The Great DV Shootout 2003
Page 14 of 14
Charlie's Final Comments:
The most wonderful thing about all three of these cards is that now all three are actually real time, that is, you can see lots of effects while you're editing in real time, and then when you want to place your finished product back on DV tape, you no longer have to wait for any rendering to take place. Before this product cycle, Canopus DVStorm was the only card of these three that could do this. This is an extremely important capability. For example, imagine if you had to key a graphic onto the bottom right corner of the screen for an entire hour show you were editing -- something that happens a lot these days with the graphic "bug" that sits there on the screen all day long. Before, with the Matrox RT2500 and Pinnacle Pro-ONE, you'd have to wait for that entire hour-long program to render before you could lay it back onto DV tape. No more. So you can see, this across-the-board real time DV input/output represents a huge improvement.
Another significant upgrade for all three boards is their extended real time editing capabilities. Not only can you do more in real time, with processor speeds getting so fast these days, the rendering you do have to wait for won't be very long at all -- often it's only going to make you wait as long as it would have normally taken for your tapes to preroll back in the old tape-based analog days. This lets you work a lot faster and a lot easier, and then you start to realize what is really meant by the overused term "workflow." You don't sit there waiting to see your ideas take form -- it's right there, right now. No time to forget what you were going to do, no interruptions, no distractions. It's like playing video jazz, where your spontaneous ideas play themselves out on the screen in front of you in real time. Feel free to improvise -- it's easy to experiment and change things when the effects happen immediately.
But don't think there aren't any limitations to all these real time highjinks. With each card, you'll probably hit the wall of its real time capabilities quicker than you might think. But all three cards' effects arsenals are getting so powerful and complex, if you need even more than what they can do in real time you'll probably want to turn to a sophisticated compositing software package like Adobe After Effects. But the question is, where are the limitations? With the Pinnacle Pro-ONE, you can't do any real time chromakeying, and the rendered chromakeying you are able to do isn't very good. With the DVStorm2, if you want to move lots of graphics or text on-screen at the same time, you can stack up tons of layers but your choices of where and how those graphics will move is limited. If you go with the Matrox RT.X100, you can't put as many text and graphic layers on the screen at the same time, and you're limited to only one 3D effect at a time.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
So it all boils down to which card is more useful, more flexible, and makes the most sense in a production environment, and which one offers the best value. In my testing, I found the Matrox RT.X100 to be the overall champ when it came to actually using the card in a production situation. Its formidable color correction tools -- almost as sophisticated as those of Final Cut Pro, but operating in real time on an NTSC monitor -- were the best of the bunch. Its filters and 3D effects are the most configurable, and it is the most responsive of the three on Adobe Premiere's timeline. It also has the best capture routine. It can't build as many layers or add as many filters as the DVStorm2, but I think the number of filters you can add in real time and the number of text layers you can build is oftentimes more of a theoretical exercise than a real-world concern. The DVStorm2 can truly stack five layers of video together in real time, but I'd still like to see more control over what each of those layers does. And, I must give Pinnacle a special commendation for its work in the motion tracking work it's doing. Borrowing from the company's recent software acquisition, Commotion, it's incorporated some highly sophisticated technology that's truly unique to this class of editing equipment. I was able to use this feature to make effects that were impossible using the other two systems.
I think Matrox's approach to this problem of real time DV editing is the most practical of the bunch. It's using its hardware for the 3D effects, which is a good idea because it gives the RT.X100 the oomph it needs where the heavy lifting is concerned, and with this new version Matrox adds software-based effects that use the host processor, letting you add pro-level color correction and smooth slow motion to lots of clips at the same time. Overall, the RT.X100 is a great value, and the winner of The Great DV Shootout 2003.
| The Verdict: | |||
 Canopus DVStorm2 |  Pinnacle Pro-ONE RTDV |  Matrox RT.X100 | |
| Stability | 9 | 8 | 7 |
| Real Time Effects | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| Real Time 3D | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| Image Quality | 8 | 7 | 9 |
| DV I/O | 10 | 7 | 10 |
| Usability | 8 | 8 | 9 |
| Configurability | 7 | 9 | 9 |
| Overall speed | 9 | 7 | 9 |
| Price/value | 7 | 9 | 8 |
| Average | 8.33 | 7.88 | WINNER 8.66 |
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, broadcast industry consultant and shot-calling television director who has worked in broadcasting since 1974. Talk back -- Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
