anybody using matrox rtx-100??

[matthewd5]

Hello.

i'm looking to get a new dv editing card

i'm pretty happy with what the matrox rtx-100 says it can do but i have found very little postings about it

does anyone here have first hand experience??

matthew

[PurposeDriven]

I own one yes.

I'm open to answer anything, or discuss whatever about it.

I'm very satisfied with it.

[Johan]

Hi,
Will Aftereffect Wysywig plug in work on RTX10 ?

[matthewd5]

well the problems i had with the canopus raptor rt2 were so basic...

real time - does the rtx-100 add much in the way of speed over the built in premiere pro transitions?

does it really accelerate the premiere pro native transitions?

with the canopus i did a bunch of editing without the canopus card and with and you honestly couldn't tell the difference.

then what really did it was when i got the dvx-100a on 12/24 and found out that the canopus capture utility mangled the .avi files from the dvx.

it would import them in this weird stretched letterbox like format and their tech support didn't have any better answer than to use the premiere capture. which did work, so it proved it was the canopus utility.

so i guess i'm super picky, i want a card that speeds things up a little bit, work every time you try to use it! and generally just does what they say it will do.

matthew

[Neil Rowe]

..i also own the rtx100 extreme.. its not worth its weight if your doing true 24p work, cause it can only run ntsc, but if your editing 24pn as reg ntsc, it really kicks butt. its nice to have everything be so instant.. + it provides an ntsc monitor out all the time in after effects or any other direct x video overlay compliant program so even if your not using the card, it gives you a full res ntsc out which is cool. really thats all i use it for alot of the time, cause i do so much 24p work, but last month i did a commercial in 24pn, and i can tell you that that card made a breeze of the work. again it doesnt do anything that your regular nle could nt do with some render time. (it does do alot of advanced DVEs and stuff like that..but who really uses that cheesy poo anyway..really youll find yourself using things like color corection, and soft focus effects, and blurs, and fades, and such ..the standard type stuff).. all in all its a hefty price to pay if your only going to be using it as much as i am ..which isnt all to often(but agin still nice for the monitor out) , and pretty nice to have if your doing ntsc work.

[matthewd5]

thanks.

that is the main thing i would miss without any nle card, the video out.

i don't need any software as i already have the adobe video collection, so trading in the canopus it is $599 for the rtx-100

i don't use any of the cheesy wedding type effects, just pretty standard transitions, i am currently only using 24p not 24pa, at least until premiere fully supports 24p.

after i finish the current project i am going to play with using that dv filmaker utility to make 24pa into true 24p for editing.

matthew

[speedbump]

I have the RTX100 and am editing with Premiere Pro. This card, coupled with a 2.8ghz hyperthreaded CPU, is a phenominal timesaver for complex 60i work.

In my case, without RAID disk support, I typically can edit in realtime (i.e. no rendering) 3 simultaneous video streams, with color correction and transformations (such as scaling or letterbox) on each stream. With Windows software RAID on three IDE drives, I'm editing 4-6 simultaneous streams, realtime.

- Previews are output to my NTSC monitor, full screen, full speed, all the time.

- Realtime AVI or MPEG-2 captures, with credible adjustable bitrate MPEG-2 captures, ready for DVD production.

- Realtime multiformat export. Meaning I can export an AVI, Quicktime file, and MPEG-2, all in one operation. Nobody else has this!

- Waveforms and scopes, realtime. Conversion to NTSC-compliant video values, on capture or during editing, realtime.

- A bunch of 3D, PIP, and cheesy effects, which I mostly don't use, but occassionally do for music videos.

- The Matrox codec is clean and robust. Not perfect, but it is my personal preference as compared to Pinnacle or Canopus.

All that being said, there are problems with it, just like everything else. You've really got to adhere to Matrox's recommendations for chipsets and motherboards, but once you've got a stable system, its hard to beat for sheer editing power, in 60i.

