Matrox MX02 mini

[Peter Osinski]

the website claims that using this device connected to your comp via pcie adapter and to your HDTV (mine is a 1080p 40" from proscan) via HDMI you can calibrate your screen for color grading accuracy.

1) is this true

2) does anyone know if you can the connected screen as an extended desktop option just by setting it up in system preferences? I know specifically you cannot do this with the Black Magic Equivalent

thanks in advance, any other tips, comments, or product reviews are welcome

 

[MichaelHalsell]

Did you pitch these pre-sale questions to the Matrox team? Seems few people have used this product.

 

[sander kamp]

I am thinking about getting the AJA io express. From the specs it seem better suited for RED since it has 1080p in many frame rates while the MXO2 mini does only 1080i if I remember correctly. The AJA would also do RGB over HDMI which would make it work nice with the Dreamcolor display, but it is kind if hard to get reliable information about that.

I think you can connect to most LCD TV's over HDMI with a simple HDMI to DVI adapter. I have that right now here with my Samsung 46" tv connected to my MacPro as extended desktop. It works quite well and the Mac even gives you control over interlaced or progressive. The downside is that since it is connected as a desktop and not as a video device it doesn't synchronize your video to the refresh rate of the TV, so motion is not as smooth as it could be.

 

[Peter Osinski]

well I heard that DVI only gives you 8 bit color and you need 10 bit or something like that for color grading.

 

[Johnny Friday]

I also have been looking at this product...seems a great product from what i read. All on the website at: Also take a look at the videos. Like the H.264 encoding at faster speeds--compressed, but looks good.

website: http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2/features/

Specs from website: YES--10bit

Key features

Works with Intel-based MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, and Apple Xserve systems
Lightweight – less than 3 ½ lbs. (1600 grams)
Fits in your laptop bag – 13" x 9½" x 2" (330mm x 241mm x 51mm)
Can run off a field battery or its AC adapter
HD/SD SDI, HD/SD analog component, Y/C, and composite inputs and outputs
Genlock – SD analog black burst (bi-level) or HD tri-level sync
10-bit HDMI input, output, and monitoring with calibration controls including blue-only
10-bit realtime hardware up/down/cross conversion on capture and output
Up to five user selectable simultaneous video outputs – HD and/or SD on HDMI, SDI, and analog
Professional audio inputs and outputs with 5.1 surround sound monitoring
RS-422 machine control for frame-accurate capture and print-to-tape
Captures to a variety of codecs – Apple ProRes 422 HQ, 10-bit uncompressed HD, and many more
File-based workflow support – XDCAM, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, P2, P2HD
RED workflow support
HD-SDI closed captioning support
Works with Final Cut Pro, Apple Color, Adobe After Effects and all QuickTime applications that support the V-out component
Also available with Matrox MAX for faster than realtime H.264 encoding

RED workflow support
RED users can benefit from Matrox MXO2 to capture, monitor, and playback on set. Back in the post suite, they can use Matrox MXO2 to work with 1K and 2K RED timelines and output to SD, 720, or 1080 via MXO2’s realtime 10-bit hardware scaling feature.

**I'm not affiliated with this product. BUT, i would like to hear from anyone that uses it as i am very close to pulling the trigger. Just need to hear how good it is.....???

 

[Nikolai Vavilov]

Sander Kamp: We have lot of issues with AJA IO Express working as simple playback on set for TV series, I can say its very unstable device with current drivers/firmware. System hangs often during recording with FCP (OS X 10.5.8, 10.6), frame drops on HDMI output (looks like device overheating after few hours of continuous work). Now we switched to MOTU V4HD and most of bargain has gone.

 

[sander kamp]

Sander Kamp: We have lot of issues with AJA IO Express working as simple playback on set for TV series, I can say its very unstable device with current drivers/firmware. System hangs often during recording with FCP (OS X 10.5.8, 10.6), frame drops on HDMI output (looks like device overheating after few hours of continuous work). Now we switched to MOTU V4HD and most of bargain has gone.

Awww, that's bad news. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Shawn R]

John did you get the Matrox MXO mini? This an interesting piece for me. I want to have HDMI out without using my video card. I also want an exterior sound card. Right now I am trying out the Tascam US-122MK II. But if the Matrox could kill two birds with one stone then it would actually save me money.

 

[Kaku Ito]

Here's Wayne's explanation on MXO2 series' HDMI calibration.

http://www.matrox.com/video/jp/products/mac/mxo2_family/monitoring/

MXO2 mini should be compatible with psf at least.

 

[Kaku Ito]

On the RED workflow support, this is my contribute to Matrox and Wayne Andrew worked on it to make it realize.

What he used is the MXO2's (including mini) hardware scaling feature, so when you are editing in 1K proxy, you can choose the monitor output setting as RED 1K (unfortunately only supports 23.976 for now but I asked him to work on 29.97, too) then MXO2 will use its hardware scaling feature to nicely blow up to HD size with less flickering and CPU power. I used to edit proxies using Multibrdige Pro, then with the timeline I was noticing occasional interrupt in playback and flickering on some pictures, with MXO2's RED output choice, the playback got smoother because of less CPU power demand and flickering was reduced.