Matrox RT.X100's Installation Improvements
One of Matrox's RT.X100 DV editing system's claimed improvements is its easier installation routine. In its predecessors, the RT2000 and RT2500, many users complained about setup problems, where it was necessary to reboot the machine three times to get the thing to work. Even then, sometimes it still wouldn't function as advertised. Matrox itself called the procedure "cumbersome." Matrox says it has made great strides in civilizing the setup experience, and we wanted to test that claim. So we installed the RT.X100 on two different workstations, one using Intel's 2.53GHz P4 chip and another with dual Athlon 2000+MP processors. Here's what happened.
The first system I tested was a BOXX machine, with dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+ chips on a Tyan Thunder K7 Mother Board (Model# S2462NG), with AMD's 760MP chipset and 1GB of RAM (Click here for my full review of that system), onto which I installed Windows XP Professional. I must mention that this AMD-equipped Tyan K7 motherboard and AMD 760 MP chipset is on Matrox's list of motherboards that will work with the RT.X100. After installing the included Adobe Premiere 6.5, I plugged the RT.X100 into an available PCI slot, and installed RT.X100's driver software. After a single re-boot, the card was ready to go. All was well -- it recognized my DV camcorder, captured video flawlessly, and edited like a champ. I was able to stack up two layers of video and two graphics, all at the same time. And, I could apply a few filters to those clips at the same time, too, all without any rendering necessary. All was well until I tried to use the new Title Tool included with Adobe Premiere 6.5. It crashed, but not every time. About half the time, Premiere would lock up on me as soon as the Title tool appeared. I'm not sure if this problem was due to the motherboard, the graphics card (an NVIDIA Quadro4 550 XGL AGP Dual-Monitor Display Card with 64 MB Onboard RAM) or something else. Matrox couldn't pinpoint the problem, either, so I still don't know why this happened, and neither does Matrox.
Next it was time to try out the RT.X100 on an Intel P4-equipped machine, a box that has not yet made Matrox's approved list of workstations. It's a Dell Precision Workstation 340 running Windows XP Professional (click here for my full review of this machine), equipped with a single Intel P4 2.53GHz chip, 512 MB of RAM and an NVIDIA Quadro4 550 XGL AGP 64MB graphics card. Again, the installation was effortless, and this time the hardware and software worked together flawlessly. There were no Title Tool difficulties at all. The system worked just as advertised, with lots of real time effects, no crashes, and perfect real time output to DV tape of our entire test segment including a multitude of effects.
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Bravo, Matrox. It would be hard for me to imagine how Matrox could further improve this setup routine, unless the company invents a way for the card to magically plug itself into a PCI slot for you and automatically install its software driver. It just works. How did they do this? According to Matrox guru Alain Legault, the company got lots of complaints about previous RTs' installation routine, and put easing the setup routine at the top of the list of priorities for this new version. "We experienced some difficulty in the past with installation. It was cumbersome. For example, it was a requirement to have three re-boots that needed to be done while you were installing the product, which was a big annoyance to customers," Lugault said in an interview with Digital Media Net, the full text of which is available by clicking here. "So what we've done is integrated the new product to the Windows XP operating system, and we made some changes in the lower-level driver -- instead of the previous 1394 driver we're now using the Microsoft driver stack -- and because we did that, and also wrote the lower-lever driver, we were able to eliminate the three boots, and now require just a single re-boot of the computer," Legault continued. "So, basically, it greatly reduces the time it takes to install the product and eliminates some of the annoyance. In our testing with Beta sites, users were able to install the product in as little as a half an hour. It's fairly simple where it used to take a lot longer. The effort we've done to make a better fit with the plug-and-play technology of Microsoft Windows XP is really what made the installation a lot easier."
I'm here to tell you, I tested this, and the man speaks the truth.
If you're wondering which computers, motherboards and chip sets Matrox has approved so far for use with the RT.X100, there's a growing list on the Matrox Web site, which can be accessed by clicking on the following URL: http://www.matrox.com/video/support/rtx100/rec/home.cfm.
By the way, we have received numerous requests for another comparison of the top three real time DV cards. So, we are planning a shootout article between this Matrox RT.X100 card, Pinnacle's Pro-ONE RTDV and the Canopus DVStorm 2, coming in November right here on Digital Media Net. It will be in a format just like the previous shootout between the predecessors of these three DV cards, with a debate format between the three vendors where I function as the moderator/referee, testing the claims of each manufacturer and offering my assessments of each system. The three vendors have promised to be on their best behavior, and have agreed to send turnkey systems for testing. All have made significant improvements to their products since our last shootout in December, so stay tuned for that one. In the meantime, if you'd like to read the previous shootout, click on the following URL: http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2001/12_dec/reviews/cw_shootout.htm.
Charlie White has been writing about new media and digital video since it was the laughingstock of the television industry. A technology journalist and columnist for the past eight years, White is also an Emmy-winning producer, video editor and shot-calling PBS TV director with 28 years broadcast experience. Talk back -- Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.[an error occurred while processing this directive]
