Dave Friend
Forum Replies Created
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[kylesway] “Do you happen to have experience w/ the Matrox products?”
Yes, but my Axio experience is limited to demos – so far. But those experiences have been good. And I have gotten reports from people I know and trust that are very complementary. I will be getting an Axio SD soon. I do have real-life experience with older Matrox video products like the Digisuite and Rtx100. Video quality is excellent. They sometimes struggle with software drivers but that seems better in recent years. And they seem to be putting lots of resources into continuing development and refinement of the Axio line. With regards to software, I have more trepidation about Adobe Premiere Pro than Matrox.
I have not seen the new RTx2 but my confidence is high because of their track record with the older RTx products. It looks like a lot (if not most) of the technology in the x2 is from the Axio product.
“Can they “really” do what they claim?”
Yes, they do deliver what the marketing department promises. Undoubtedly there are bugs. But every piece of software ever written has those.“Do they have restrictions one needs to be aware of?”
Like software bugs, every NLE software or hardware vendor has “gotchas” that are often hard to spot until you start using in a real-world situation. You really do need a computer that meets system requirements or you will be disappointed. Again, PPro is probably more of a bottleneck than the Matrox hardware. Sorry I can’t give you more specifics – I just don’t have the experience to speak intelligently. Take these questions to the Matrox Video COW and see what response you get.Dave
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Kyle,
There are no settings anywhere in the computer to compensate for the lag. The DV out is slow because all the data has to be serialized, pushed through the wire and then de-serialized at the DV device. That takes a lot of time – particularly when compared to a low-latency audio card. I suppose some clever audio card company could write a driver that would add latency to the card’s output. That would probably be a hard sell to any company that has spent a lot of effort making a low-latency card.
Define affordable. If you’ve got a couple grand to invest and if you computer meets requirements then maybe the Matrox RT.x2 should be considered.
Dave
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It appears that the scene was so over-exposed that all detail in the bightest areas has been lost. There is probably no way to adjust the scene so it looks “normal” – the highlights have no data to work with.
Bummer.
Dave
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Yes it does. The bin has a column available that shows video and audio usage counts. Also, when you select a clip in the bin there is addition info available. At the top of the bin (where the playable picon of the clip is located) to the right of the picon is a tiny triangle. Click the triangle to dislplay a list of the locations (every place on every timeline) where the clip is used. Click one of the list items and you will be transported to that clip useage instance in the timeline.
Perhaps even better than the avid?
Dave
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[Uwe] “some standalones can handle WMV9”
Can they handle a multi-channel WM9 and properly decode it to 5.1 surround sound?
(This is not a sarcastic question. I honestly don’t know.)Dave
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With WM9 it is possible to create/use uncompressed files. AC3 is always compressed to some degree. So if your end-product will support uncompressed that would be better.
Given WM9 and AC3 files created from the same source material and compressed at the same bitrate I doubt most listeners would notice any difference between them. If someone is able to detect a difference I suspect that which was “better” would be entirely subjective.
OTOH, WM9 can handle bit-depths and sample rates beyond 16 bits/sample @ 48Khz. Can the Minnetonka encoder do that? I’m not sure.
Dolby is undoubtedly the more universal format with regards to set-top playback machines. The contrary is probably true if the expected playback platform is a PC.
Dave
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Is your goal to make 5.1 for DVD? If so, ac3 is the correct choice.
Dave
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[jpertel1964] ” I can’t even make channel 1 go to channel 1, it throws both avi channels onto 3 and 4 for some reason!”
Yeah, that’s really bush.
After you edit to the timeline you can hold down Alt and click on the unneeded audio clip and then delete it. The video and other audio track will still be linked.
Dave
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Use the + key on the numeric keypad for timecode values. The + key on the top row of the keyboard (usually next to backspace) is for zooming.
Hope this helps.
Dave
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[stevem1928] “Does a person on the receiving end of QT file have to have the same codec that was used to compress the file?”
Yes.
[stevem1928] ” I am experimenting with which is best.”
Best for what purpose? Answering that will help narrow down which codecs to examine.
~Dave