Post by Jonathan Moser

The introduction of the Matrox MX02 Mini actually makes a little bit of video history: It’s the first third-party hardware option Avid deemed worthy of being allowed into the exclusive club with Media Composer. Matrox is well-known for its quality and value, so the partnership with Avid bodes well for both companies.

To put this little guy into perspective, I need to tell a real-life story: I was recently working on a breaking news program (something to do with a little oil spill) in which there was a ton of different media formats and codecs — all had to be ingested fast and furiously as things were changing minute-to-minute.

At one point the facility was maxed out of computers for transcoding and the show was in danger. I had been beta testing the MX02 along with Media Composer 5 on a MacBook Pro, which I happened to have with me — all snug in my laptop case. I brought the laptop out, booted it up, slipped in the Expresscard adapter and hooked up the MX02 Mini.

I fed an ingest DVCAM deck the component out of the Matrox box, then asked for the drives with the media that would have had to be transcoded and hooked it up via FireWire. Media Composer’s AMA functionality immediately found the various QuickTimes, built bins for me, and I quickly built a timeline with all the media. I went to the start of the timeline, hit record on the DVCAM, playback on the Avid and began recording all the needed media in realtime without transcoding, and all within 15 minutes... ta da! read more...