Matrox RT.X2

New from Matrox - a card designed for editing High Definition and Standard Definition which enhances Adobe Premiere Pro 2.

• Standard Definition in and out through S-Video, composite and component and High Definition through component connections.
• Output through DVI means you can watch your HD video on many cheaper LCD screens. This output is fixed @ 1920 X 1200 and will not work on lower res screens. Also be warned that a lot of PC screens with this resolution can only manage to display at 60Hz - fine for NTSC users but not so great in PAL land.
• The RT.X2 does twice as many layers of DV in realtime as the old RT.X100.
• Matrox filters improve on Premiere Pro’s filter set.
• Other useful features include High Quality downscaling from HD to SD, voice over directly onto timeline, VU meters on capture, and video preview during HDV capture.
• Accelerated export - the RT.X2 accelerates Premiere Pro 2’s excellent media encoder.
• WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) output plug-in for Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop - see your work at full quality on a video monitor.
• Supports Adobe Dynamic Link - work in After Effects, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro simultaneously, and when you switch programs the video output immediately shows the active application.

HDV & HD Editing

• When editing HDV on any system you DO NOT GET OUTPUT down the FireWire, like you do with DV while you edit, making it hard to properly judge colour correction and even see if a shot is focused correctly in HD. The RT.X2 adds full component output to Premiere Pro 2 so you see everything in brilliant HD quality as you edit.
• You can capture into Matrox I-frame MPEG format through component, so you can edit other HD formats with the RT.X2. However, this is not at full HD size of 1920 x 1080 - if you want to edit full HD then the Axio LE (see over), is the card to buy as it supports more formats.
• Support of editing native HDV MPEG files - the best we have seen for native editing with almost DV like performance. On the right system you can do two layers plus a title flying around in realtime.
• Definitely the best device to use with Premiere Pro 2 for editing HDV footage.

This makes it the best device currently to use with Premiere Pro 2 for editing High Definition footage as you can see the results of your effects and the quality of your footage at full HD quality while you edit - in much the same way the Canopus NX for HDV add a component output to Canopus Edius. Without the RT.X2 the only way to get an component output from Premiere is to use the second head of your graphic card which gives a larger but jerky output.