AVID HARDWARE

The Matrox MX02 Mini was first supported in Avid Media Composer 5, although now with MC6 ALL the MX02s are supported and all can capture as well as playback footage.

Black Magic offer the cheapest cards for use with Media Composer and all can capture and playback standard MC footage in SD and HD. Matrox have a few features not found on Black Magic cards and do not cost too much more. The Black Magic USB3 devices do not work with MC6, but the rest of their range does.

All the AJA cards are now supported by Media Composer 6 and can capture as well as playback footage. AJA offer cards which can edit at bigger then HD resolutions, unlike Matrox which is limited to just standard HD resolutions. However at the moment Avid itself is also limited to standard HD resolutions so you cannot take advantage of the extra abilities inside MC anyway.

Avid's own hardware performs the same functions as the Matrox, Black Magic etc, although with the current version there is one small difference. The Audio punch-in tool does not work with third party cards, but does work using Avid hardware. To make audio punch-in work on third party cards you have to disable the card, which generally involves restarting the PC, so is quite annoying. However, Avid hardware is considerably more expensive than third party cards, so you have to weight the cost against the convenience.