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The Videoguys' Insider Vol 1 Issue 4 For the months Insider I'm going north of the border, to Montreal, Canada and two of the guys responsible for the fantastic success of the RT2000/2500. Alberto Cieri is the Worldwide Sales Manager and Patrick Beaulieu is the RT2500 product manager. Videoguy : I want to start this interview by giving both you guys kudos. The RT2500 is one of the best selling capture cards in the over $500 segment of the marketplace. Matrox has proven to be one of the market leaders, pushing the industry forward. Great Job guys!! Albert:Thanks so much. That means a lot coming from you. We are very gratified that our huge investment in R&D has paid off in bringing a new level of professional realtime editing performance to our customers, at such an affordable price. Videoguy: Back when it was introduced one of the most incredible features of the RT2000 was the real-time 3D FX. Since then other cards have come out that support real-time 3D. What makes the Matrox Flex 3D technology better? Patrick: The competition has definitely been playing catch-up since we introduced affordable realtime 3D effects two years ago. With Flex 3D, Matrox was the first to make use of video texture mapping onto 3D shapes in real time. In the Matrox implementation, all of the processing power of the graphic engine is focused on achieving the highest possible quality on each effect. Matrox Flex 3D provides high-quality filtering, softness on object edges, and true 3D drop shadows. Our competitors sacrifice effects quality by distributing the power of the processing engine over multiple effects. They have to render in order to achieve the same level of quality.

Albert: We designed Flex3D to be extensible and have been consistently delivering new effects packs to our customers. We are just about to release two exciting new effects in PRO Pack -realtime Blur and realtime Mask.  Videoguy: Glad you mentioned the upcoming Pro Pack. Can you go into some of the new features a little bit more? Patrick: With PRO Pack, we're bringing some of the professional features from our Matrox DigiSuite product line to Matrox RT2500 and RT2000. Take the Adobe After Effects WYSIWYG plug-in for example.  You'll now be able to see all your work directly on a TV monitor to check for color accuracy and safe titles. Albert:  Another great tool is Matrox MediaExport.It lets you quickly encode multiple Windows Media and RealMedia files with multiple bit rates and resolutions with just ONE export from the Timeline. So if you're creating a website with streaming video and you want to tailor your clip to different dialup connections, Matrox MediaExport automates the process. Patrick:The new realtime blur and mask effects add a lot of realtime power to the RT.  I predict the blur will be the RT's most popular realtime effect -- it just has so many uses on video and graphics!  The mask lets you use any 8-bit TGA graphic as a cutout shape to create really cool effects like colored spotlights, soft-edged frames, or flying video logos with shadows. Albert: Finally, we've added a lot more keyframe parameters for you to play with.  On the page curl for example, you can control the angle and radius of the curl.  On the particles, you can actually control the force of gravity and dispersion of the pieces.  The DVEs now have two additional border types.  You can also create and save icons for the effects you want to include in your own effects library.  This makes them easier to load and reapply at a later time. Albert: By the way, we're featuring RT2500 and Pro Pack in action at our free seminar - The Ultimate DV Journey. The journey began in October 30th and runs through December 13th, 2001, in a dozen cities across North America. Dates, times and locations can be found here.  Videoguy: The RT2500 has become a very stable product and you've done a great job making it compatible with the latest technology. Obviously you are putting a lot of engineering resources into this product. Albert: Stability, compatibility, and responsiveness were the top priorities for our engineers in developing RT2500. The RT2500 is much easier to install than the RT2000 was because it's a single board solution that uses only one IRQ. The stability of both RT2000 and RT2500 has been reported by the users on our forums to be quite impressive with the latest software release. I'm actually quite impressed to see the level of stability engineering has been able to achieve while continuing to introduce important new features such as the Matrox SinglePass realtime DV scan and capture utility, the Matrox TurboDV export engine, and many more.   