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[Click for Larger Image] The 2D DVE is available without having to go into menus to select it. Effects can be copied and pasted between clips or saved as templates to be applied in a seperate project.

What's Missing?
One feature that's missing in Incite is the ability to make virtual clips, as in Premiere. If you're not familiar with this concept, think of it as something like mixing lots of different clips down to one on the time line, which greatly simplifies things, especially if you've just put together an elaborate concoction of shots and effects. But the next best thing is Incite's grouping feature, working on the same principle as a soft link in Premiere between audio and video. Group shots together, and they move around as one solid element. You can take this a step further by copying and pasting. Say you want four edited clips that will be needed in five different spots, as in an intro for a segment. Control F5 makes a copy of that group of clips where your position bar is. You're also able to use grouping to copy and paste between different story boards (projects). Hey, I could get used to this.

As I was working with this software, it occurred to me that it would be ideal for long-form shows. That's because you don't have to digitize everything -- just use the tape machine as a source. Aiding this concept is the ability to place different proc amp settings for clips, where the software remembers those settings for a group of shots.

Here's a final piece of advice for you if you're considering this or any other complex nonlinear editing setup: Get a turnkey system. Some dealers put together great systems. Others are rife with trouble. If you decide not to go this route, at least make sure the computer you use is on the Matrox approved list. An example of a great distributor is Forefront, the distributor that we used to configure our test system. It worked like a champ.

Incite's designers set out to create a great broadcast editor. It looks to me like they have succeeded toward that goal. Best of all, there's more to come, with enhanced 3D real time effects when Matrox releases its MAX hardware (now, you can do real time 3D effects with a Pinnacle Genie board), Web video features, DVD authoring from the timeline, and more. Until then, Incite holds the honor of being the best hybrid digital video editor available on the market today.

 

Score (out of a possible 10) 9.0

Charlie White has been writing about digital video editing since it was the laughingstock of the post-production industry. He's an Emmy award-winning producer and director for PBS, and Senior Producer at Digital Media Net. Reach him at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com

 

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Price: $2495, Software only.

Minimum System Requirements:
Pentium II 333 Mhz processor or better with 256 Mb RAM
Windows NT 4.0 operating system (on a 6 Gb IDE system/application drive) with Service Pack 4 or later
Matrox DigiSuite (full version or card set), DigiSuite LE or DigiSuite DTV hardware pack.
Matrox Millennium with Media XL option or DigiDesktop graphic board
High-performance bus-mastering SCSI controller (DigiSuite LE and DTV)
2 Monitors recommended
A standard NTFS disk stripe set (SCSI drives) for video/audio storage
1 SCSI cable, 68 pins, to connect DigiMotion (a board included in the DigiSuite packs) to the video drives
SCSI terminator or disk extension with SCSI terminator

Incite highly recommends:
Dual processors (for added foreground-editing/background-rendering power)
Dual boot setup (for added security)

Choosing Matrox DigiSuite Hardware:
The same Incite software runs on all three of the Matrox DigiSuite hardware boards. Your DigiSuite choice will depend on the type of work you wish to produce.

DigiSuite is Matrox's flagship NLE hardware cardset, offering lossless M-JPEG video quality and the maximum in real-time possibilities.
DigiSuite DTV is Matrox's real time editing single-slot cardset for digital television.
DigiSuite LE provides real time dual stream M-JPEG at a lower price using a single PCI slot.

In addition, all three hardware packages can take advantage of:
Incite Optionals
Serial Digital (SDI) input/output interface
The DigiSuite DTV also supports Matrox SDTI"! for 4x real-time capture. For more information about Incite, please visit the company's Web site at inciteonline.com.

Incite Multimedia Corporation
4 chemin du Tir-au-Canon CH-1227
CAROUGE Geneva (Switzerland)
+41 - 22 / 308.57.57

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