The Matrox MX02 range of devices add analogue and digital i/o to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and Apple Final Cut Pro.

MX02's only role is to add a decent set of video input and output connections to your computer. If you buy a Matrox RT.X2 or Axio you will also get a range of extra Matrox effects and accelerated exports to some formats and extra realtime performance. The MX02 range only feature the Matrox colour correction found on the RT.X2 and Axio and even then this does not work in realtime as it would with an RT.X2 or Axio .

You can buy each MXO2 in a MAX version. The MAX have an inbuilt H264 encoding chip to make Blu-ray discs fast.

The Matrox RT.X2 is one of the best ways to improve the performance of Adobe Premiere Pro and is great for SD and HD editing. It does not do full size HD (1920 x 1080) - for this you need the Matrox Axio.

Performance is better with the Matrox RT.X2 than with the Matrox Mini because the RT.X2 accelerates Adobe Premiere as well as adding extra inputs and outputs.,

The Axio is the king of the Matrox range.  it adds HD-SDI i/o as well as component, composite and SVIDEO, with XLR balanced audio.  It works at anything up to full HD (1920 x 1080) and has a range of extra plug-ins to improve the performance of Adobe Premiere.  Only by using an Axio or RT.X2 can Premiere rival the realtime performance of Grass Valley EDIUS.

There are various cards available to add proper video outputs to Premiere Pro. Matrox are the only ones that add extra effects and improve the realtime performance and rendering of Premiere Pro. They make editing HD just like editing DV with layers of realtime effects.

Matrox' 3 capture cards do have some things in common:

A decent format for capture and AVCHD

Matrox add in their own format to any system, Matrox MPEG I-frame.  This is a nice to use format that is excellent quality and therefore a good format into which to capture HD footage when recorded through  HDMI, component of HD-SDI as it keeps the quality of the image up whilst using a lot less space than uncompressed footage.  Also if filming on AVCHD you can use to when you come to convert your  files into something usable.  AVCHD is a great filming format but horrible to edit.  Premiere Pro does the best job of editing native (as it comes of the camera) footage but it is still a struggle.  Ideally you want to convert it to something else.  On its own Premiere does not have a decent format to use.  If you buy a Matrox card you can use this format which will keep up the quality of your clips and make then easy to edit.   To convert the clips drop them into the Adobe Media Encoder, choose a Matrox format and click the "go" button. Conversion will take a bit of time but at the end you will have thoroughly usable HD files.

The Matrox RT.X2 does sizes up to 1440 x 1080, where as the Axio and Mini will do up to 1920 x 1080.

WYSIWYG support for other programs

All the Matrox cards add a video output - both HD and SD - to various programs, including Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Discreet Combustion, 3D Studio Max and NewTek LightWave.

With the RT.X cards you can have 2 or 3 of these programs open simultaneously and the output shows which ever program you are using.

The first  thing the Matrox RT.X2 and Axio add it extra inputs and outputs.  However you can add the same kind of i/o with other cards - these include the new Matrox Mini, as well as Black Magic's range of cards.   So why pay more for the RT.X2 and Axio? The answer is they also accelerate Premiere and add a lot of different features and filters.

Extra filters and Features

The Axio and RT.X2 add a lot of extra features to Premiere which will speed up your editing and give you a range of effects simply not available in Premiere Pro.  For full details of these extra features click here.