Just recieved Matrox RT.X2
 

I just recieve a Matrox RT.X2 installed it, and edited my first wedding with it. I must say going from software only to the X2 is night and day difference. I was blown away by the quality of the slow motion and color correction. I had done half of a wedding with the software , then the other half once I recieved the card. I ended up having to redo the whole thing because there was such a noticable difference in quality. I was under the impression it was just a hardware accelerator, but I was wrong. Just thought I should share.

Hi there Steve,

Have you got any snippets of the footage you can put on the internet? Would like to see this...

When you use the Matrox boards you were probably also using the Matrox Codec, when running software only you use the microsoft codec.

What format were you capturing in?

Cheers,

Questions
 

Steve,

Thanks for your post, I am looking at the Matrox RT.X2 and if it is worth the money. See thread http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=87088

Your comments help me lots, so it was worth the money to you? How is the slow-mo compared to PP alone? Did you look at Cineform Aspect HD at all? It seems to have similar benefits as RT.X2 but it is software only and I think bigger files. On the plus side Aspect HD is about $500 compared to $1700 for the RT.x2.

Thanks for yours, or anybody else’s thoughts on this.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I havent used the Cineform Aspect HD so I cant really comment on it. But I have used the PP software only for a while now. Since I mainly do weddings slow motion is very important to me. Slow-mo in PP software only is sketchy at best below 50% in my experience, its expecially noticable in pans. Ive slowed down different types of clips with the Matrox to 20-25% and the quality is very good, I was really excited about it.

I made my choice for the Matrox because I got the bundle with the Production Studio so I can use the Dynamic link between it and AE7 ect. it works great and saves me alot of time. Plus I have the real-time effects,color correction without having to render, and the DVI Monitor out to my samsung gives me full resolution HD/SD on my second monitor.

P.S. I rendered to DVD a 58 minute wedding ceremony with my software only using the Main concept encoder built in with 7mb CBR and it took 19 hrs on a Athlon 64 FX-57 2.88mhz with 2 gig of ram.

I then rendered to DVD the same 58 minute ceremony with my new Core 2 Duo 2.66mhz and Matrox w/ 2gig ram. It rendered in 32 minutes now thats a time saver for me. Matrox touts on their website better than real time encoding for DV and realtime encoding for HDV.

Hi Ed,

I will try to put together some samples of what I was talking about as soon as I get some free time in a few days.

I was capturing in DV, Im waiting for my HV20 to arrive via B&H so I can get some HDV editing time in. I believe I am about to buy the Canon A1 also and switch from my VX2000, low light was my main concern but from what Ive read here it seems to be comparable in low light so we will see.

Take care,

Steve

Wow, that faster.
 

Wow, that is a big time savings! Thanks for the feedback on the slow-mo, it is good to hear that Matrox has good slow-mo. Decisions, decision!

Is it me or is it odd that Matrox doesn't show any of their own Video Cards as suitable candidates for the RT.X2? I have their APVe and I've pulled it out of my system as it's sluggish in performance when compared to the NVidia Quadro 1400 the system shipped with, but to not review any of your own cards is sending a really odd message.


See here:
http://matrox.com/video/support/rtx2...splay/home.cfm

From what I understand Matrox quit trying to compete in the Massive GPU game and devoted all their resources to the niche market of specialty cards.

The RT.X2 really needs the raw GPU power of the new nvidia and ati cards for most of its accelerated and realtime effects.

The question is, are these effects accelerated by Matrox or GPU?? What does RT.X2 really DO if it NEEDS such a powerful system, which is more than capable of editing HDV itself?

19hrs to render mpg2?
i'll look over and respond when i get a chance, but 19hrs?
With mainconcept, i render at 1.5x realtime.. which is actually faster than realtime..

Good question, you can probably find your answers at the Matrox website as far as the technicial details. I think it harnesses the power of the GPU to assist in all the real time functions. (faster the more powerful your GPU)


I know what you mean, I was shocked. However it was probably due to some fault of my own. I upgraded my computer at the same time I bought my Matrox card to a Core 2 Duo with seperate HDD's for scratch and capture that were set properly. So I do attribute some of that time to improper scratch disk setup, I no longer have that computer to test my theory with it set properly.

Regards

I also have the RTX2 and have been mixing HD and SD footage. I just completed my first all HD project with captures from two Canon A1 camcorders. The editing including using color corrections (to correct lighting differences due to different angles on spotlight lit subjects) was all in realtime, no rendering. The mixed project was 3 video tracks 2 SD one HD and four audio. Only a couple spots were red, but played.

The output of an earlier project using the HD timeline then exporting SD mpg at 4.5 VBR 2 pass encoding from the time line took real time.

I have not exported to tape yet, but will with this 2hr 10 min project. I am splitting it into 4 pieces though as I found that if I had to make a change, it is nicer to only have to reencode 1 shorter one, not 1 really long one.

I will be archiving this one to tape when I get done, so I will let you know how that goes.

I have run into a roadblock, the Canon XL H1 is listed as not supported for HD back to tape. It appears the same problem is true for my Canon XH A1.

So I did a test of exporting an mpg2 1080i at 15 Mbps 1920x1080 and a 10+ minute video was .5GB. So I could archive the video on Blu-ray. Converting the HD back to a video to edit on Matrox takes 2x the length of the video 1hr = 2hr conversion. Once converted it edits in RT.

Bill

Thanks for the Info Bill, I just recieved my XH A1 Friday so I havent been able to play with it yet and the RT.X2. any pointers and advice is appreciated.

P.S. I also have a HV20 arriving Monday.

Steve

Steve (or anybody else),

Can you check if you can export to tape on the HV20. I am looking into buying an A1 and the HV20 with the RT.X2, but I would really like to export to tape for archiving. It sound like the RT.X2 will not export to the A1 so I am really hoping it will export to the HV20, so I can archive that way.

Patiently waiting on what you find out.

thanks
jeff