Analog Technology is a Dead-end
With the proliferation of digital technologies, numerous hobbyists and semi-professional video enthusiasts have turned to filming with digital DV cameras, such as the Sony DCR-PC100E. This shift has increased demand for digital video editing solutions. Digital video editing allows filmmakers to add a professional touch to raw material by inserting transitions between separate clips, dubbing, titles and credits. We’ve already tested the Pinnacle Studio DV Plus, which targets the low-end segment, and the Matrox RT2000 card, the predecessor to the RT2500. We also have the second part of our Video Capture article coming up very shortly, which will compare the RT2500 to other video capture cards. In this article, we are going to focus on the video editing features of the Matrox product.
What sets the Matrox RT2500 apart from the RT2000 is its compatibility with 3D graphics adapters from other manufacturers. You are no longer limited to the “Matrox G400 Special Edition”, which provides below-average 3D features. Instead, you can combine the RT2500 with a GeForce2/3 or a Radeon graphics card, or other cards. Matrox has also begun bundling drivers for the more stable Windows 2000 operating system with this card. Editing videos under Windows 98 or ME used to cause system instability once the amount of data mushroomed. The focus of this card has been placed on real-time video effects. Transitions, page turns and 3D titles can be inserted in real-time. Such a feature eliminates the long waits required with classical rendering calculated by the CPU – it often takes up much more time than the effects themselves.
Despite the emphasis in digital processing, this card also processes analog video and audio signals from older cameras. You can even connect VHS VCRs to the RT2500. First, however, the signals have to be captured (i.e. converted into digital signals). The card uses the video formats DV or MPEG-2 directly. Any other formats have to be converted using a file converter.
The RT2500 Card Up Close and Personal
RT2500 Card: Front View
The RT2500 has a D-sub port for the breakout box (explanation later) and two IEEE1394b/FireWire ports on the front bracket. There is also a VIP connector to transfer the video signal, provided that the graphics adapter supports this feature.
RT2500 Card: Rear View
The back of the RT2500 sports additional chips to manage the RAM and for FireWire.
Hardware Installation
As we said earlier, the RT2500 can be combined with Matrox graphics cards or with products from other manufacturers. The RT2500 can be used on platforms with an Intel Pentium III, Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon. We do not recommend configurations with Duron or Celeron since some processing power is still required for rendering calculations. Low-grade CPUs have got no business here. At the end of this article, we’ve listed the compatibility of the graphics adapters tested. Exercise caution in using models we haven’t listed. This editing system does not work on all platforms! We also recommend using two hard drives – one for the operating system and applications, and the other for video and audio files.
Combining Matrox RT2500 with the Millennium G450
This picture shows a standard configuration with the RT2500 (right) and the Millennium G450 Dualhead (left).
From right to left: GeForce2 MX card, Matrox RT2500, Soundblaster Live sound card.
Alternatively, you can use a graphics card from a manufacturer other than Matrox. We tested our system with a GeForce2-MX card from Creative. We also furnished our testing system with the Creative Soundblaster Live. There’s good reason for this: the RT2500’s audio signals are only limited to the generic DV and MPEG-2 formats. If you feel like checking out files in AVI or any other format before converting them, you’ll have to have a second card (or AC97 sound on the motherboard). Otherwise, the only thing you’ll hear will be a “profound silence”.
Hardware Installation (Cont’d)
If you’ve got a Millennium G450 card, you can make use of a special interface to feed in the video signal. The ribbon cable supplied with the entire set up connects both cards together. This way, you cut down your use of the PCI bus and improve the quality of the video signal display. This feature cannot be used in tandem with graphics adapters from other manufacturers.
Monitors and Breakout-Box
The VGA monitor on the left can be used to run the software, while the television set on the right displays the edited videos. The breakout-box is the blue object between the two monitors.
A close-up shot of the breakout box. Here you can see its analog audio and video-in and video-out jacks (stereo). You have the option of using cinch or S-VHS. We only used the outlets for the television (on the right). The capturing feature was used to make sure that the analog-in ports functioned properly, but we ran the majority of our tests with digital signals from a DV camera that was directly connected to the RT2500 card.
