To import via Matrox MXo2le or not question
 

For years have been quite happy importing my DV footage via fire wire . Purchased a Matrox mxo2 to increase my input/output options , to make use of 'Max' for increased compression speeds and to have a reasonably colour reliable external monitor
Is there any advantage to now capturing my footage in component through the Matrox rather than via fire wire in terms of quality

regards
John

The advantages as I see them are more specific to HDV capture - in FCP, HDV to ProRes is a Capture Now scenario. IF one wanted to work with lo res proxies and recapture just the media in use at online res later, the ability to capture with REAL device control is advantageous. Me? I've been getting by with importing HDV at ProRes files sizes and just "dealing with it".

The advantage is yours to decide by making a couple of test on what you feel is your most difficult footage in terms of image. Analog component can "soften" the footage in ways that some people find pleasing over a direct digital capture. Also component capture is usually done to a less compressed codec than DV. I have not tested this recently as I also go HDV to ProRes directly by FireWire.

while DV compression in the camera is the primary limitation, capturing to ProRes which is 10bit does present some advantages. working in a higher color space it means you have more control when grading / color correcting shots. this is especially true when the footage is marginal - dark / noisy. its not going to add anything, but it will make working with what you have better. you'll have finer control of the process

if you have a sony VTR with SDI out, the sony VTR's do some processing on the image where folks find the image to be a bit smoother / cleaner.

you can of course always take the MXO2 with you so you can capture from the camera's component or SDI outs.

if you are editing a HD project, you can use the MXO2's input to scale the image to HD in realtime during capture. can't think of a better way to get this done !