[matthewd5]

well i have the machine from hell (dual xeon 3.06) raid 5 with (4) 250 gig sata drives and an adaptec sata raid controller and 3 gigs of ram

but that doesn't help me when the matrox card thinks my dvx-100a footage is 720x480 pixel aspect of 1.2

my footage was all shot in the cameras "letterbox" mode which premiere itself captures just fine as 720x480 with pixels of .9

but when i bring it into premier with the matrox it is 720x480 1.2

not getting any help from matrox whatsoever.

matthew

[Neil Rowe]

i import through my matrox card into premiere all the time.. never done it another way since i got the card, and have never had an issue. so i cant even pretend to know whats going wrong with peoples systems that are having an issue.. ? wish i could help

[speedbump]

Matthewd5-

You can change your capture settings to set the aspect ratio to be whatever you want, I can't tell you where to go because I'm not in front of my editing system now, sorry

[matthewd5]

i have spent a lot of time on the phone with matrox support and they have finally acknowledged that i am experiencing a bug in their software.

i had all of the settings correct and i sent them footage that everyone finally agrees should have been tagged as 720x480 with a pixel aspect ratio of .9

but for whatever reason their project settings/codec etc? tagged it as 720x480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2

premiere captures it just fine.

i'm waiting for them to get back to me with a fix

matthew

[matthewd5]

just an update for anyone who might have this problem, or maybe someone who knows a fix...

my problem with the rtx-100 is that it works great with my dvx-100a as long as i don't use the in camera letterbox mode...

if i attempt to capture footage shot using the in camera letterbox mode (shot in f5 - 24p NOT 24pa) it thinks its in true 16:9 widescreen and makes the pixes 1.2 wide

i sent samples to matrox and they finally agreed that it is a bug in the software but it has been almost 2 months!

i first got the rtx-100 card around feb 16th...

EVERYTHING i shot is in the in camera letterbox mode so this card is pretty useless to me unless i find a fix or until matrox finds a fix in their software.

btw, if i capture in premiere directly with a plain old vanilla 1394 card the footage comes out just fine 720x480 etc.

matthew

[Neil Rowe]

.. you can capture using the matrox 1394 in put through premiere by just selecting matrox capture, and it just views it as any other firewire port. dont use the matrox capture utility. theres really no point.

[matthewd5]

i wasn't using the matrox capture utility.

the really strange thing is that cliips that were captured on another machine using using a vanilla 1394 card are fine until i transfer them to this machine. then they go wacko and are some weird non-standard size.

if i uninstall the matrox software the clips are o.k. once again.

there is something about the matrox software where it doesn't like clips shot on my dvx-100a in the letterbox mode.

i have verified this with them and they AGREE that it isn't anything i'm doing.

i have emailed them short sample clips and they can reproduce the problem.

i just don't understand what is different about my setup vs other people with dvx-100's

i had someone on here shoot me some great footage of DC for a project i'm doing and his footage was the same way!

so its not my camera.

once again, i must repeat that the matrox people walked me through everything like 5 times and they even agree that it isn't anything i'm doing.

matthew

[Neil Rowe]

thats weird. are you capturing to a matrox project, or a regular dv project? try using premire with the capture set to matrox to a regular dv project if your doing matrox projects now, you can always change the project mode once you capture. you can also say 1394 capture and use the matrox 1394 port the same as any other firewire port without specifying matrox capture. *sounds like youve probably done everything under the sunthough. machines are just stupid somtimes. *hope it all works out for you. in the end it doesnt matter if you just use a reg firewir port to capture anyway. it will give you the exact same file (minus the wrong flagging), and you can just take that file into a matrox project and use the matrox codec :)

[matthewd5]

what i would really appreciate is someone who has a dvx-100 or better yet a dvx-100a and a matrox rtx-100 who could shoot just a minute or two of footage in F5 with the in camera "letterbox" option on and then capture it in premiere using the matrox rtx standard project settings (not 16:9 Widescreen) and tell me if it comes out o.k.

it should be 720x480

it get an odd size and the pixels are 1.2 aspect ratio.

maybe i have a freaky card or an anomally on my dvx-100a?

i did get it like the first week it was shipping...

matthew