Matrox Announces Matrox Axio LE Realtime HD/SD Editing Platform at a Breakthrough Pri

[Gary Bettan]

Montreal, Canada, February 13, 2006 – Matrox® Video Products Group today announced Matrox Axio™ LE, a high-performance realtime HD/SD editing platform at the breakthrough price of $4,495 US in North America.

Matrox Axio LE is the latest entry in the Matrox Axio family of products that makes Adobe® Premiere® Pro the foremost realtime HD and SD editor for demanding broadcast and post-production environments. It features no-render HD and SD finishing in compressed and uncompressed formats, superior realtime color correction tools, advanced realtime effects, and a full complement of analog and digital audio and video inputs and outputs. It also lets users work seamlessly with the other Adobe Production Studio applications, fully supporting Adobe Dynamic Link and providing WYSIWYG video output support for Adobe After Effects® and Adobe Photoshop® CS2, as well as other industry-leading animation and compositing packages. Matrox Axio LE incorporates Matrox Flex and Power of X technologies to leverage CPU and GPU power to provide the ultimate HD and SD post-production experience.

“With the launch of Axio LE, Matrox has again demonstrated their ability to deliver a high-end professional editing platform at an affordable price point,” said Simon Hayhurst, director of product management, Web and Video Solutions for Adobe. “The new Matrox Axio LE is ideally suited for use with Adobe Production Studio, bringing maximum realtime functionality and complete workflow flexibility to professional video editors working in both HD and SD.”

“Matrox Axio LE makes realtime HD editing much more affordable, bringing huge productivity and workflow advantages to creative professionals,” said Lorne Trottier, president and CTO of Matrox. “Users get so much more than with software-only systems – many more realtime layers of video and graphics, many more realtime effects including broadcast-quality 3D DVE, native support for many additional codecs, simultaneous HD and SD output, accelerated export to DVD and multimedia formats –the benefits inherent in this complete post-production solution are very impressive!”
Key features of Matrox Axio LE
• Full-resolution multi-layer realtime editing of HD and SD video, graphics, and effects
• Realtime CPU-based effects such as color correction, speed changes, and chroma/luma keying
• Realtime and accelerated Matrox Flex effects such as 2D/3D DVE, blur/glow/ soft focus, and shine
• Uncompressed HD and SD editing
• Native HDV and DVCPRO HD editing
• Compressed HD editing (offline and online finishing-quality MPEG-2 I-frame)
• DV, DVCPRO, DV50, and MPEG-2 I-frame SD editing
• Realtime mixing of HD codecs or SD codecs on the timeline
• Realtime playback of SD clips in a 1080i HD timeline
• Realtime mixed-format multi-cam
• 24 fps editing in HD and SD with pull down and reverse pull down
• Accelerated export to DVD, multimedia formats including Flash Video, and Adobe Clip Notes
• WYSIWYG for Adobe After Effects and Photoshop, Autodesk Combustion and 3ds Max, eyeon Fusion, and NewTek LightWave 3D
• DV-1394, composite, Y/C, HD/SD analog component, and HD/SD SDI input and output
• Realtime high-quality downscaling from HD to SD
• Simultaneous HD and SD output
• 2-in/6-out AES/EBU audio, 2-in/6-out XLR audio, 2-in/6-out SDI embedded audio, 1/4” output jack for stereo monitoring

Price and availability
Priced at $4,495 US in North America, Matrox Axio LE is available through a worldwide network of authorized dealers. Matrox Axio LE system prices vary depending on workflow requirements. System selection guidelines and lists of validated workstation-class PCI-X computers and motherboards, as well as recommended GPUs and storage devices will be posted in the support section of the Matrox website. Complete Axio LE-based turnkey systems are also available from Matrox Axio LE authorized dealers.

Videoguys will be carrying Axio LE and we’ll have pricing and special bundle offers posted shortly!

Gary