Matrox RT2000

Supreme Video + Electronics

Matrox RT2000 Capture Card
$1199

Matrox RT2000 is a realtime nonlinear editing solution for corporate and event video artists, that provides an impressive array of professional features at an unprecedented price.

"Most products are evolutionary, but this one is truly revolutionary. Matrox RT2000 is a quantum leap over any other editing product on the market. And it could only have come from Matrox. RT2000 leverages the synergy between Matrox Graphics Inc.'s expertise in high-performance 3D graphics and Matrox Video Products Group's mastery of realtime editing system design."

The revolutionary Matrox Flex 3D≥ architecture of RT2000 exploits the explosive 3D graphics performance of the award-winning Matrox Millennium G400 accelerator to provide broadcast-quality 3D DVE and 32-bit uncompressed animated graphics in a native DV editing environment. MPEG-2 output for DVD, Video CD, and web video streaming applications, along with 1394 and analog video output for tape distribution, rounds out the solution

Complete RT2000 Bundle includes:

RT2000 MPEG2 capture/playback card
Millenium G400 AGP graphics card w/
Break Out Box
DV/FireWire cable
Adobe Premiere RT
Ulead Cool 3D
Sonic Foundry ACID Music
Sonic DVDit! LE

Matrox RT2000 Incredible value!!

The Matrox RT2000 bundle includes the RT2000 codec card, the Matrox Millennium G400 graphics accelerator, an attractive audio/video breakout box, and a complete content creation software suite √ Adobe Premiere RT realtime nonlinear editing, Ulead Cool 3D titling, Sonic Foundry ACID Music audio editing, and Sonic DVDit! LE DVD authoring.

This IS your graphics card! Millennium G400 provides a high-performance console with a video-in-a-window display. An additional graphics display adapter is not required in the system so there are no compatibility hassles.

Adobe Premiere 5.1 RT
The Matrox realtime plug-in for Adobe Premiere lets you take full advantage of the powerful RT2000 hardware. Choose from a wide variety of realtime 2D and 3D filters and transitions with customizable drop shadows, soft edges, and color borders.

Get instant feedback the Matrox plug-in provides ultra-responsive scrubbing and realtime preview and playback on your video monitor and desktop display. You even get multi-track transparency control from within Premiere.

Sonic Acid
ACID Music is the fastest and easiest way to create custom license-free music for your RT2000 projects. The package includes many high-quality, cutting-edge loops to give you unprecedented creative flexibility.

Ulead Cool 3D
Cool 3D lets you create stunning full-screen 3D animated titles, alpha-channeled TGA images and sequences, and full-motion AVI movies for your RT2000 projects. Add finishing touches to your videos with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface where you can apply special effects, textures, and bevels to your text and logos.

Sonic DVDIt!
Sonic DVDit! is the easiest way to publish digital video on DVD. You capture and edit video in realtime using Adobe Premiere RT. Then drag and drop your edited video sequences, audio clips, graphics, backgrounds, and buttons into DVDit!. With its intuitive user interface, lightning-quick operation and high-powered formatting engine, DVDit! lets you easily create DVD-Video and DVD-ROM titles that play back on your set-top or PC-based player. Now, with an affordably-priced DVD-Recordable device on your desktop, DVD is the perfect distribution format for any video program.

Matrox RT2000 includes a variety of unique productivity tools to save you countless hours in the editing suite.

Matrox Infinite Capture≥ overcomes the 2 GB file size limit of Windows 98 by providing seamless capture and playback of unlimited file size within Premiere.
Accelerated print-to-disk quickly puts your realtime sequences into a DV or MPEG-2 file for storage, archiving, DVD authoring, etc.
Accelerated image transfer of video frames to system memory over AGP increases performance of host-based software effects.
Versatile software codec lets you run multiple VFW applications concurrently so that you can render a project in a compositing or animation application such as After Effects or 3D Studio MAX, while doing realtime editing on Matrox RT2000.
1394 interface software provides camera/VTR control to facilitate frame-accurate clip logging, batch capture, and print-to-tape.
Realtime audio and video preview during DV capture lets you hear and see your material exactly as it is recorded onto your hard disk.
Hard disk benchmark utility ensures optimal system performance.

RT2000 - the features

Video Inputs

1394
composite video (CVBS), RCA jack
S-video (Y/C), mini-DIN
NTSC, PAL, and SECAM
Video Outputs
1394
composite video (CVBS), RCA jack
S-video (Y/C), mini-DIN
NTSC and PAL
Video formats
ITU-R601 YUV 4:2:2
NTSC: 720x480 at 30 frames/sec
PAL/SECAM: 720x576 at 25 frames/sec
Video overlay
programmable NTSC and PAL video-in-a-window support on console at 60/50 fields/sec

System requirements:

Intel Pentium II CPU, 300 MHz
128 MB RAM
Free AGP Slot
Free PCI Slot
500 MB of free space for software installation
Separate drive for A/V content
CD-ROM drive for software installation
Windows 98

Matrox Flex 3D

All you really need to know about the revolutionary Matrox Flex 3D architecture is that it gives you broadcast-quality 2D/3D DVE and transitions in real time. If you're curious about HOW we do it, read on!

