|
The Great DV Shootout 2003
Page 3 of 14
RT.X100's 3D transitions are plentiful and look great, although I did have trouble with one of the transitions in particular: The sphere. It caused such a stir within the Matrox system that it crashed every time. This didn't happen with the Sphere filter, just with the transition. Other than that, the 3D transitions, thanks to Matrox's Flex3D hardware, are clean and quick.
 | | Click for QuickTime movie -- Matrox chromakey example |
One of the great improvements I noticed in the RT.X100 is its Chromakey capabilities. Take a look at the QuickTime movie here, and you get an idea of how cleanly this chromakeyer works. I think it's better than the Chromakey offered on the DVStorm2 because it's cleaner, even though both are about equally adjustable. The test chromakey looked almost perfect with the Matrox system, where the DVStorm's, using the same footage, was not quite as good -- it had a hazy cast around the woman's hair. In the DVStorm's favor, its chromakey is easier to set up, where it acts like a transition where you place one clip in the 1A track and the other in the 1B track and then the arrow points to the foreground clip. With the Matrox chromakey, the foreground clip is placed in the video 1 track and the background is in the Video 2 track and chromakey is added as a filter. The transparency must be adjusted for an Alpha Key. At first that threw me off a bit, but once I got that straight it wasn't a big factor at all.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
The RT.X100's chromakey can do a near-perfect job of chromakeying a subject that is well-lit and that doesn't pose classic chromakey problems. But get a furry cat in there, or a guy drinking water from a bottle, and you can see why some people will spend upwards of $100K for more sophisticated key controls. But as you can see by the QuickTime example, using a well-lit subject, the chromakeying capabilities of the RT.X100 are remarkable, especially considering that you can make adjustments in the many parameters in real time. There are controls for Spill removal, that don't seem to do much. Even though there are a lot of controls here, it seems like the best key could get was by clicking around the frame with the eyedropper (which appears as a crosshair) until it looked best.
 | | Click for QuickTime movie -- Matrox performance example |
I was also impressed with the number of layers the RT.X100 can preview in real time. I dissolved from one color-corrected shot at 88% speed to another color-corrected shot at 66% speed, faded a title over all these and at the same time, flew in a Targa still using a 3D page curl. All played back in real time. So that's two layers of moving video, two still graphics, as advertised. But then there's the color correction on each video layer, and slow motion on each, along with that 3D title flying over all this. That's nice. See the QT movie for the finished effect. I also put together a graphic where I had a chromakey, a background at 44% speed, a title, and another Targa graphic keyed on top of that. When I added one more title on top of that whole stack, the red "render" line appeared. So, indeed, it looks like the RT.X100 can handle four layers at a time, with two of those graphics, and then can do real time slow motion on the two video layers, and color correction on one of the video layers, all at the same time.
Another positive attribute of the RT.X100 is its smooth, responsive scrubbing that Stephen mentioned above. This is a definite improvement over the RT2500, which made you wait about a second before it reacted to your input. The scrubbing is certainly crisp and immediate, and much better than the other two contenders in this report. Even when there were heavy effects, the response is noticeably faster and smoother than in the other two systems. This might seem like a small detail, but it's this kind of responsiveness that makes one card a better companion than another throughout long hours of stressful, day-in, day-out editing.
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Related sites: • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • DTV Professional • DV Format • Presentation Master
Related forums: •
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
|
|
