Matrox RTX100...opinions?

[chrisV]

Hi,

I purchased the RTX100 a few months back in effort to upgrade my suite. My computer guy and I did everything possible including a purchase of a Matrox recommended mobo. The RTX100 was a complete disaster and we sought outside help/advise.
If I stayed inside of the "Matrox project" parameters and used only the Matrox toolbox/effects package, the experiance was pretty good. Problem is I find the Matrox tools incredibly clunky, far too many keystrokes and frankly ll the custom presets were cheesy and a problem to hurdle. When I went "home" and used Premeire 1.5 (love it) the "realtime" promised by matrox fell quickly by the wayside. Worse than that, my projects became so horribly unviewable in the timeline preview that I lost most of my capability. Needless to say, I had to remove the RTX to get my suite's productivity back.

Has anyone else had problems such as this with the Matrox 100? If you've had a good experience with it I'd like to hear about that also and it would be great if I could see a finished production or two.

Can one use the 100, forget about doing "matrox projects" and employ PPRO all at the same time? And finish some reletivly complex projects with out going crazy?

chris v
www.chrisvalentines.com

[Alan Mills]

Blasphemy!

I shall retort properly later when I have more time. But the simple answer is you must be doing things wrong and you clearly haven;t bothered reading the documentation! That and the fact that your early setup issues have clearly clouded your judgment of the product making you biased towards it.

[Mike Thorpe]

Alan's very protective of his 'baby'

[Alan Mills]

Hi,

I purchased the RTX100 a few months back in effort to upgrade my suite.

Good choice!

My computer guy and I did everything possible including a purchase of a Matrox recommended mobo. The RTX100 was a complete disaster and we sought outside help/advise.

if you have/had setup problems you should have been talking to matrox support or the Matrox forums for help guidance. They deal with setup issues all the time.
It's true that many people have setup and stability problems with the RT.X100. The Matrox forums are full of them. But they would be wouldn't they because those having no problems don't post. It's also true that the card is a little bit pedantic about it's setup. More so than is comfortable for many it seems. It even has to be in the correct PCI slot. Now I thought they were all the same but clearly they are not. There's a lot of negativity about the card over on the Matrox forums and the negative posts, like this one, are all to do with setup and installation. I spent a whiole bunch of time chatting to the Matrox guys at the video forum in january. I actually made Wayne (if you frequent the Matrox forums you will know this name) laugh when I introduced myself because I asked what I must be doing wrong because my rtx card doesn't crash all the damn time like everyone else in the Matrox forums. During our chat, he told me that just about all those 'bad posts' prove to be setup issues. wrong driver versions or bios settings or having the card in the wrong slot or using the card with h/w not on the approved list.

If I stayed inside of the "Matrox project" parameters and used only the Matrox toolbox/effects package, the experiance was pretty good.

and so it should be. Even if you step outside of the Matrox effects then the worst that should happen is that you are back to Premiere Pro (vanilla) render times.

Problem is I find the Matrox tools incredibly clunky, far too many keystrokes and frankly ll the custom presets were cheesy and a problem to hurdle.

Now this confuses me. What extra extra keystrokes? Dragging and dropping an effect onto the timeline is the same as premiere. Click on the properties button and change the effects properties. What's different? The only difference I can think of is that you have to open a dialogue box to change properties (much as with some other plugins I;ve seen) and the dialogue box does not look 'standard Windows'. Curious, but this should hardly be an issue.
And if you don't like the custom presets don't use them. They're only convenient sets of keyframes for the effect at hand to maybe get you started. Make your own then. Indeed, some of them are very cheesy but isn't that the same for most transitions and 'effects'?

When I went "home" and used Premeire 1.5 (love it) the "realtime" promised by matrox fell quickly by the wayside. Worse than that, my projects became so horribly unviewable in the timeline preview that I lost most of my capability. Needless to say, I had to remove the RTX to get my suite's productivity back.

No you didn't "have to". With the card fitted, if you just want to edit plain vanilla Premiere then simply don't start with a Matrox project preset. Simple as that. While it's true that earlier version of the drivers did kick in even though you start with a standard project preset, you are using Pro 1.5 and so presumably (if not then this is your problem) have the latest drivers. For Premierre Pro 1.5 you need (it's not an option) version 6122 and also install the hotfixes as well.

Has anyone else had problems such as this with the Matrox 100? If you've had a good experience with it I'd like to hear about that also and it would be great if I could see a finished production or two.

Everything I've posted on these forums has been edited using my RTx100.

