Some posts ask about capture cards. I’ve owned a Matrox RT.X100 for 6 months, and recently contacted Matrox about image files not displaying on any video track. They were mystified. Jpegs, bitmaps, targas, even photoshop psd files would not display (without rendering first - an impractical editing situation). All I got is the red bar above the ‘X’ logo.

At first, Matrox said pixel dimensions must conform to standard 720 x 576 (for PAL) to display correctly. Now this is plain daft, and they knew it. I solved the problem by reinstalling X.tools, which meant all images now display ok - whether pixel size is standard or not.

When editing with PPro alone, it’s stable and trouble-free. But with a Matrox preset, it’s so unstable that even 3 short clips on the timeline cause it to struggle. Playback in the movie window is jerky, and looks like a slow frame rate. It’s impossible to carry on.

The point of my moan is that makers should address the compatibility issues surrounding their beloved products. The RT.X100 is known to be intolerant, and can even give trouble with systems that Matrox approve of – like mine. I followed every recommendation, and I’ve still never seen Matrox ‘Realtime Effects’ yet!

On the plus side, it captures analogue from VCR beautifully, in perfect synch. And being a hardware encoder, it makes sweet mpeg-2s. It’s an expensive item, and the reseller told me a lot of people buy it for the Adobe software bundle alone – the main reason I bought it myself.

So any prospective buyers – this is one video enthusiast’s experience. Haven't been able to radically improve my RT.X100 editing environment so far, but my fingers remain crossed.