Intel Mac using VMWare fusion and it encodes at about real time on an 8 core 3ghz machine using just one of the cores.

It’s expensive at around

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks, nice to see the old threads still get read.

More than one way to ‘skin a cat’ in AFX for sure.

[Andy Taplin]

MacPro 3GHZ 8 Core
16GB DDR2RAM
ATI Radeon X1900 XT

2x 500GB internl drives

3TB G-Tech G-Speed eS RAID (5)

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks All

I guess I though I had reached computer power nirvana with an 8 core and all that RAM! – still I can run 4 or 5 apps at once now which is a big productivity boost.

I’ll also try dropping the RAM allocation.

Andy

[Andy Taplin]

Hmm… I’ll try Nucleo and see what they say.

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks Floh

That makes sense – I just tried a blue clip and you can see it as a pinprick in Episode!

[Andy Taplin]

Hi Dave

Yes they are by-refs, but my other system finds the data instantly – the file structures for the original data are the same on the new system so I’m not sure why it takes so long to link to the data?

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks Floh

It seems the MXO guys claim it does allow an LCD to show interlaced video, this is from their user forum:

Question:
INTERLACING: My main issue here is whether XMO will display the interlaced fields of SD video… ALSO read elsewhere on the site: “The MXO provides interlace viewing on a progressive monitor.” so that’s encouraging, but i need to check.

Answer:
We do display every single field. The MXO

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks

Shame about the plug-in thing.

I’ve got hardware meters already but it’s nice to have both and you can put the software ones where you like in your eye-line of course. Cheap too – around $100.

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks for your thoughts – I actually agree with a lot of what you say, but I was thinking of the 30 inch LCD for editing only and for the increased desktop area with AFX, not for monitoring HD output.

Having said that, I have been looking at the Matrox MXO with a 1920×1200 LCD and the web is full of pro graders who swear by this device – 9/10ths of what a broadcast tube would deliver apparently – I’ve not seen it myself yet.

I’m happy to listen to alternative views but unless there is a conspiracy out there the MXO seems to be a solution for all but the most demanding users?

I take you point about the need to see interlaced video properly and I use a tube monitor at the moment for just that reason. Apparently the MXO will show interlaced video and display any field errors as you would see on a tube.

As for latency, I’m not sure if the MXO helps hear but with the latest LCDs this is becoming a minor issue.

I guess the bottom line for me is I don’t have clients visit my edits that often and it will be a couple of years before I’m working in HD full time, so for monitoring output I think the MXO might be the way to go until I’m doing a lot more HD work.