Matrox delivers HD monitoring to Avid as well as acceleration of the Mercury Playback Engine [NAB Video]
Matrox definitely won the “surprise announcement” award from this year’s NAB with its Avid partnership. This gives Avid editors around the world the hardware that they have been desperately needing.
Matrox’s MXO2 Mini is definitely a device that will get some serious attention from Avid editors, but that’s not all that Matrox had up its sleeve. They also announced the ability to accelerate Mercury through its MAX line of products. The Mercury playback engine is designed around technology that combines the power of the GPU, with the CPU. What makes the Matrox MAX technology so special is that you don’t need an 8 to 12 core, top-of-the-line system to get the performance benefits of Mercury. You can use your quad-core systems with any of Matrox’s MAX devices and have the ability to accelerate the Mercury Playback Engine. Oh yeah, and they can also accelerate h.264 compression too. As if that wasn’t cool enough!
Frank Scartozzi gives us a run-down of Matrox’s innovations at NAB 2010.
6 Responses
That it excellent news from Matrox at NAB 2010 that the RT engine is enabled with the Max technology, however, when will Matrox announce the release of the drivers for the RT.X2 that actually supports CS5, I am sure thousands of RT.X2 users are asking the same question.
I will send Matrox an email tomorrow and find out about their plans with the RT.X2. I’ll let you know what I find out.
Don,
I spoke with Janet at Matrox and they still don’t have a release date. She said she will be letting us know though. I’ll post it here.
Your Comments
I’m really surprised by Matrox’s messaging machine (if they indeed have one)
I’ve been on the phone with Matrox sales reps over the last 2 days discussing at length various compatibility issues revolving around the MXO family with Cineform’s intermediate codec as a way to accelerate CS5’s Mercury and my most lusted after feature: smooth multicam editing. Would Cineform possibly obviate the need for a super computer to accelerate those things?
Matrox has, quite some time ago, announced compatibility between the MXO2 Mini (without Maxx) and Cineform’s entry-level NeoScene.
In speaking with two inside sales people at Matrox of two day, not once was Maxx ever mentioned as an accelerator for Mercury! Nor that it outperforms Nividia’s Cude GPU acceleration!
Now some may ask: Who really needs Cineform anymore if Maxx can accelerate, (essentially doing the same thing, albeit via a completely different approach with a superior codec, rather than accelerating. But I digress)
Cineform’s Firstlight color correction, that’s why. Cineform also transcodes an 8bit video file into a 10bit file too. MXOs have 10bit HDMI input but Matrox doesn’t state whether that is only to accommodate a 10bit incoming signal or whther it transcodes an 8bit file up to 10bit.
I’ll be on the phone with Matrox again when they call me back with the ‘hard questions’ I pose to them.
I must say that in all of the videos I see online, including the one on this interviewing Francesco Scartozzi, it is all glossed over. Maybe it’s me but “Maxx obviates and outperforms Cuda, on an i7 system” is really big. Maybe it would behoove the interviewers to do a little research prior. What is needed are interviewers who seem to understand the import of certain advancements, instead of saying “wow, that’s fantastic” without any real enthusiasm.
Oh, and the video stall too. Maybe the video can be compresses a bit more and still look great for effective presentation purposes required here.
Thanks for the comment, we appreciate any and all criticism. However, for this interview we were all caught a bit off guard by Matrox’s announcement since this was the first day that it was public – at least beyond any closed door sessions. As much as I try to get my hands on pre-release models to perform accurate tests (or at the very least get access to this information prior to public announcement) I’m still a low man on the totem poll when it comes to media access.
My hope is to provide information about CS5 especially in how it relates to Matrox because I’m very curious myself. However, the only NLE manufacturer that is showing any interest in showcasing their software these days is Avid.
Your Comments
Cuando estarán disponibes los drivers para cs5 de la mox02 LE max
Gracias