Videoguy: Well all your hard work is definitely showing results. We've just started selling a cool new product called Multicam, that lets you edit a multi-camera shoot - up to 4 cameras! For wedding and event videographers it is a fantastic utility and productivity tool. It utilizes Matrox's seamless video capture and display technology to let you preview all 4 cameras simultaneously on the computer screen and switch between them. Multicam remembers all your cuts, then exports the entire project back to Premiere as an A/B timeline. I think the fact that they chose the RT2500 as one of their first supported hardware solutions is a testament to the stability of this product and its ability to handle the demands of long format productions. Are there any other 3rd party software vendors you are working with? Patrick: We're working closely with all of our partners -- Adobe, Inscriber, Ligos, Sonic Solutions and others -- to insure that RT users have the best tools to maximize their productivity and creative freedom.  But let's not forget that Matrox also provides great utilities. In particular, users appreciate Matrox MediaTools with our SinglePass DV scan and capture technology. Did you know that this cuts capture time in half by automatically scanning, logging, and batch capturing DV clips in realtime in a single pass? It also eliminates repetitive rewind and pre-roll to save wear and rear on your camcorder, VTR and tapes.   Videoguy: You mentioned Sonic Solutions, makers of DVDit, and that reminds me of one of the top questions videographers ask – How do you make a DVD? Inexpensive DVD burners are readily available, but you need more then just a burner and authoring software to make a good DVD. Since the beginning your RT2000/2500 products have been capable of both native DV and MPEG2 editing. We think the RT2500 is a great choice for DVD creation. Can you go into this in more detail? Patrick: With RT2500 you can create a DVD in four easy steps -- Capture - Edit - Author - Burn First you capture video clips from analog or DV sources. If you already have edited material on tape that you want to use in your DVD project, RT2500 also acts as a MPEG-2 encoder. It lets you directly capture MPEG-2 IBP clips in realtime over the analog input for immediate use in DVDit or for achiving. Once you have all your video on your hard disk, you use Adobe Premiere to edit. When you're happy with your video sequences, you simply export them directly from the Adobe Premiere timeline. RT2500 lets you compress to DVD-compliant MPEG-2 at a constant bit rate (CBR) or a variable bit rate (VBR). Hardware accelerated MPEG-2 encoding makes this process very fast. Your video files are then ready for use in DVDit. Next you author your DVD using DVDit. It's so easy to use; you don't have to be a DVD expert to get professional results. You simply create menus and buttons to provide navigation then link your video clips to the buttons using a drag and drop interface. You can use the predefined, customizable templates for backgrounds and buttons or create your own using Adobe PhotoShop LE, which is also bundled with RT2500. Finally, when you're satisfied with your DVD project, you can burn it directly to a DVD. Just insert a blank DVD-R disc to your DVD-R drive and select “Make DVD Disc” directly from DVDit. Your DVD is ready for viewing on any PC-based or set-top DVD player. Videoguy: Guys, thanx for taking the time for this interview. I know you guys are very busy working on future. Can you give us a sneak peak at any new features or capabilities coming down the road? Albert: We have all sorts of great stuff in the works for RT2500. We just released Matrox Video Tools 3.1 with lots of new features including the Matrox TurboDV scalable export engine. PRO Pack is coming later this month, and Windows XP support is imminent. Our partners are working hard too. We're expecting DVDit! 2.5, Ligos v1.5, and TitleExpress v1.5 very soon. Our new DEMO CD is now shipping and you can also view the interactive demo on line. Our free web video-hosting site, www.matrox.tv, is going great guns too. It's in phase 3 already and now supports RealMedia and QuickTime formats. We never stop listening to our customers and innovating. Videoguy: And Innovation is the key to success in our industry. The products keep getting better, faster and more powerful. Matrox has been a leader in Real-Time 3D technology and I'm glad we got the chance to let our readers know just how far you guys have taken it. We always like to offer some special deals at the end of our interviews. We've put together our Martox bundle configurator that offers HUGE savings on the Pioneer AO5 DVD burner, Multicam, DVDit! upgrades, EZ Keyboard, Medea VideoRAIDs and more. Just click here to check it out!!  Albert & Patrick: Wow! Those really are some great deals! I'm sure your customer's will LOVE THEM!!

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