Can one use the 100, forget about doing "matrox projects" and employ PPRO all at the same time? And finish some reletivly complex projects with out going crazy?

yes, with premiere pro 1.5 and Xtools 6122 (along with Hotfix2) just choose a non Matrox project preset.

So my advice is to step away from the thing for a while and so lose the negative attitude towards the card, talk to Matrox, get the installation issues sorted out (and they will spend time helping you on this) and then enjoy the benfits of the card when it's all working. rest assured that there are many many more users having success with this card than those not.

Of course, you might prove to have a faulty card. It's always possible.

[chrisV]

Alan,

Thanks for all the advise.

We've done everything that you've nicely outlined....everything. We've been to the Matrox boards and the advise is similar.

If I don't do a Matrox project, what is the board doing for me?

In a typical 5 minute project I have hundreds of brightness/contrast adjustments, luma/chroma key variables, very precise floating crops, multible blurs etc. etc. When I use the Matrox tools for these needs, every time I have to open a dialogue box, adjust with sliders and imputs that feel awkward to me somewho really feels comfortable with the PPRO feel. Again, with the thousands of little tweaks that I'm trying to achieve, the Matrox tools just didn't work for me...it was exhausting. I can't really envision making my own presets as any help, because I never use them either.

So using the Matrox tools is out, I have no debate in my head there. For whatever reason they simply do not suit my needs.

Bottom line question is this: If I am going to rely solely on PPRO for my audio/video adjustments, (simply forego the Matrox tools) and I want to realize a strong benefit with the reinstallation (by the book/with every fix) of the 100, do I start "matrox" projects or "premiere" projects?

If I start your recommended way and a timeline has say a 3 or 4 necessary layer section for a multiple keyed/blurred/transition, that must be precisely timed to an audio event within 1/15th of a second, will I be able to preview my success without my monitor view studdering very ugly. I'm at 2gb ram and the preview would always degrade to "unpreviewable" with board installed. When I do 4, 5, 6 fx-filled layers now (without the RTX) things get slow, but I'm still in the "productive" range.

I looked a bit, but I was unable to find any of your videowork in the forum.

THanks again!

Chris
www.chrisvalentines.com

[chrisV]

Alan,

I noticed that twice you used the word "vanilla" when referring to Premiere. Do you feel Premiere is plain or lacks capability? I've only used Premiere, so I can't really related it to anything else. I've only been doing the NLE thing for about 18 months and just just the last 9 with PPRO (before that MOvieMaker).

If you do feel Premiere is lacking versatility or power, I'll say something in its defense, despite my lack of using any other software.

Here are two clips from my first couple Premiere 1.0 projects. Granted, I used Flash for the opening to one of them and they are just "family photo/vid montages, but I'm trying to show that even shortly out of the box you can do some cool things with PPRO.
http://www.2bdeterminedfilms.chrisva...ics/FamAd3.wmv
http://www.2bdeterminedfilms.chrisva...aphics/DBP.wmv

I've been messing with it for sometime now, but I feel I've only scratched the surface.

chris

[Marc Peters]

I don't use an RTX100

[chrisV]

I don't use an RTX100

What do you use?

[Alan Mills]

By plain vanilla premiere I just mean premiere with no 'extras' like the RTx100, that's all.

OK, I'm not going to try to persuade you anymore that the RTX100 is a fab piece of kit - which I think it is - because your mind is made up. But it does appear that you are stretching your projects beyond th ebounds of what can be achieved in realtime rendering. The card will not perform fours layers of chromakeying, masking, brightness, conrol et al all in realtime. Check your docs as to the limits of what can be achieved. If preview is choppy then you'll just have to render - which you'll have to do in premiere anyway so no loss there.

Also, as to the interface. It's not my personal choice either that you have to open a dialoguebox but hardly a reason to throw the card away and declare it unusable. I agree that it can make it a bit more awkward to synchronise effects having to open and close dialogues but then again, I don't push the thing to it's extremes.

I'm also a little confused. So the card is working then? I thought the major issue here is that you couldn't get it going. It seems you can.

Yes, if you use a Premiere preset then there is no benefit to having the card installed at all - other than maybe sending video out to an external montitor via the BoB.

And can't find any of my work eh? Marc, have you removed it all again? Seriously, check out the last competition. I won it Also, look for the transporter cat thread and Clones thread under user videos.

[Tony A]

Your films are neat video artistry, I think the way you vary the sequences is great. And this is what you can do straight from the Ppro box?

You managed enough variety not to need the Matrox effects – but some of them, especially used in combination, can be real eye-openers. It’s a shame you find them awkward to use.