®

REAL-TIME NLE REVIEWED

MATROX AXIO HD

JANUARY 2006

reviews

Axio HD 1.0Matrox, $11,495($17,000 as tested)

Real-Time HD NonlinearEditing System

BY FRANK CAPRIA

score

ProsImpressive real-time perform-ance in SD and HD. Tight inte-gration with the Premiere Prointerface. Matrox MPEG-2 I-Frame codecs yield excellentresults for HD mastering. Singlepoint of contact for all support.

ConsPremiere Pro and Windowsonly. Axio’s performance andfeature set would appeal toFinal Cut Pro users as well.

Bottom LineMatrox has built a very solidand impressive turnkey HD edit-ing system. If you’re notalready committed to anotherNLE platform, Axio is definitelyworth a look.

Recently an NLE manufacturer ran anad reminding readers that not allediting systems had to begin with

an A, a reference to the NLE Big Three ofAdobe, Apple, and Avid. The ad made itseem like all the typical NLE buyer does is choose one of the three and get to work, but it’s not nearly that simple. Noediting system is an island—it’s a part of acomprehensive postproduction ecosystem.

Each of the Big Three has taken a different approach in its attempt todominate that ecosystem. Apple and Avid use a mixed bag of proprietary and third-party software and hardwaredevelopment to create their NLEs, butAdobe is all about the software. Because ithas no hand in CPU, OS, or I/O hardwaredesign, Adobe has control over the fewestparts of the ecosystem.

With Axio, Matrox fills in some of theblank space in Adobe’s approach. Thecompany isn’t presenting Axio as simplyan I/O boardset, but as a turnkey editingsolution, which Matrox supports in itsentirety. Matrox fields all of the supportcalls, whether they’re about the Matroxhardware, the Adobe software, or the HPworkstation. This single-point-of-contactstrategy has kept many Avid customersloyal for years. Matrox is attempting togive Axio customers similar peace ofmind.

Quick response, real-time overachievementThe first thing you notice with an Axio-powered Premiere Pro system is the respon-siveness. Hit play, and playback commences

instantly. There’s no delay for buffering,even for sequences with multiple video lay-ers and real-time effects. The confidenceinspired by Axio’s performance allows youto concentrate fully on editing, rather thanworry whether the system is behaving as itshould.

The specifications sheet for Axio makes some impressive claims, startingwith guaranteed real-time playback of two layers of uncompressed 10-bit HD,plus an additional two layers of graphicswith effects. In SD, the guarantee coversfour layers of video and six layers ofgraphics. Nice, but spec sheets tend to be best-case scenario—I was looking forreal-world numbers.

In HD, I built a sequence with fourvideo tracks and two graphics tracks andapplied to each track one commonly usedeffect, such as a blur, a picture-in-picture,a color-correction, or a garbage matte.That sequence played without a singledropped frame. I finally forced a droppedframe by adding a 3D effect to a videotrack. In SD, I became bored well before I forced a dropped frame.

Somewhere around eight video layersand 12 additional graphics tracks (eachwith effects), the system finally hic-cupped. No system I’ve tested has everexceeded its promised real-time perform-ance by such a wide margin.

With Axio, real-time performancewarnings are based on actual performance.When the numbers of recommended tracks

above:Matrox takes the familiar Premiere Pro interface and backs it up with powerful real-time hardware and well-integratedeffects for both HD and SD work.

««

reviews

right:Top to bottom:

Uncompressed,300 Mb,

and 100 Mb. The differencemattes are to

the right.The Matrox

MPEG-2 I-Framecodecs yield

excellent results.To test for

subtle artifacts, I sampled someMPEG-2 frames

into After Effectsand used the dif-

ference transfermode to comparethem to the origi-

nal HD image.Only by increas-ing the contrast

by a factor of 10 was I able to seeany differences,

and they werequite negligible.

or effects are exceeded, thepotentially problematic area is flagged in the timeline. But after playing the section, if Axio determines it can beplayed without dropped frames,the warning is removed—another subtle feature that builds confidence.

The Matrox Playback Set-tings allow the user to set thethreshold for the performancewarnings. A slider lets youchoose between safe andaggressive, which is very useful.You can offline your show inaggressive mode, then move theslider to safe before going totape. Axio also gives the optionof reporting lost genlock duringplayback and dropped frames.

Accelerated, integrated effectsIn order to get as much real-time performance from the sys-tem as possible, certain PremierePro effects, such as Motion, arehandled by the Axio hardwarerather than the CPU. Othereffects, such as chroma keys andthe 3D DVE, have been totallyrewritten by Matrox. The Matroxversions of the effects have thefamiliar Premiere Pro interface.The interface differs only whereMatrox has added features.

Matrox’s 3D DVE is one of the best I’ve ever used, andsignificantly outperforms theDVEs in both Avid and Final Cut Pro. Motion and edges aresmooth, and—no surprise—real-time performance was supe-rior. Multiple DVE moves can beplayed in real time in SD. Othernice touches include roundededges and the option of placingborders inside or outside theimage window.

One of the nicest features of the Axio system is the ability to add a shadow to any keyed

element. It’s an amazingly usefulfeature for greenscreen work, asthe slightest shadow is enough to make the foreground subjectappear to be on a different plane than the background.Implemented correctly, it can lookquite natural. Small touches suchas this, peppered throughout theAxio editing environment, add upto significant time-savings over the course of a project.

