Matrox, Pinnicle or Canopus??

[Kamal Tailor]

just wondering which card is the best to use for DV editing?? or is it best to wait unti HD cards come out??

i was looking at the Matrox cards, feature wise they seem the best, and i had a look at their marketing spiel..... but like they say

don't believe the hype!

so i thought i'd ask the boys and girls here, cos i'm sure you would all know.

[Ed Smith]

Kamal,

There have been may discussions about this in the past. Please try our search.

It all depends on a number of things. Most of all you need to see them for your self, so that you can figure out which one is best.

There are a few things to consider:

Matrox boards only run with Premiere Pro
Pinnacle boards will only work with Pinnacle Edition
Canopus boards will work with either Premiere Pro or Edius

So depening on what NLE you want to use will depend on the hardware you get.

There is also the possibility of using NLEs without hardware (you will still need a firewire card). i.e. Sonys Vegas. Premiere Pro will also work on its own, and I think so will Edius and Edition. So you might want to ask the question ; Do you really need hardware assistants?

Obviously if you want analogue in and out/ more effects and more real-time capabilities, then the answer would be yes.

I would first of all, download demos of the software from the relevant manufacturers. Play with them and then decide what hardware you would need/like, if any.


Hope this helps,

[Vladimir Gitlevich]

Kamal,

Here are my thoughts:

1. Canopus DVStorm2: I use this card. It works great with Edius, but I happen to like Premiere Pro. After a year of Premiere Pro being around Canopus finally released a relatively stable PPro driver, but it still has some issues and limitations. It will probably continue to have issues well into the future. I suggest you look at canopus forums (http://forum.canopus.com/) before you make a decision regarding the card.


2. Matrox - I heard they are pretty good, although I think they are quite particular about hardware requirements. Unlike Canopus, Matrox has been focused on Premiere Pro, and from what I read, their card integrates with the former well, probably because they are not developing a competing NLE software solution. But no personal experience.

3. Pinnacle's last card, if I am not mistaken, was DV-500. They dropped Premiere support for it starting with Premiere Pro and moved it to the "legacy" status. The company now is focused on Liquid Edition, which is their software-only NLE solution. I used DV-500 before I went to DVStorm, and my experience with it wasn't too pleasant.

Now, the question to ask is why you need the card. I am using mine for real-time output to monitor (as DVStorm2 performs most of the rendering in real time) and for hardware-accelerated MPEG encoding as well as some filters/effects that came with it. It also allows you to capture from analog sources, but will you really need that?

In short, the trend seems to be moving to software-only solutions, as the power of current CPUs is enough to drive an NLE application: Canopus developed Edius that does *not* require a card to give you real-time previews, Adobe has Premiere Pro which also gives you real-time previews, and Pinnacle - Edition with same capabilities.

If you are using Premiere, adding a card (and your choice is mostly between Canopus and Matrox solutions) is probably going to give you some neat real-time features and some extra effects/titling apps/etc., but might make Premiere less stable.

My 2 cents ;-)

Vladimir

[Andy Browne]

I moved to Pinnacle Liquid Editon (Pro) from the DV500 and Premiere. In a word... Liquid Edition is AWESOME! Backround rendering is great and their instant save feature is incredible. I have never lost a single frame of editing in the last year and 4 months.

andy@browneweb.com