Connecting IEEE1394/FireWire Cameras
IEEE1394/FireWire Cable Included
To go with the card, Matrox includes a FireWire cable that you can attach to an appropriate DV camera.
We set up our system so that the FireWire cable (black) connected the RT2500 to a digital DV camera Sony DCR-PC100E.
Details for Tech-Savvys
The following information will probably be more interesting for tech-savvy users.
These two chips from Texas Instruments (TI) ensure IEEE1394/FireWire functionality.
The heart of the RT2500 card is the C-Cube DV Xpress MX. This chip plays video streams and effectively takes up some of the processing load away from the CPU. The Flex 3D is responsible for effects.
You see in this screenshot that, in addition to the C-Cube chip, Matrox’s G400 graphics chip lurks just under the heat sink. This chip provides TV-out features for the television monitor. It is not, however, used as a standard graphics chip.
Lessons in Patience: Software Installation
Included in the package contents are:
- Matrox drivers for the RT2500 (Win 9x/ME/2000)
- Adobe Premiere 6.0 (full version)
- Matrox Realtime Effects (plug-in for Premiere)
- Quicktime, Cleaner, Windows Mediaplayer Export, Realplayer Export
- Inscriber Title Express (plug-in for Premiere)
- Pixelan Matrox Effects (plug-in for Premiere)
- Ligos LSX-MPEG LE 1.2 Encoder (plug-in for Premiere)
- Sonic Foundry Acid Music 2.0 (sound editing, full version)
- Sonic DVDit! 2.3 LE (DVD authoring software, light version)
Anyone buying the RT2500 from a retailer will have to be terribly patient when installing the software. Customers are considerably better off buying the RT2500 as part of a pre-configured complete system, thus sparing themselves of a lengthy installation process.
So what exactly are you in for? To start out, you have to install the monitor driver and the DV codec for the RT2500. And then there’s Adobe Premiere. At this point, you get to install the Matrox Realtime plug-ins for Adobe Premiere. Once that’s over and done with, you need to install the Matrox Flex3D drivers together with Quicktime, Cleaner, Windows Mediaplayer Export and Realplayer Export filters. Rolling right along, you then set up Inscriber Title Express and the Pixelan Matrox Effects. An additional plug-in joins the gang, this time it’S the Ligos LSX-MPEG encoder, which is also part of Adobe Premiere. And that’s not all – the whole installation party winds down when you install Sonic Foundry Acid 2.0 and DVDit! 2.3 LE from SonicFoundry. Don’t forget – you need to reboot more than a dozen times during this entire procedure.
Hard Drive Transfer Performance Requirements
As we already mentioned in the section on the hardware installation, the video editing system should ideally have two hard drives installed in it – one for the operating system and applications, and the other for the audio/video material. Once all the hardware and software has been installed, a pop-up window urges you to run the Matrox Disk Benchmark, included with the card. The benchmark needed an hour apiece for our two 30 GB drives! The point of this procedure is to verify that your transfer rate for writing and reading data is sufficient. A slow rate can cause frames to be dropped if you work with less compressed formats such as DV.
Despite having two identical hard drives, we measured different data transfer rates.
We used two IBM Deskstar 75GXP DTLA-307030 hard drives. The specs for these ATA/100 drives list 30 GB capacity, 2 MB cache and 7200 rpm. The maximum data transfer rate of 100 MB/s is only attained when reading the 2 MB of cache memory. The sustained transfer rate is 37 MB/s at most in the outer portion of the disks.
As the screenshot of the benchmark program shows, the actual values are considerably lower than the specifications. The results turned out differently despite having come from two identical hard drives. This phenomenon can be easily explained: The operating system and applications are on the system disk (C:), while the video and audio data are stored on the video disk (D:). Since the operating system and the applications require system bandwidth, the values for the system disk are lower than for the AV disk. As a consequence, only the latter disk gets the thumbs-up.
Hard Drive Storage Space and Transfer Rates Requirements
The Disk benchmark only gives you the go-ahead if a hard drive can transfer data at a rate of at least 4 MB/s per stream. This requirement must be met when both reading and writing. This is a clever over-calculation on Matrox’s part, since the maximum bandwidth necessary for DV and MPEG-2 is only 3.52 MB per second.
