Hi,

I've tried to search for answers to this on the forum but haven't been able to find anything.

I'm getting fed up of waiting for edited work to render so I'm keen to buy a piece of hardware that will render realtime. My first choice would be the Matrox RT X10 but even this is a little out of my budget at the moment.

Is there any alternative products out there that will render the video in realtime to save me waiting? Thats all i'm really needing the extra hardware for (i think)

I'm keen to know about all products (regardless of price) even if you can just list them so I can go and find the info myself this would be a great help. This really is an area I know nothing of and would hate to spend such vasts amounts of money on a piece of kit that i'll only ever use a fraction off.

Thanks in advance

Nick

Matrox announced support for Premiere 1.5 with awesome new features with their new version of Xtools.

RT Colour Pass
RT Timecode
RT Colour Match

to name a few.

Check it out at www.matrox.com

Regards,
Elie

>Is there any alternative products out there that will render the >video in realtime to save me waiting?

What we all want is "less than" real-time rendering.

<<<What we all want is "less than" real-time rendering. -->>>

If there are products that offer that then please let me know of them also...

Thanks

As PC's get faster, less than RT rendering will be a possibility.

Regards,
Elie

Having done 3D animation and waiting 20 something hours for a 15 second clip to render, has really made me apreciate only having to wait minutes for my video to render.

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : Having done 3D animation and waiting 20 something hours for a 15 second clip to render, has really made me apreciate only having to wait minutes for my video to render. -->>>

Exactly my point (although not to those extremes), what card do you use for rendering???

Nick,

Real time editing cards don't always give you real-time. There is normally a limit to how many effects and video tracks one can use before you have to start to render.

Sometimes it is also down to the software as well.

The Matrox RTX series are a good place to start, but if it was me I would go for the RTX 100.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ed Smith : Nick,

Real time editing cards don't always give you real-time. There is normally a limit to how many effects and video tracks one can use before you have to start to render.

Sometimes it is also down to the software as well.

The Matrox RTX series are a good place to start, but if it was me I would go for the RTX 100. -->>>


Brilliant, thanks for the advice but can I ask you why the RT X100 over the X10? What is it that makes you favour the more expensive?? I'm on a tight budget you see and all i'm really interested in at the moment is faster rendering times, so I can see the results of what i;m doing straight away without waiting half an hour

Cheers

Nick

<<<-- Originally posted by Nick Glenister : <<<-- Originally posted by Ed Smith : Nick,

Real time editing cards don't always give you real-time. There is normally a limit to how many effects and video tracks one can use before you have to start to render.

Sometimes it is also down to the software as well.

The Matrox RTX series are a good place to start, but if it was me I would go for the RTX 100. -->>>


Brilliant, thanks for the advice but can I ask you why the RT X100 over the X10? What is it that makes you favour the more expensive?? I'm on a tight budget you see and all i'm really interested in at the moment is faster rendering times, so I can see the results of what i;m doing straight away without waiting half an hour

Cheers

Nick -->>>

Hi nick,

take a look at this comparision chart:

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/pdf/rtxsuitepro_comparison.pdf

Main differences being:

real-time DV and MPEG IBP for DVD authoring export
more real-time effects
The extreme preview

Hope this helps,

Ed

This might also help:

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/rtx100xtremepro/effects/combine.cfm

<<<-- Originally posted by Ed Smith : This might also help:

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/rtx100xtremepro/effects/combine.cfm -->>>

Cheers for the info but this is were I start having problems; I don't know what half of it means i.e

• 5 channels of transparency
• 2 channels of smooth fast or slow motion control on video
• 2 channels of color balance on video
• 2 channels of input/output level control on video
• 2 channels of proc amp control on video
• 2 channels of keyframeable 3D transform and perspective with soft borders
• 2 channels of keyframeable cropping

Obviously I understand the words but not the application of the effects and when I would want to use them... therein lies my problem I don't want to spend £1000 (unless someone wants to ship me one from the states... please??) on hardware when I don't really know what it is i'm doing.

