Re: Best harware I/O for CS4

I would say the major deciding factor is whether you are willing to pay a bit more money for a faster system. The Axio's main advantage over the I/O cards are extended multi-track real time playback capabilities, it's excellent real time effects package (which work in After Effects as well), and accelerated rendering & export.

The Matrox real time chroma key is easy to use, gets great results, and is miles beyond the stock Premiere chroma key. If you do a lot of chroma keying, the Axio is a no-brainer for this feature alone.

Also, the Matrox unified external monitor support for After Effects, Bridge, and Photoshop, Autodesk Combustion and 3ds Max, eyeon Fusion, NewTek LightWave 3D, and Windows Media Player is very useful. I'm not sure if all (or any of) the I/O cards support this feature to the extent that Matrox does.

Other nice features are support for video in the capture window when capturing HDV, and realtime playback of 32-bit compressed and uncompressed AVI with alpha (both HD and SD).