These numbers can be used to estimate the maximum capacity available for the AV material. Our 30 GB drive, for example, can accommodate 145 minutes of DV material or 284 minutes of MPEG-2 footage. However, the capacity for MPEG-2 is variable as it depends on scene complexity.
If you want your video editing system to work properly, however, you should follow this rule of thumb when calculating the dimensions of your hard drive – one third goes for the raw material, one third to edit the project and the last third is for the final video. That means that we can fit about 45 minutes of DV material or 95 minutes of MPEG-2 material on our 30 GB hard drives. Overall, the more capacity, the better. Hard drives with 80 GB and up are recommended.
An experienced editor would only use a certain percentage of what he captures. He does not make another copy for editing the project with.
On the other hand, if you you’re planning to publish your video masterpieces on the Web, smaller capacities will also be fine, since the bandwidth required in that case is significantly smaller. All this information is for maximum quality and full PAL/NTSC resolution.
Premiere – Bitter Pill under Windows 2000 SP2
After having spent several hours installing software and running Disk Benchmark, we wanted to finally get down to the nitty-gritty of serious testing. However, our lab suffered a serious setback – Adobe Premiere 6.0 crashed without fail after every single start under Windows 2000.
The culprit was Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 2, which had no intentions whatsoever of playing nice with the Matrox plug-ins. The system worked perfectly with Service Pack 1. This behavior doesn’t occur under Windows 98 or ME, but only under Win2000, although we managed to reproduce the same effect on our Athlon system that we had on our Pentium III platform. Even the latest Matrox software update (still in beta-stage) didn’t do any good.
Matrox has some catching-up to do with Microsoft here, especially considering that your average user will blithely install Service Pack 2 instead of SP1 – Microsoft Windows Update literally urges you to do so.
| Update Information from August 29, 2001: Matrox demonstrated their own reference system after we published this review. They prooved that Software from Matrox and third party vendors was stable under Windows 2000 SP2. However, this might vary from system to system. |
Video Editing with Adobe Premiere
Matrox relies on Adobe Premiere 6.0 for its video editing software, only spicing it up a little with some of its own realtime plug-ins.
Adobe Premiere 6.0 with an opened project.
This screen comes up after a video-editing project has been opened. There are four sections on the screen – Project Bin, Timeline, Preview Monitor and the bar with the effects. All these features will be discussed in more detail in the following paragraphs.
Starting with Raw Material
Beginning a project entails collecting raw material, which can be captured if it’s still on the DV tape. In this case, you need to use the IEEE1349b/FireWire port on the RT2500 card. If you own an analog camera or are using a VHS cassette, the signal will be routed to a breakout box (see the hardware section).
Using Movie Capture to Capture DV Film Material.
In Movie Capture, you either select the DV option (IEEE1349b/FireWire) or the analog ports on the blue breakout box under “Settings.” The DV material can be edited directly by the RT2500 card.
Media Tools is also a great tool. It saves time capturing and later in editing because your clips are already cut up. You can alter the in and out points for these clips and then capture them again and delete the originals to save more space. Because it only needs to scan the tape once, you can save on wear and tear on the DV device.
In case you want to work with files as raw material (from a CDROM or the hard drive, for example), you have to first check and see if the format is correct. The RT2500 accepts DV or MPEG-2. If not, the formats have to be converted first. Matrox supplies the following file converter for this purpose:
Converting Raw Material
The Matrox File Converter converts various file formats into a format that the RT2500 “understands.”
It doesn’t support all formats, though, as you can see in this screenshot. On occasions you’ll have to resort to converters from other manufacturers.
Converting Takes Time!
There’s no way to get around it – converting AV files takes oodles of time. This process generally lasts several times longer than the actual clip itself. Having powerful CPUs such as the Athlon (1 GHz and up) and the Pentium 4 is definitely a good idea. If the initial material is already in DV or MPEG format, you can generally skip this very time-consuming procedure.
Once you’ve gotten all your source files in one basket, you shunt them to the Project Bin (see previous paragraph). The editing can now begin.
Project Bin and Templates
In the “Load Project Settings” menu, select the format you want to use to edit in real time. There are several subcategories available. Realtime effects only work if you use the Matrox DV or MPEG-2 formats.
