Prospect HD & Matrox Axio LE

[Brian Cassar]

Is anyone using Prospect HD with PPro CS3 & Matrox Axio LE? I have downloaded the trial version but am afraid to install it for fear of a conflict with the Axio. I could not find any info on such a scenario both in this forum and in Cineform web site.

I'm thinking of using Prospect HD in the hope that it does a better job in downconverting HD to SD than adobe or matrox encoder. I'm currently using an EX3 (1920x1080 files).Are you guys happy with Prospect's downconversion?

Thanks

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Brian,

I'm a Matrox RT.X2 user and think I know what you are talking about with HD to SD quality - are you referring to the poor results when encoding an HD timeline to "MPEG-2 for DVD" ?

This is an Adobe issue in how it handles the color space conversion (or so I am told), even when using Matrox Encoder (which uses Adobe under the hood).

I have a few workarounds to suggest which can really make a difference. One would be to just use a third-party encoder, such as Grass Valley ProCoder 3. Just Import your Matrox .avi into it and output to format of choice.

Another method, staying in Adobe, is to Export Movie from Matrox HD timeline, but change export settings from the Matrox HD codec to "Matrox DV Widescreen", also changing pixel aspect to 1.2 DV widescreen. This way, Matrox is converting to DV, not Adobe. Now take the resulting .avi file into a Matrox DV project, and export to MPEG-2 16:9 from there.

Last option is to open a Matrox DV widescreen project, Import HD project into it, then again Export to MPEG-2.

I have not tried Prospect HD, but am pretty sure you'd lose any Matrox realtime playback, would likely require rendering in timeline.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers
Your #1 DV & 3D Animation Source - Safe Harbor 800-544-6599

Originally Posted by Brian Cassar

Is anyone using Prospect HD with PPro CS3 & Matrox Axio LE? I have downloaded the trial version but am afraid to install it for fear of a conflict with the Axio. I could not find any info on such a scenario both in this forum and in Cineform web site.

I'm thinking of using Prospect HD in the hope that it does a better job in downconverting HD to SD than adobe or matrox encoder. I'm currently using an EX3 (1920x1080 files).Are you guys happy with Prospect's downconversion?

Thanks

[Brian Cassar]

Hi Jeff,

Exactly! I'm referring to the unacceptable results obtained when either exporting or encoding a HD timeline to mpeg2 DVD. The results are horrible.

I have already done option 2 but still I'm not impressed with the result. The good thing is that, as you said, one does not loose the hardware acceleration for exporting.

I will try the other 2 options maybe I solve this problem.

At the moment I'm doing another option - I exported from the HD timeline a mpeg2 iframe file and I'm applying a sharpening effect to it. The good thing is that from the preview monitor it seems that the resultant sd picture is very sharp (almost HD) - however the bad thing is that it is an Adobe filter and thus needs rendering. I've calculated that on my quad core HP workstation 1 hour of footage with this effect needs more than 5 hours of rendering! It's like going back to the dark ages!

[Mike McCarthy]

I have AXIO and Prospect/Neo. I usually only put Neo on my AXIO systems to avoid conflicts, but I have installed Prospect on occasion, and it works. You have to choose AXIO or Cineform editing mode, you don't get to use the features of both simultaneously, but your system will be able to read and write both codecs in either mode.