Hi, I am running Final Cut Studio 3 on a MBP 17" with Snow Leopard. I was looking at a low-cost monitoring solution. Here on videomaker and on other forums people have suggested the Matrox MXO2 mini.
How well does it work with SL?
Will both FCP and Color be able to use the MXO2?
I will be encoding for youtube a lot, and occasionally for blu-ray. Is it worthwhile to get the MAX hardware accelerated version?
Not sure if it's relevant, but most of the footage will be captured using FCP from two cameras: a Canon HF200 and a Panasonic HMC-150.
Looking forward to some helpful advice, as always :) Thanks!
I don't use this product, but haven't heard anything bad about FCP and Matrox products.
Both FCP and Color should be able to use the MXO2 mini.
The Max hardware acceleration is faster-than-real-time H.263 encoding. So if that's what you're going to use for youtube, then I'd say go for it. I've read reviews that compare Matrox's hardware H.264 encoding to Compressor's software encoding, and while Compressor DOES do a great job, the Matrox products do it faster and cleaner. I don't believe Blu-Rays use H.264 though, so it's not going to make a difference in that area.
If you're computer meets the CPU requirements, I suggest capturing your footage as ProRes (regular ProRes, not ProRes HQ)
Rob Grauert, Jr
www.robgrauert.com
www.facebook.com/robgrauertvideo
Hi, thanks for your comments and the ProRes tip.
I think Blu-Ray supports multiple compression schemes, one of which is H.264. Blu-Ray encoding is listed as a feature of the MXO2 mini MAX product.