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**Sciascia** · 11 July 2002, 11:12

AVID is the industry leader after all. Having worked on them for 10 years now I have seen it come along from a buggy, low quality, proprietary nightmare to a full fledged, smooth broadcast quality, proprieary nightmare. There MJPEG HW is very good, but it is definitely proprietary and they like it that way. They have years vested in this product and have made it work. They also get a nice big fat check everytime they sell a complete XpressNT system or Media Composer. The DV stuff is a new toy that looks really promising, it really looks like a nice suite, though what I heard through the rumor mill at NAB a few years ago is that it wasn't targeted at the home user or even the guy doing wedding videos. It was developed for the Adult Video industry! Kind of shocking, but they had a relatively large market for better quality, lower end stuff there and it supposedly has done well.

All in all AVID is the best stuff out there for editing, it is just at a premium price. I really don't see them doing anything with Matrox, they have nothing to offer them. With the way they do business now, they get all of the money and you have to go through them for replacement HW and upgrades. If they start farming out licenses for other HW, then they run into the problem of pirated SW. Any Joe Schmoe could go out, buy the same HW and then install a pirated copy of XpressNT on their computer. As it stands now if you don't have the HW, you can't install or use the SW. Then throw in the HW dongle to boot; 100% license control. Plus you have to add cost for technical support and then the new courses for ACSR training. Imagine working tech support and being 100% competent on a system that is exactly the same for all users, then having to troubleshoot 500 different configurations via phone.

Too many reasons not to include Matrox, they hold all of the cards and have no incentive for going a different route. I think we all remember the AVID Cinema fiasco, they didn't like that at all

!

**miya** · 11 July 2002, 12:06

I have been using Avid Xpress DV since version 1.5. It is a solid, powerful, and just plain amazing system. Each version released is significantly better than the previous. The current version is 3.5 and includes realtime effects and color correction in software, using an OHCI firewire card, no proprietary hardware required.

The rumor about it being designed for adult video is completely untrue. One need only look at the DV market to realize that there is alot of money to be made there, naked talent or not. The product was designed with three markets in mind: One, professional Avid Media Composer editors offlining at home (project files are completely compatible with the entire Avid line.) Two, production companies working exclusively in DV (same market as Matrox RT series.) Three, low budget filmmakers, with an emphasis on FILM (Avid Filmscribe is the industry leading tool for producing film cutlists for projects shot and finished on film.)

I have had my share of experiences working with Adobe Premiere with a variety of hardware, from Matrox to DPS, and I wouldn't think of going back. I still use After Effects regularly, but when I need to edit, I wouldn't think of any other app but Avid.

As far as Matrox cards working with Avid, it is simply not neccesary. All effects are already realtime using only software, no hardware acceleration needed. XDV already works great with G400/450/550 DVDMax for analog output.

**Sciascia** · 11 July 2002, 13:05

OK, the adult movie comment was not direct, but it was second hand from a reliable source, directly from an AVID rep. I am sure that they would discount it, but I trust the source. It's actually pretty irrelevant, it's a good piece of SW and has a lot of room for growth. AVID is an excellent company with hands in a lot of parts of he industry, including the new Spiderman movie, it is really cool hearing about a big production like that being done on the same system you use at work. We have had Unity meida servers for several years and they are becoming more common every day. As an Engineer, a little more job security and a bigger stake in there always makes you feel good.

The Matrox card situation is exaclty as you said, all effetcs and processing is SW, for the DV version. The only package they offer any advavntages with HW are the higher end stuff and that is all proprietary, pro stuff. The DV version has no need for HW assistance so Matrox or any other manufacturer for that point is not necessaily going to cash in on a big contract.

And while the project files are universal, the omf files are definitely not. Not even between their own systems. Try using files from a Newscutter in a Media Composer or an AVID Airplay. They just aren't compatible. Both are AVID MJPEG, HW compression, but different formats. Unless you export to Quicktime then you can't work between the 2. DV is fine, it is a standard, but going from a fieldpack or Betacam SP you are screwed once it is digitized, you have to dump it back to tape.

**SpiralDragon** · 11 July 2002, 13:27

humm... ithink you ar right about the lack of need for HW...... but i was thinking more in terms of non avid plugin RT.... ... as for pirated material ... trust me there is always room for that.... even at the highend where HW is needed.... i know of a few who use a pirated version of XpressNT on avid HW.. (they had older versions) and XpressDV 3 was available for DL one week after it was anounced........

**Dr Mordrid** · 11 July 2002, 14:32

The only way I use Premiere is on my RT.X100 workstation, and that's only because Matrox won't give us drivers for something else

Still....the RT.X100 does make up for several of Premiere's more glaring issues, not the least of which is that it renders and edits slow as mud.

The neat part about that system is that it uses both hard and software to generate quite sophisticated effects, inlcuding a DV chroma/lumakey (both automatic and manual) that is a sight to behold. That it can can run on systems as lowly as an AthlonXP 2000+ with a $60 ECS K7S6A mainboard is just amazing.

Otherwise I prefer to use MSPro, AVID or about anything other than Premiere....

Dr. Mordrid

**Sciascia** · 11 July 2002, 21:15

Originally posted by SpiralDragon
humm... ithink you ar right about the lack of need for HW...... but i was thinking more in terms of non avid plugin RT.... ... as for pirated material ... trust me there is always room for that.... even at the highend where HW is needed.... i know of a few who use a pirated version of XpressNT on avid HW.. (they had older versions) and XpressDV 3 was available for DL one week after it was anounced........

Exactly my point, the pirated version of XpressNT is installed on a system with AVID HW, I imgaine it is cracked or had a Dongle updater crack or something, but it still needs the HW.

The Xpress DV is not HW dependent so it is quite easy to distribute illegally.

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