Videoediting stations of DV format from Matrox Company

By Andrey Konjaev

Review contents:

Post-production systems of DV format The mobile DV-solution from Apple AVID systems for TV programs post production in DV format Canopus DV Storm2 Pro System NewsBaseDV System Serial-4-Cam for preparation of material at multicamera shooting DV-installation: variants are possible Videoediting stations of DV format from Matrox Company Systems of Pinnacle Liquid Edition series DV Rack from Serious Magic Program-making system DV Station

DV format is widely used both in household, and in professional systems of editing. And all is due to that the digital recording with the stream 25 Mbit/sec on 1/4" tape allows to receive the high quality material on an output, as the first approximation close to broadcast quality. Operation expenses with such systems are much lower, than, for example, with Betacam SP. The largest manufacturers of the equipment for editing give users an opportunity of purchase of systems of various price levels. If it is necessary, expensive solutions allow to transform DV-image to content of Betacam format. Thereof set of various manufacturers of TV programs as abroad, and in Russia, the equipment of DV formats are chosen as basic.

Production of Matrox company, already during 28 years have been producing the equipment for video editing, is well familiar to domestic manufacturers of TV and video production.

Stations of nonlinear editing on the base of Matrox RT.X card

These computer stations have received extremely a wide spreading in domestic TV production. Many Russian studios use the nonlinear editing systems on cards of RT.X family. There is one more sphere of application of these systems: Internet-broadcasting.

The system based on Matrox RT.X100 in operation

The reasons of popularity of the stations are high efficiency of systems and high quality of the edited material at low cost of such solutions. As against systems of editing of other manufacturers, the Matrox stations are carried out the real high-grade color correction, and also provided with great opportunities in the real time mode. It can be explained by approach to realization of effects in the real time, based on Matrox Power of X technology where the capacity of the specialized video processor is entirely involved for performance of the most complicated editing problems. However, there are very strong requirement to the processing speed of computer and RAM at such operation scheme.

The basic difference of NLE complex on Matrox RT.X10 and RT.X100 cards from stations of broadcast quality is that they are not provided with component input and are provided with lower opportunities of operation with audio.

The basic characteristics are the following:

• Video editing software — Adobe Premiere Pro;
• Wide range of 2D and 3D effects in the real time mode;
• Many video and graphics layers mixed in real time;
• Overlay of subtitles in the real time mode;
• Color correction, keying on luminance and a color key;
• High quality of the effect calculations;
• Control of peripheral devices (digital camera and tape recorder);
• Input/outputs — DV, composite, S-Video;
• Signal output to DV-output in the real time mode (only for RT.X100, for RT.X10 this function is absent).

Editing stations of professional level on the base of Matrox DigiSuite LX+Max cards

These multiformat computer systems are provided with analog and digital input/outputs: composite and component, S-Video, DV. The stations provide realization of complex effects, and also overlay of subtitles and graphics in the real time mode and output to recording DV-device without any calculation. They are completely compatible with video and audio equipment of TV studies. Control of recorders and cameras is carried out through RS-422 or IEEE-1394 interface.

The basic characteristics are the following:

Section of the interface (top) and the choosing MPEG-2 parameters

• Supported applications — Adobe Premiere, In-Sync Speed Razor, IMC Incite, UMI On-Line Express;
• Opportunity of operation with one channel of 3D and two channels of 2D special effects, and also with two channels of color correction YUV;
• Capture and output of content of DV and MPEG-2 format in the real time mode;
• Support of three-dimensional effects in the real time mode;
• Keying on the color/luminance/alpha channel (mask) in the real time mode;
• Separate control of transparency of several layers;
• Hundreds of adjusted transitions in the real time mode with the smoothed color edges and soft edging (fringe effect);
• Overlay of static and dynamic subtitles in the real time mode;
• Control of playback on frames with any speed;
• Support of aspect ratios 4:3 and 16:9;
• Multilayer mode for fast operation with several layers;
• Operation with AVI-files of the not limited size (more than 12 TB);
• Input/outputs — component, composite, Y/C, IEEE 1394, SDI (option);
• Four audio chains;
• Full synchronization of audio (48 kHz) from video.

Matrox Company is recently engaged in development of a platform for PCIX, capable to operate with four video streams. In this system the new hardware-software principle based on unique technology which will allow essentially expand the card opportunities will be applied.

Probably, the equipment of this company in the future will be in demand by the Russian users due to favorable ratio of opportunities and cost of system, high quality of the edited content, reliability of data storage, and also to absence of losses of quality at editing and copying.

Material provided by Corporation D&K