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The twin technologies of DV compression and IEEE 1394 have dramatically simplified shooting and editing high-quality video. While no one would deny the benefits of reduced complexity - ease-of use has fostered a pointand-shoot mentality in many DV product buyers. This attitude can diminish the acquisition of technological knowhow. A lack of knowledge may not be a serious problem when buying a DV camcorder because, in many ways, DV camcorders are quite similar. However, when it comes to buying an NLE system - not having a good grasp of technology can leave you at the mercy of marketers' messages.
Two popular NLEs available for less than $1,000-the RT2000 from Matrox and the DV500 from Pinnacle Systems - are marketed as offering "real-time, native DV editing" and, looking deeper,
both offer 3D effects and make use of the C-Cube DVXPRESS-MX25 chip. So do these products really offer equal capabilities and performance? Without an understanding of the technology employed by these products, the answers are not obvious.
For example, despite both products' claims to be real time - neither can really record a timeline, via an IEEE1394 connection, in real time. Why? Both products lack a third hardware DV codec. So when exporting via IEEE 1394, all effects, non-real time and real time, first must be hardware-compressed to DV by the MX25 chip. All rendered effects are stored on disk. Then the DV recording can be made. Of course, all real-time effects are displayed on one's RGB monitor and on an NTSC monitor as you are creating them; thus the creative process is not hindered. But, strictly speaking, these products are not real-time NLEs when used in an all-digital environment.
After reviewing Matrox's RT2000 (see "Matrox's RT2000 is irresistible," page 108), Pinnacle's DV500 was the next logical choice. The DV500 and RT2000 have almost identical components: an MX25 chip, 8MB SDRAM buffer, PCI interface, Texas Instruments IEEE-1394 interface, analog audio, and video analog-to-digital converters and digital-to-analog converters. The MX25 offers what C-Cube calls DV25 compression. DV25 supports a 25Mbits/s data rate to provide 4:1:1 sampling at a 5:1 compression ratio. The MX25 optionally provides Main Profile at Main Level and 4:2:2 Profile at Main Level. While the RT2000 has an MX25 microcode that supports MPEG-2, the...