Matrox Axio LE The Matrox Axio, a high end, broadcast quality capture card, has been available for over a year. The LE version is capable of editing DV, DVCPro 25 and 50, HDV, DVCProHD, and SD and HD through SDI.
It is also capable of simultaneous SD and HD output through SDI and will give Adobe Premiere much greater and more professional support than it is capable of on its own. Complete Axio LE systems start at about £7,000 +VAT.
Inputs and Outputs Axio LE inputs and outputs are housed on an external, rack mountable, breakout box which has: DV/HDV/DVCProHD, composite, Y/C, HD/SD analogue component, and HD/SD SDI input and output, 2-in/6-out AES/EBU audio, 2-in/6-out XLR audio, 2-in/6-out SDI embedded audio, and a 1/4” output jack for stereo monitoring. The Axio LE differs from the full Axio HD in two major ways: - The full Axio edits 10bit uncompressed SD and HD - the LE does 8 bit uncompressed
- The full Axio has a 3D chip on board and so can achieve more in realtime than the Axio LE, which uses your PC’s graphic card.
MPEG I Frame Like the RT.X2, Axio LE will edit in MPEG I-frame, as well as IBP MPEG2. This is more important for Axio than RT.X2 as people are likely to be feeding all sorts of formats into the system, and MPEG I-frame will maintain the quality, whilst keeping the file sizes reasonable. Performance Axio LE performance is slick and responsive, even with native HDV files. It can happily mix a number of formats on the timeline, including HD and SD clips. In addition to a lot of inputs it also has lots of outputs which include HD out from Premiere Pro via SDI and component. Axio LE will also output both SD and HD at the same time, but only if you have an SDI HD monitor. Reliability The Axio LE has proved to be very reliable in all our tests, we were following Matrox specifications to the letter, to get the system working this well. This does not mean that the system is very fragile, just that the computer around it has to be made properly. For example, Matrox say that unless you have a Dual Opteron system you will not be able to play back any realtime effects with HD footage. They have made this information fully available on their website, however we would recommend more than ever that you buy the Axio as part of a complete system (preferably made by us at DVC!). Axio LE systems are being bought by facilities companies and production companies who want a fast flexible editing system that can cope with a huge range of inputs and sources. The close intergration with Adobe After Effects also means the Axio LE is an excellent finishing and compositing system. Formats Supported by Axio LE - HDV 1080i
- DVCPRO HD at 1080i
- DV/DVCAM
- DVCPRO 25 and 50
- DV50
- P2 MXF (next driver release)
- XDCAM MXF – DVCAM, IMX (next driver release)
- XDCAM HD MXF 17.5, 25, 35 mbps (next driver release)
- MPEG-2 4:2:2 I-frame SD 10-50 mbps
- Uncompressed 8-bit SD
- Uncompressed 8-bit HD
- MPEG-2 4:2:2 I-frame HD at 1440 (next driver release)
- MPEG-2 4:2:2 I-frame HD at 1920 50-300 mbps
- MPEG-2 4:2:2 I-frame HD at 1280 50-300 mbps
- Compressed HD for off-line
- Playback of legacy Matrox DigiSuite AVI files
- Playback of legacy RT series AVI files
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