Mxo2 = Woot

[Matt Davis]

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2

Nuff said.

[Dave Morrison]

You're a man of few words, Matt. ;)

[Matt Davis]

- Downconvert in hardware
- SDI to MBP, record SD from HD
- RT 720 to PAL/NTSC O/P
- Upconvert in hardware
- 720p60 to 1080p25
- Monitor on-screen in hardware
- Work in ProRez
- And it goes on. I've deleted my rant.

A while back, I dumped an entire Avid suite and replaced it with an AJA IO and FCP. Suddenly everything worked, we could ingest and output BetaSP, work at 4:2:2 even from DV sources (ingest DV using S-Video using DV50 - hey, it looked nicer), even bring in the occasional digiBeta. We did great work with that suite after sweating some petty stuff before.

Well, I feel like I'm sweating petty stuff again (or, more realistically, petting the sweaty stuff) in the SD-HD transition, and this box may well be the same enabler that the AJA was.

Not to diss the new AJA box - it's just that the MXO2 is MBP sized, battery powered (sorta) and most importantly works with my EX1 rather than the Red I Do Not Have.

There's only one point I'd have to draw attention to: the old MXO did not display fields correctly, so you couldn't spot field ordering problems on an LCD (an issue that's bitten me on the bum a couple of times - thank you LiveType). I hope the new MXO2 does what the Matrox cards did on the PC which is display field ordering problems by showing interlaced video at 50p. You can see problems then. And at the same time, get converted to shooting Progressive for data delivery.

[Matt Davis]

Nuff said.

[Tyler Franco]

I see it says that it's a great solution for both MBP's and Mac Pro's. But does it work with iMacs?

[George Kroonder]

Originally Posted by Tyler Franco

But does it work with iMacs?

No, it needs a Mac with either a PCIe expansion slot (Mac Pro) or an ExpressCard slot (Macbook Pro).

George/

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Matt Daviss

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2

Nuff said.

Yeah... I saw this thing at the FCP Supermeet during NAB. Matrox was there showing it off. Very nice piece of hardware.

-gb-

[Tyler Franco]

Thanks George!

[Mike Testin]

Will this convert live uncompressed from the EX1 SDI to the MacBook Pro in ProRes for capture?

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by Mike Testin

Will this convert live uncompressed from the EX1 SDI to the MacBook Pro in ProRes for capture?

I don't own one yet, but in regard to the communication from Matrox, I believe this to be precisely what it's good at. Amongst many other things.

Could do with one right now, in fact.

[Evan Donn]

I was wondering about that too - as far as I can tell it's just passing the uncompressed signal through to the processor which then handles the compression in whatever format you want to use... that's where it differs from something like the IO which has prores in hardware. So I guess the real question is can a macbook pro do realtime prores encoding from uncompressed?

[Dean Harrington]

Originally Posted by Evan Donn

I was wondering about that too - as far as I can tell it's just passing the uncompressed signal through to the processor which then handles the compression in whatever format you want to use... that's where it differs from something like the IO which has prores in hardware. So I guess the real question is can a macbook pro do realtime prores encoding from uncompressed?

ScopeBox monitor/record software for Mac.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

If I now convert HDV (from my Z1's, next to my EX1) to DVD, in Compressor, it can take a while. I remember rendering for 13 hours for a 2 hour show, in the preset Best Quality 120 minutes, on a Macbook Pro. How long would it take with such a card, would it improve speeds?
Or am I misunderstanding things?

[Dean Harrington]

Originally Posted by Mathieu Ghekiere

If I now convert HDV (from my Z1's, next to my EX1) to DVD, in Compressor, it can take a while. I remember rendering for 13 hours for a 2 hour show, in the preset Best Quality 120 minutes, on a Macbook Pro. How long would it take with such a card, would it improve speeds?
Or am I misunderstanding things?

If you are going to capture HD/SDI camera out into Mac via MXO2, you would be recording Apple HiRes 4.2.2 out of the MXO2 as direct capture. You are not capturing HDV but HD.
these are the specs.
"Realtime hardware up/down/cross conversion

Matrox MXO2 lets you deliver in any format your clients demand. The 10-bit hardware scaling provides high-quality mastering.

HD to SD downscaling
Matrox MXO2 provides realtime HD to SD downscaling so that you can monitor or record an SD master of your HD project in real time. Proper conversion of the HD color space to the SD color space and proper aspect ratio conversion to anamorphic, letterbox, and center cut are supported.

SD to HD upscaling
Matrox MXO2 provides realtime SD to HD upscaling with proper conversion of the SD color space to the HD color space.

Cross conversion
Matrox MXO2 offers realtime cross conversions from 720 to 1080 and 1080 to 720. Realtime frame rate conversion is also supported with the following cadences – 2:3:2:3, 2:3:3:2, and 2:2:2:4. This feature is useful if, for example, your source material is recorded at a different frame rate or resolution than the delivery format your client requires. It also facilitates monitoring when, for example, you need to work with 23.98 fps footage but your monitor does not support that frame rate. You can use MXO2’s realtime frame rate conversion to view your project at 29.97 fps."
http://www.matrox.com/video/en/produ...o2/conversion/

[George Kroonder]

Originally Posted by Mathieu Ghekiere

How long would it take with such a card, would it improve speeds? Or am I misunderstanding things?

The MXO2 is not a hardware accelerator card but an Input/Output device that interfaces with your Mac Pro or MacBook Pro.

Your Compressor workflow would not gain any speed.

George/