Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Matrox MXO and MXO2 test

Kaku Ito

Kaku Ito

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,803
Reaction score
3
Points
38
Age
65
Location
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Website
www.dittok.info
These past few days, I was working with various video hardware to edit with the new R3D workflow.

Both MXO and MXO2 seem to work fine on the new workflow. Playing back the wrapped QT or Prores 422HQ (naturally, but 2K to 1080 on the fly resizing via Open Timeline), sent to Color and display your grading through MXO and MXO2 work fine, then sent back to FCP at 8bit or 10bit uncompressed 422 work fine, too.

The significant difference between MXO and MXO2 are the bit depth. MXO2 can input and output 10 bit and MXO only output 8 bit.
 
Excellent news!

How's your experience with the MXO2 in general regarding RED footage. I'm especially thinking of 2K to 1080p downscaling... Does it crop or resize?
Also, what version is the HDMI.Does it do 10bit?

I tried getting an answer about this at IBC but no one could answer me..

Helge
 
Thanks Kaku
 
Can anyone tell me what would be the cheapest monitoring solution for the MXO2?
Both 10bit and 8 bit?

Thanks !
 
Take the composite output and route it through your domestic TV.

Specs say that's 12 bit, so you should be golden.

(well you did ask for the cheapest ;-))
 
OK, I'm about to purchase the MX02, but I'm not sure what monitor to get. The Dell 2408 Ultrasharp has a 1920x1200 resolution. As I understand it, I absolutely need a 1920x1080 resolution for the MX02. Since I have to get another monitor, what monitor do you recommend(with 1920x1080 resolution)?
 
trevora said:
Take the composite output and route it through your domestic TV.

Specs say that's 12 bit, so you should be golden.

(well you did ask for the cheapest ;-))
Click to expand...

:) LOL
yeh ... I did say cheapest
That would be like shooting a YouTube video with an EPIC
 
I'll do more tests and checking with Matrox to answer all of your questions.
 
Jonas said:
Exactly, that's what the 3rd of december will be about!
EPIC for youtube!
Click to expand...
Ha!

but getting back to the topic ...
and for jaadgy akanni too

If I wanted a color monitoring solution to go with
an MXO2. How much do I have to spend?

8bit or 10bit?

Im planning my scarlet workflow indie film pipeline here!
:construction: :construction:

:help: :help:
 
Quickly, what I do now is to use Sony 10bit panel with HDMI, recent ones are good.
Just be warned that depending on the model, view angle is not so good, so if you are off-center then looses the contrast. Wether current firmware/software version of MXO2 supports 10-bit HDMI output or not, I'm checking. I was notified more robust HDMI support on up coming versions.
 
Helge Løken said:
Excellent news!

How's your experience with the MXO2 in general regarding RED footage. I'm especially thinking of 2K to 1080p downscaling... Does it crop or resize?
Also, what version is the HDMI.Does it do 10bit?

I tried getting an answer about this at IBC but no one could answer me..

Helge
Click to expand...

I checked and it's likely resizing via open timeline.

So, 2k material drop to a timeline then that gets set to 2k timeline, choose 1080 for MXO2 output then 2k material fits in 1080 aspect automatically.

In any case you want to crop, then make a 1080p timeline then place 2k clips (they will be automatically resized at first), then edit one the clip in motion tab to fit the vertical aspect, save the motion effect then apply to others.

On the 10-bit output through HDMI, I'm checking with the Mac Guru at Matrox.
 
As I can see for quick tests, the video quality setting works well at "Dynamic". "High" ends up in dropping frames.

Also, 1k proxies work well so for 4k material, use M, for 2K, use H. For wrapped QT, use have no choice but use 2k, so keep the video quality as "Dynamic", so the frames don't drop. When you used Prores, with the appropriate hard disk performance then they work just as well as 1080 video clips, so provides full quality playback.

And of course, 10-bit uncompressed 422 back from Color in FCP would work as long as you have appropriate drive transferring rate.

I'll see what is the "appropriate" drive speed is like with my various RAID choices.
I have metaSAN running with Infotrend EON drives (which is what I'm doing most of my tests right now), Enhance Technology's SATA2 RAID with 8 drives and Areca RAID card (ARC1220ML I think), LaCie Little Big Disks (eSATA or Firewire 800 connection), Caldigit Firewire 800 RAID drive (two disks) and eSATA 4 drive raid that I constructed. More report on the way.....(including testing with MOTU V4HD, also ask me anything with Decklink HD Extreme and Multibridge Pro).
 
Now I tested with the least speed RAID drive from the list above, firewire connected LaCie Little Big Disk drive that is running with two 5400 rpm 2.5" drives striped.

With Firewire connection, it only goes up to 80MB/sec transferring rate (with eSATA it goes close to 120MB/sec). Wrapped QT clip played back without stopping at "Dynamic", I would say the required transferring rate, wrapped QT does not need much transferring rate to playback. It would be good to be fast drives for ingesting, no doubt about that though. By the way, the drive tested is filled at 50% of whole capacity.
 
jaddgy,

We've been using Eizo 24 inch monitor which has one of the better response time, wide viewing angle and control over color temperature. Also it provide six color phase/gain control. We have it set close to our Sony master monitor D24.

Be careful with $300 to 400 range full pixel HD monitor. It works okay, but it shows less than 80% NTSC color range and vertical viewing angle is terrible, so you set the contrast right in the middle but top and bottom would look less contrast.

NEC and Mitsubishi look all well at Yodobashi Camera yesterday. Mitsubishi could be good since they make TVs, so they could be more aware of Video/Sound sync importance. Eizo has entered TV market few years ago, so I'd think they are good, too. Doesn't Dream Color have HDMI?

Also, consumer TV's are really getting great for editing, like my Sony Bravia 5000W, things to watch for is as follows;

x.v.Color compliance
24p compatible
FullHD 10-bit panel
wider viewing angle over 170 degree horizontal and vertical
maybe motion correction for smoother motion (which I believe one day, would work like the shutter on theater projection, but unfortunately not perfect yet).

Considering you can't really get large monitor for editing unless it's for client viewing, I found Sharp LC-32GX5 interesting for least size TV and compatible with 24p, and dual speed for better motion, most importantly, 12bit process (not sure if the panel is 10-bit, I will call Sharp).
 
This one clearly mentions 10-bit panel, x.v.Color, viewing angle of 178 degree, HDMI version 1.3 compliance, even swibels!

But not sure it accepts 24p.
 
Thanks Kaku. I was about to make a hasty decision, but you've made me stop and think before I start spending.

Do you connect the MX02 with RGB or YUV connectors? Should it be YUV?

how important is dot-by-dot mode and how can I tell if a TV set has it? I keep checking specifications but never find any mention of dot-by-dot mode.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top