Hello all,

Hoping an X100 owner might be able to help me here...Before I splash out on one I want to make sure it'll do what I want it to!

I want to take existing MPEG2 files of non standard resolutions (mostly 480x576 from a Tivo originally, now sitting on my PC's hard disc), trim the start and end, crop a bit, resize to a DVD compliant resolution, then re-encode back to DVD compliant MPEG2 in realtime. I can currently do all of that in far-from-realtime(TM) using software tools, so it's really the realtime re-encoding that interests me. Anybody with experience of whether or not the X100 can do all that?

Appreciate any advice...

Thanks,
Chris

Apologies for the very late reply to this. I completely missed the post.

I've got a Matrox RT.X100 and, although I've not attempted your exact workflow, I can confirm that any project currently opened with Premiere Pro 1 and/or 1.5 has exported (on my system) as MPEG2 in realtime (or very close to it. Once in a while I notice that a 1 minute (say) export takes just over a minute.

So from my experience, if you can open it in Premiere as in RTX100 mode then the realtime export will be ok.

But that's not to say you won't have to render prior to exporting. Even with all the realtime capabilities there are combinations that need rendering, depending on what you do.

The real beauty of the realtime MPEG2, for me, is capturing analogue tapes and encoding to MPEG2 in realtime for converting my old home movies from VHS to DVD. Save hours per tape.

Word of warning though with the RTX100. Check out the forums at Matrox and double and triple check the compatible systems and components lists. At the Matrox forums there are many many horror stories about incompatibility issues causing crashes - even with alleged compatible hardware. It reads bad but only the bad stories get posted I suppose. I had my system built with the card in it and have had no problems to date. Def one of my better purchases, Saves hours and hours on any job.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more. And once again, sorry for the late reply.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Thanks millsy, that's exactly what I was hoping for.

Your warnings over compatiblity are well taken - I don't think the X100 will like my Athlon 64 much I'll look at taking your approach of buying a pre-installed machine....Might need to save for a few months methinks!


Thanks again for the response - much appreciated.

Chris

From what I've read, there's not a snowball's chance in hell it will like it - meaning - Athlon 64s are not on the compatibility list.

In truth, although I have one (and love it) I'm not a technical meistro when it comes to the RTX100 and would suggest (Sorry Marc) that you check out the pre-sales forum over at Matrox to ask any specific techy questions as to whether it's going to be the right ard for you.

Alternatively (cheap plug coming up) have a chat with the guys at DVC (link on the left bar of this page). They are the people who put my system together after spending ages on the phone over a few weeks working out what I needed and didn't need.

One, possible thing to remember though is that teh RTX100 will not help in any way (that I know of) for any High def work you might want to get into. Some people consider the RTX100 to be serious money but the HDV version is REALLY serious money!!!!

And if you're speccing a system do not skimp on disk space or RAM.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Not got a problem with that at all.

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