For the most part i'm creating titles and bluring out car number plates with mattes and keyframes etc I'd like to do picture in picture and i've recently been playing with trapcodes shine (which is great!) and i'd like a much faster rendering time. None of the above bullet points seem to be of much use to me but please correct me if i'm wrong.

Thanks

nick

At this point in time, Nick, "real time" cards have sped up the playback of effects-heavy timelines in down-rezzed monitor windows. If you can't see it on an attached TV/broadcast monitor at the same time, it isn't real time in a meaningful sense - just a decent preview. And it isn't rendered. At least one name-brand NLE offers what it calls "background render", using CPU cycles while you're doing less intensive editing to get ahead of the game. I don't know what your PC specs are but if your system is a year or two old you'd probably get more sheer render speed from upgrading processor, mobo and RAM than from a proprietary card. What you won't get is more special effects bundled in.

David Hurdon

<<<-- Originally posted by David Hurdon : At this point in time, Nick, "real time" cards have sped up the playback of effects-heavy timelines in down-rezzed monitor windows. If you can't see it on an attached TV/broadcast monitor at the same time, it isn't real time in a meaningful sense - just a decent preview. And it isn't rendered. At least one name-brand NLE offers what it calls "background render", using CPU cycles while you're doing less intensive editing to get ahead of the game. I don't know what your PC specs are but if your system is a year or two old you'd probably get more sheer render speed from upgrading processor, mobo and RAM than from a proprietary card. What you won't get is more special effects bundled in.

David Hurdon -->>>


Hi David,

Thats interesting I could do with updating my computer, I assumed that the card would have more impact on rendering as it has dedicated chip, you see all i'm interested in is seeing the results of a particular effect or conbination of effects not so much what it looks like on a TV. My work is all digital and is very short promotional clips (very fast changes between clips and lots of effects) and will mostly take the form of website content but possibly DVD too.

I'm not overly bothered by the extra effects that come bundled with the cards.

I guess I should look into upgrading my system which raises a whole load of extra questions.

I currently have PC with Athlon 1800 XP and 512mb of RAM. At the moment all the video footage is stored on an External 160Gb firewire HD. I was looking to get an Athlon 2800 XP and and extra half gig of RAM.

Cheers

Nick

Hi Nick,

By channels I think they mean tracks? All though not certain. You should be able to do everything you have mentioned in real-time using the matrox effects.

What software are you using at the moment?

You would also probably have to upgrade the specs of your computer, I would check the specs on Matrox's web site.

Thanks,

Ed

<<<-- Originally posted by Ed Smith : Hi Nick,

By channels I think they mean tracks? All though not certain. You should be able to do everything you have mentioned in real-time using the matrox effects.

What software are you using at the moment?

You would also probably have to upgrade the specs of your computer, I would check the specs on Matrox's web site.

Thanks,

Ed -->>>


Ah it makes a bit more sence if it were tracks. I'm using premiere at the moment. I tried the but you are correct in me needing to upgrade my system before buying an RT X10 etc...

to be honest after what David said above i'm not so keen on buying a card just yet, it seems like a luxury rather than a necessity and i'll have to get used to waiting to see the results of my work.

While you are at it, you owe it to yourself to check out the Canopus products. They've had real-time products for a long time and should be considered if you are looking for a new editing suite.

Like the Matrox, you will be happier with a faster computer system but you can run realtime using something like StormEdit (which, given what you need for editing may be exactly what you want) with your present system.

As with any editing system, check the compatiblity pages (Canopus web site) on your computer hardware before you decide.

And Canopus is realtime for DV and analog outputs (Composite and S-Video).

Demo software is available for download.

Double check the compatibilty charts, and then search through the forums on their websites. You are never really sure what bugs might be a problem, and which just need a tweek.

I have been using the Canopus Storm with Premiere 6.something, with no problems. My Abit KG7 raid Mobo was a different story though... I spent a year with major problems, until I discovered I needed to just tweek a setting or two. Rock solid ever since.