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By increasing realtime functionality in Final Cut Pro and Xpress DV, Apple and Avid have reignited the marketing war over "what realtime really means." For these companies, an NLE is realtime if it can preview 2D effects without rendering. However, the DigiSuite DTV MAX 7.0 from Matrox provides a significantly higher level of realtime functionality.
Composed of two PCI boards, DTV MAX (MSRP of $7,995) runs under Windows 2000 and ships with Adobe Premiere 6.0. Matrox also supplies the DTV without the MAX board at $5,995. The SDI I/O daughter card (that also adds AES/EBU audio) costs $1,995. Those who own the DigiSuite LX (reviewed in the September 2001 issue of Video Systems) or the DigiSuite LE can add MAX for $2,495.
The DigiSuite DTV board accepts analog (composite, S-Video, component) and SDI. Any video signal can be digitized with DV25 (5:1 compression, 4:1:1 sampling), DV50 (3:3:1 compression, 4:2:2 sampling), MPEG-2 "IBP-frame" (up to 15Mbps), or MPEG-2 "I-frame" compression (up to 50Mbps). DV50 offers an editor "far better than DV" image quality at the expense of greater storage requirements. Low-data-rate MPEG-2 "I-frame" compression can be used for draft-mode editing with a subsequent batch recapture of timeline material in DV50. MPEG-2 can also be employed at high data rates as an editing alternative to DV25 and DV50. IBP-frame MPEG-2 compressed material can be used to create DVDs directly. Analog audio (unbalanced RCA and balanced XLR) can be digitized, and digital AES/EBU audio can be captured.
The DigiSuite MAX board contains four components: a 1394 interface, an MX25 chip, a 32bit graphics buffer, and a Matrox Flex3D chip. DV, DVCAM, and DVCPRO25 can be captured to disk via the 1394 interface. The 1394 interface can also be used with the MX25 chip to provide realtime output back to DV, DVCAM, and DVCPRO25. To support realtime 1394 output, Matrox has specified a dual-733MHz PIII as the minimum system requirement.
The Matrox Flex3D chip is the same chip used in the Matrox RT2500 to generate effects. Because DigiSuite uses a YUV color space, the RGB color corrector offered by the RT2500 is not present. However, all RT2500 2D and 3D effects except "particles" are provided by MAX.
While the low-cost RT2500 can apply one realtime effect at a...