The Great DV Shootout 2003
Page 9 of 14
Stephen Albanese, Matrox:Sorry Canopus, your layer and filter count doesn't tell the whole story. You claim no limitations, yet DVStorm2:
Our customers prefer to have much more control albeit on fewer layers, rather than limited creative freedom with more layers.
You claim to have the best quality, yet our tests prove that the Matrox codecs outperform yours where it counts (www.matrox.com/video/products/pdf/canopus_got_it_wrong.pdf).
You claim to have the best ROI, but don't take into account your higher price, the cost of the new computer needed for additional functionality, nor all the time wasted trying to overcome your product's limitations.
As for you Pinnacle, your editing tools (capture, color correction, effects quality, etc.) don't meet the needs of professionals, and your motion tracking and stabilization features are of very limited value. Is this why you lowered your price so much?
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Charlie's Comments:The color correction tools on Pinnacle's Pro-ONE are by no means professional. It's pretty much like the controls you'd have on a color TV set, and are certainly outclassed by both Matrox and Canopus. He's right. The "Color Adjust" tools are quite primitive, and seem to be a generation behind both Matrox and Canopus. Hey, at least they didn't have the gall to call it "color correction."
As for Matrox's comments about DVStorm2's limitations, yes, the lack of 32-bit graphic and title effects is a severe limitation. You can move the graphics around, but only with a limited, canned set of moves. If only you could apply the configurability of the DVStorm2's 3D-RT interface to stills and titles on the DVStorm2, Canopus would overcome this major limitation.
About the quality, even though Matrox's tests may have shown its codec outperforming that of Canopus, and Canopus has done the same on its Web site in an epic white-paper war, I couldn't detect much quality difference in the general output of the two in normal everyday use. I have seen tests from these competing companies showing how their codecs hold up after multiple generations of compression and recompression, but I think these tests are mostly academic, because few users will be actually re-compressing their DV twenty times. If you're looking for the best DV codec, forget any of these and go with the Sonic Foundry Vegas Video codec, which looks better than all of these after 25 generations. But that's all just theoretical and has little to do with the way these cards will actually be used. I did think the Matrox 3D effects were of higher quality because of their smooth filtering characteristics, but they don't look as much better than the rest as they used to -- the others are catching up, and the difference there was slight.
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