Hi everyone, please share your experience of the Matrox MX02 if your lucky enough to have got one.

- does the color calibration really work as well as the MXO as its says any HDMI display will work
- does it improve FCP real time previews?
- it plugs into the expresscard port - doesnt that frustrate if you have an eSATA drive as well for captures/renders
- any other observations

Many thanks.

Hi Sherif,

The MXO2 is not shipping as of yet and so there's no users out there yet who can answer your questions.


What I can tell you is that yes the calibration utility for the HDMI monitor does work as well as the one supplied with the MXO for the DVI monitors. Obviously seeing is believing and I hope you will be able to be seeing one soon!

Concerning you question about FCP real time previews, it does nothing to help speed up rendering times. The MXO2 does have support for the Dynamic RT feature of FCP as well as provide realtime scaling (SD to HD, HD to SD and HD to HD) via the MXO2 hardware.

I can't really answer your other questions as they are more of the opinion based type of answer from a users point of view. What I can say is that if you do have some existing express storage for you laptop I can understand how this might be an annoyance having to change your storage to get the MXO2 to work since it takes over the express slot. However for any newer set ups with a laptop firewire storage will get the job done just as well!


cheers,

Joe



Joseph Trepanier
Product Specialist
Matrox Video Products Group

Joe,
Quick question about the MXO 2. The MXO was designed w/only a few select monitors in mind (ex. the 23" ACD) so that the calibration software could fully utilize the display characteristics of those select monitors to achieve a very accurate image. Is the MXO 2 going to have similar list of "preferred" HDTV's?


-A

Andrew- Matrox says they are going to release that list when they release the box itself.

Joe,
Quick question about the MXO 2. The MXO was designed w/only a few select monitors in mind (ex. the 23" ACD) so that the calibration software could fully utilize the display characteristics of those select monitors to achieve a very accurate image. Is the MXO 2 going to have similar list of "preferred" HDTV's?


-A

Andrew,
There's a common misconception going around that the MXO was designed with only a select few monitors in mind. This is not true.

The ACD is better suited for the MXO because of the refresh rate of the monitor being able to do 59.94Hz which is the true refresh rate of the 60i video. If you're not working with 60i footage then it doesn't matter since the ACD doesn't synch to 50Hz anyway.

There is no specific LUT designed in the MXO for the ACD or any other specific monitor. It's the same calibration technique with the ACD as it is with the Dell or any monitor that meets the minimum specs of single link DVI support 1920x1200.. At that point the quality of the colour display will come down to how well the monitor can display the colours.



cheers,

Joe

Hi, anyone using the MX02 yet?

I have not had too much time with it, but I am running it with a MacPro and a Panasonic 17 inch broadcast monitor. The images are stunning and it plays the FCP timeline without a hiccup using an HD SDI connection. I have not yet connected to the audio ports. I also have not yet tried it with the MacBook Pro, but I will let you know on that. I have been traveling a lot and it is killing me. I really want to spend some time with it! So far so good.

Norman, thanks that would be great. I am holding back on Macbook Pro and FCP purchase until I have my input/output device and LCD monitor decided as well. The AJA IO is way too pricey for me though I love its prores capture in hw feature, the new MOTU AV unit doesnt have firewire or hdmi in! So the MXO2 sounds great at its price-point especially as it also has surround audio output, though Matrox make it quite clear that prores capture isnt recommnded on a macbook pro, only on macpro machines. But I want to convert fully to mobile units so I can capture, edit, output anywhere. Please post soon :-)

I have not had too much time with it, but I am running it with a MacPro and a Panasonic 17 inch broadcast monitor. The images are stunning and it plays the FCP timeline without a hiccup using an HD SDI connection. I have not yet connected to the audio ports. I also have not yet tried it with the MacBook Pro, but I will let you know on that. I have been traveling a lot and it is killing me. I really want to spend some time with it! So far so good.

Just got back from Europe. I have been editing using the MXO 2 to monitor my FCP Pro time line. For this purpose is works flawlessly. I will not have time to use it for capturing or with the MacBook Pro for a couple of weeks since I am on a dead line. All I can say is that it is a Godsend, working on the MacPro. I am surprised that there are no other user experiences. BTW there is no time lag between the audio and video. This is a complaint I have heard with the Aja I/O though I have not tested it myself.

Norman which monitor are you using?

It is a BT-LH 1700W. Could be the best investment I have made in my video suite. But the MacPro and the MXO 2 make it all the more valuable.

Thanks Norman that is a very nice monitor.

Just ordered the MXO thanks for the help.

Did you order the MXO or the MXO2?

I ordered the MXO for color with FCS2. From what I read the MXO2 is for input from the camera and I rarely shoot in the studio mostly in the field and no space for a computer where I shoot.

Am I correct with this assumption or did I make a mistake?

The MXO2 is an I/O device so also does Output. You can use it to monitor in real time or play back to an HDMI display. The "2" doesn't do scan conversion, but then I don't believe it would have to when you connect it to a HDMI display that supports the broadcast standards.

The MXO connects to a computer monitor via DVI.

George/

Thanks George that is the same information I have read. For now the MXO is the right tool for me.

I just captured an hour of DV footage through my Matrox MXO2 to my Mac Pro. It took up 38 GB, which is about 3 times more than if I'd gone straight from my DV deck to the computer via Firewire. Anyone else have a similar experience? What gives??

I just captured an hour of DV footage through my Matrox MXO2 to my Mac Pro. It took up 38 GB, which is about 3 times more than if I'd gone straight from my DV deck to the computer via Firewire. Anyone else have a similar experience? What gives??
What capturing settings are you using?


-Andrew

In FCP 6.0.2, I used the Easy Setup called Matrox MXO2 - DV NTSC 48kHz.