Flex 3D is a fully programmable architecture that applies 3D texture mapping to video using a Matrox 3D graphics accelerator chip and graphics memory. Motion video or graphics are treated as source textures and mapped onto polygon-based 3D shapes such as page curls, planes, and particles. Broadcast-quality effects are achieved using special features that are built into the 3D-accelerator chip and exploited through the Flex 3D architecture:

YUV4:2:2 and RGB32 source textures and 32bpp RGBA output maintain true-color integrity.
Tri-linear and anisotropic filtering ensure high-quality video scaling and perspective.
Sub-pixel precision guarantees smooth DVEs and transitions.
Anti-aliasing ensures smooth edges.
True environment-mapped hardware bump-mapping produces an unlimited variety of realistic effects such as emboss, ripple, shimmer, wave, etc.
256 levels of alpha-blending enable multi-layer compositing.

The fact that Flex 3D is fully programmable means that additional effects can be added via supplementary software. An unlimited variety of brand new effects, that have never been seen before, can be developed.

Realtime DV and MPEG-2 Editing on Matrox RT2000

The Matrox RT2000 is a nonlinear editing solution that lets you work with two video streams and a 32-bit, uncompressed, animated graphics layer in real time.

Realtime Capture
RT2000 captures native DV material in real time over the built-in 1394 interface. Analog video from composite or Y/C sources can also be digitized in realtime into either a DV or an MPEG-2 stream.

Realtime Editing
During the editing process, you work with two video layers and a graphics layer. You can apply organic and 3D transitions, 2D and 3D DVE, and transparency effects in real time � NO RENDERING. You see all your edits and changes instantly on your PAL or NTSC monitor, at full online quality, without waiting for previews to render.

Realtime Analog Output
You can record your program to analog tape in realtime over the composite or Y/C output.

Digital Output

There are three modes of operation for digital output from RT2000:

You can stream your program from the Adobe Premiere timeline directly to DV tape via 1394 without the need to print your complete project to an AVI file.
You can record your project on disk as a DV AVI file for archiving or as an interim step in the production process.
You can record your project on disk as an MPEG-2 AVI file for DVD authoring and distribution.

Direct DV output to tape via 1394
RT2000 can output to DV tape, directly from the Adobe Premiere timeline, in realtime in certain cases and in near realtime in other cases.

Once the editing process has been completed and you want to print your final project to DV tape, you select the print-to-tape function from a pull down menu in Premiere. Matrox software then analyzes the timeline. A cuts-only project, without effects, plays out in real time. If the timeline includes effects, the software compiles just the effects sections and creates files of the effects sections that are transparent to the user. Once these effects files are created, the software will play out the entire project, in DV format, in real time. The time involved in creating the effects files depends upon the complexity of the timeline and the speed of the host CPU. Effects sections are rendered at approximately two to three times realtime on currently available computers. The overall time involved in printing to DV tape is the time it takes to create the compiled effects segments plus the time it takes to play out the timeline.

In a typical storyboard, a significant portion is likely to be straight playback of a single video stream. For example, a 10-minute timeline which consists of eight minutes of cuts-only video segments plus two minutes of video with effects can be output in 14 minutes (1.4 times realtime). The effects segments compile in 4 minutes (2 x 2 minutes), then the entire timeline plays out in 10 minutes, for a total of 14 minutes.

In the worst case, if the entire timeline is full of effects throughout, the process would take approximately three times realtime. A ten minute timeline takes 20 minutes for effects compilation and 10 minutes to play out to tape, for a total of 30 minutes.

Printing to a DV AVI file
RT2000 creates an AVI file from a DV project as follows:

Segments of pure video (no effects) are copied into an AVI file faster than realtime. The speed of this process is bounded by the data throughput of the media hard disk.

Effects segments are compiled at two to three times realtime and added to the AVI file.

The combination of faster than realtime copying of video segments and accelerated compilation of effects segments results in print-to-AVI file performance that ranges from faster-than-realtime where the timeline contains mainly cuts, to two-to-three-times realtime where the timeline is full of effects throughout.

Printing to a MPEG-2 AVI file
RT2000 creates an MPEG-2 AVI file (with an IBP GOP structure as required for DVD authoring and distribution application) from MPEG-2 I-frame or DV projects in two to three times realtime regardless of the number of effects they contain.

Summary
The first release of software for Matrox RT2000 will deliver the editing and output performance described above. Powerful realtime editing features and broadcast-quality 3D effects combined with realtime, or near-realtime, output capabilities make RT2000, by far, the leader in its class.

Finally, Matrox does not plan to sit idle after the first release of this product. We are currently evaluating ways to improve output speed in subsequent software releases.