Timeline
The timeline is the most important instrument for editing videos. You first drag the video and audio clips out of the Project Bin and drop them on the Timeline. This is the point at which to decide whether you want to make digital cuts to a particular scene, and if you should do it before or during the editing process.
There are three timelines for the videos – Video 1A, Video 1B and Video 2. You’re best off placing the clips successively on 1A and 1B. In the middle, under “Transitions”, you can select transitions from a library of effects. The “Video 2” timeline is reserved for additional effects such as inserted text, opening or closing credits.
Transitions – Realtime Effects in Detail
Now let’s turn to the most important features of the RT2500 card – Matrox’s realtime effects.
The Transitions menu bar contains the Matrox realtime library.
Heads up with the Premiere Standard Transitions! Quite a few non-Matrox headings such as “Dissolve,” “Iris,” “Adjust,” “Blur,” etc. need to be rendered, which is a really time-consuming business. If you select these effects instead of the official Matrox ones, your productivity can take a real beating, and you spend a lot of time just waiting! Although quite a big proportion of non-Matrox effects is also accelerated by hardware, you won’t know it in the first place. After some practice you will get the hang of it.
In the following, we introduce you to the Matrox Realtime plug-in. It comprises the categories 2D/3D DVEs, Tiles, Organic Wipes, Page Curls and Particles.
Realtime Effects (Cont’d)
You can see how the realtime effects look in a preview window before implementing them. The majority of them are pretty self-explanatory.
2D/3D DVEs make the transition from clip A to clip B by means of moving surfaces.
3D Tiles: Video A fades away tile by tile, while Video B fades in tile by tile, as you can see in this example.
Realtime Effects(Cont’d)
Organic Wipes are sold by Matrox, but this group is really the brainchild of Pixelan. The library contains a lot of high-quality effects that look very professional.
Page Curls and Peels are simple, but elegant in their simplicity.
Realtime Effects (Cont’d)
Particles really put the C-Cube chip through its calculation paces, but, in our humble opinion, these effects are a little bit over the top. They tend to distract the viewer from the content of the movie.
Live View of an Effect
You can see what kind of an effect a Page Curl actually is here. Clip A is slowly peeling itself away from the surface, while Clip B is emerging from underneath.
Adding Text and Credits Using the Inscriber
Under submenu File | New | Inscriber TE Title, you can open the inscribing tool of the same name. But – the Inscriber plug-in didn’t provide any realtime effects! We had to render all inserted text first.
| Update Information from August 29, 2001:Matrox demonstrated after we published this review that the shipping version of the RT2500 contains a v1.26 update which enables realtime effects. |
With Inscriber, you can produce effects such as inserted text and credits.
The templates are located in the upper portion of the window. Here you have an example titled “1115 Lower Third 15.” We inscribed “That’s Music” as the main heading and then “Tom’s Hardware” as a sub-heading into the video. There are alternative fonts available in the “Styles” tab below.
Inscriber (Adding Text and Closing Credits)
This screenshot contains another template (“1105 Lower Third 5”) that is arresting in its simplicity.
The library contains a plethora of templates, ranging from fanciful to professional. You can also create commentaries such as those seen in television news broadcasts.
If static text doesn’t tickle your fancy, you can also create moving text. This is a good way to add professional-looking opening and/or closing credits to a movie.
This example shows some closing credits that scroll up the black background. You can opt for a monotone background or overlay the text over the video itself.
Export Formats for Finished Video Productions
Projects that have been fully edited generally have to be converted into a format that can be interpreted by applications on other PC systems.
The limits of the RT2500 video editing solution suddenly become painfully clear. A closer interpretation of the advertising slogan “Realtime Editing” reveals that only the video editing is done in realtime.
Converting from and into other video formats continues to be a very time-consuming affair! The only way to save you from the bother of converting is to work with the capacity-gobbling DV format. Your computer’s CPU carries out the conversion, and again, the long wait can really wear on your nerves. So, the best bet is to start out with a powerful processor such as the Athlon (1 GHz and up) or the Pentium 4 – time is money.