The color-correction effectshave also been rewritten for Axioby Matrox. Both the primary andsecondary corrections get theadded feature of color matching.This is incredibly useful whentrying to match skin tones fromscene to scene. Color matchingcan be confined to shadows,midtones, or highlights, oradjusted globally. The addedperformance and features of the Matrox color-correctors are a significant improvement overPremiere Pro’s standard color-correction tools.

Formats, codecs, and qualityAxio captures a variety of formatsand codecs. Standard-definitioncodecs include Matrox’s DVCAM,DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, 8-bituncompressed (601), 10-bituncompressed, and MPEG-2

I-Frame. In HD, Matrox suppliesan Offline HD codec and anMPEG-2 I-Frame codec, and canedit uncompressed as well. TheMPEG-2 codecs allow the editorto select a data rate (from 50 to300 Mbps in HD). At 200 Mbps,the HD image was definitelyacceptable for broadcast. In fact,simple scenes such as talkingheads looked quite good even aslow as 100 Mbps. With the testfootage of dancers I used, neverdid I feel the need to allot morethan 200 Mbps for the shot.Without the benefit of a side-by-side split screen, I can only saythat, to my eye, the Matroxcodecs are comparable to theAvid DNxHD codecs at similardata rates.

What about HDV? Supportfor HDV and DVCPRO HD is inthe 1.5 release, which beganshipping in mid November.Version 1.5 is a free upgrade forversion 1.0 owners. Also includ-ed in release 1.5 is the ability forSD systems to play and edit HDmaterial, allowing a facility to use a single HD system as ingestfor several SD workstations.

Because Axio allows for mul-tiple codecs to be played in realtime from the same timeline, it’spossible to save a lot of diskspace by tweaking the capture

data rate based on the shots’requirements. Like Final Cut Pro,Axio will allow mixed resolutionsto be played from the same time-line, but not in real time.Although I haven’t found theneed for it in my work so far, Ican imagine the day in the not-too-distant future when a docu-mentary may include both SDand HD material in the sametimeline. For now, Axio switcheseffortlessly between SD and HDprojects. Close one, open theother, and the system adjustsautomatically.

Because Axio is so tightlyintegrated with Premiere Pro,experienced Premiere editors will have no trouble adapting tothe Axio environment beyondremembering to use the Matroxversions of the Premiere Proplug-ins. A nice feature would be a project management utilitythat would allow the editor to replace standard Premiere fil-ters and effects with Matroxequivalents where applicable,maintaining the original set-tings. This would help in situa-tions where a project moves froma non-Axio offline system to anAxio for finishing. It would be a lot of work to replace everycolor-correction effect manuallywith its Matrox counterpart.

Final analysisAfter spending some time withAxio, I could really get used to it. It makes editing in PremierePro a better experience. The relationship between Adobe and Matrox makes a lot of sense on the grand scale ofthe postproduction ecosystem.Premiere Pro’s market presence is huge—it’s come a long way in its capabilities, and Adobecontinues to pour resources into its development. It’s a goodfit for Matrox’s product line ingeneral, and its implementa-tion in Axio is impressive. So,although it’s easy to understandMatrox’s reasoning in makingAxio work exclusively withPremiere Pro, it’s an approachthat presents some difficulties in terms of how Axio fits in itstarget market.

Most facilities have alreadychosen an NLE platform, and,generally speaking, it’s notPremiere Pro. I’ve heard of sever-al Avid shops that have switchedto Final Cut Pro, and a few Final Cut Pro shops thathave done the reverse, but I haven’t come across a facilityworking in SDI and HD that hasabandoned either Final Cut Proor Avid for Premiere Pro. It’sthose facilities, already working

in those formats, that are Axio’sprime market. I’m not surethere’s enough growth in thehigh-end postproduction worldto generate sufficient sales, so Axio will have to win convertsfrom other platforms. And thereare some likely candidates—a lotof Avid Meridien systems areabout due for replacement.Meridien owners will find a lot to like in Axio at about half theprice of a Media ComposerAdrenaline, but asking them to trust Premiere Pro will be a difficult task. AlthoughPremiere Pro is a fine tool, it suffers in the marketplace for the sins of its ancestors—the name has baggage. ManyFinal Cut Pro owners could alsoappreciate Axio, but how manywill switch editing applicationsand operating systems to do so?

Axio is good enough to make Premiere Pro a viable alter-native for most any shop need-ing real-time SD and HD performance. It will be inter-esting to see if enough shopsgive it the chance. n

Frank Capria is a senior partner with Kingpin Interactive, a mediadevelopment firm in Boston. He isalso a lecturer in postproduction and editing at Boston University’sCollege of Communication.

A B

left:(A) Matroxrewrote many ofthe most popu-lar Premiere Proeffects to beoptimized forthe Axio hard-ware. In theprocess, Matroxadded usefulfeatures. Forexample, the Matrox Color Correctorincludes color matching.(B) Some of thebest features ofthe Axio systemare found in thesmallest details.The ability to set the thresh-olds for real-time perform-ance warnings is welcome.

Copyright © 2005 by CMP Information, Inc. Reprinted with permission from DIGITAL VIDEO. 6297