Production Apprentice by John DeMaio

Matrox definitely won the “surprise announcement” award from this year’s NAB with its Avid partnership.   This gives Avid editors around the world the hardware that they have been desperately needing.

Matrox’s MXO2 Mini is definitely a device that will get some serious attention from Avid editors, but that’s not all that Matrox had up its sleeve. They also announced the ability to accelerate Mercury through its MAX line of products.  The Mercury playback engine is designed around technology that combines the power of the GPU, with the CPU.    What makes the Matrox MAX technology so special is that you don’t need an 8 to 12 core, top-of-the-line system to get the performance benefits of Mercury.  You can use your quad-core systems with any of Matrox’s MAX devices and have the ability to accelerate the Mercury Playback Engine.  Oh yeah, and they can also accelerate h.264 compression too.  As if that wasn’t cool enough!

Frank Scartozzi gives us a run-down of Matrox’s innovations at NAB 2010. Read more and Watch the Video...