This menu shows the export functions of Adobe Premiere and the plug-ins.
RealPlayer
RealPlayer is a popular media player. The export wizard sets the data formats you want for Web-publishing purposes. You can even enter copyright information.
This is what the playback looks like at a reduced data rate.
Windows Mediaplayer
Projects can also be exported into the Windows MediaPlayer format.
You can tell that the copyright information has been inserted properly here.
Ligos MPEG-2 Encoder
MPEG-2 comes in all kinds of flavors, as Matrox demonstrates so clearly. The MPEG-2 format Matrox uses can only be played back using a special Matrox player on the very same system. Although special codecs are included with the package, the actual recipients of the video materials have no access to them. So you have no choice but to convert the Matrox MPEG format into a universal MPEG-2 format that can then be played on any DVD/MPEG-2 player. Ligos also provides export formats such as VideoCD (VCD) and Super Video CD (SVCD).
You can select the universal MPEG-2 format in this menu.
You can set the relevant options as well.
Ligos MPEG-2 Encoder (Cont’d)
A look at this screenshot shows how long you sometimes have to wait. 2759 frames translate into 110 seconds playing time (with PAL 25 frames/s). The converter needs more than 7 minutes on an Athlon 1400 to process these frames! That’s almost four times longer than the actual clip.
We didn’t find any universal MPEG-2/DVD player in the RT2500 package, which was a problem. The standard Matrox DVD player is no help at all after the Ligos-LSX conversion. Again, this is just what we observed. Matrox claims that another “Matrox DVD Player” is bundled with the package – perhaps in the depths of some CD-ROM sub-directory. We saved precious time looking for it and used the Asus DVD player instead.
Cleaner
The plug-in “Cleaner,” which is included in the package, is supposed to make it easier to carry out these export functions. There’s an easy-to-read menu that lists all kinds of formats suitable for the Internet. Important options, such as entering copyright information, appear to have been glossed over, though.
This software plug-in turned out to be unreliable. Instead of making things easier, it just kept on spitting out error messages during the conversion. We installed the full version that we received from Terran Interactive – and it worked…
| Update Information from August 29, 2001: Matrox demonstrated after writing this review that their plug-in version of “Cleaner” got stable. |
Sound and DVD Authoring
There are two more applications that Matrox included in the RT2500 package – Sonic Foundry Acid and DVDit!
This program is used to create songs and jingles that you can use when editing videos.
Matrox also includes the Sonic DVDit! 2.3 LE, which is used to create DVDs. You can set up a professional-looking start menu, just like the ones you know from classic DVDs. Since DVD burners are very pricey at the moment and the majority of consumer-grade DVD devices can’t read the DVD-R formats anyway, you are left with no other option but to record to a CD-R. Since only a few minutes of an MPEG-2 movie fit on a CDROM, elaborate start menus are a serious waste of space.
This situation might change. DVD burners have gotten cheaper over the last couple of months. With DVDit! you are at least prepared for the future.
Conclusion – Low Price, Complicated Installation
The Matrox RT2500 video editing system targets hobby filmmakers and semi-professional users and costs $999 retail. We recommend purchasing the card as part of a complete system. This does away with the bother of installing the retail solution. The price would then depend on the hardware used with it. In our upcoming Building a Digital Video Capture System – Part II we review the RT2500 as part of a complete system so, keep an eye out for this review this week for that assessment.
In the meantime, the advantage of this card is its ability to edit videos in realtime, as long as the DV and MPEG-2 formats are the data formats used. Producers can save a lot of time in this case. This is, however, offset when converting file formats after capturing and exporting files. The computer’s CPU still has to execute these functions, taking up a lot of time here. A whole slew of plug-ins come bundled with the Adobe Premiere 6.0 software package. The export tools for RealPlayer, Windows MediaPlayer, Apple Quicktime and generic MPEG-2 streams (Ligos LSX) are particularly helpful when distributing video productions over the Internet.
The card edits signals at a level that rivals studio quality movies, making the value side very attractive. The RT2500 runs under Windows 98/ME and 2000.
Sources
This link contains a list of dealers:
FYI – These are Matrox links we believe to be useful. Matrox has not paid for these links to be published nor have we verified any of the information.
