MXO2 Mini quick questions...
by Bryan Roberts
on
Jun 19, 2009 at 5:24:11 pm
Hey all, I'm seriously considering the MXO2 mini primarily for use to color correct a feature on my 42 inch plasma that I currently have running with Digital Cinema preview in FCP and two 24inch dells on a Matrox TripleHead2Go but had a couple questions before I made the leap that I couldn't find answers to (I've previously owned an MXO first gen that I color corrected a feature on my old g5 dual core and a 24 inch dell monitor). Quickly about the project: I'm using the new Magic Bullet Looks for color correction and it's an XDCAM feature (not transcoded to ProRes just the native XDCAM with renders done to ProRes) and am doing heavy looks inspired by Bourne Ultimatum but pushed slightly further (it's an action film with Brittany Murphy - I'm the editor and this production company's set color correction budget for each film they do only allows for CORRECTION in a DaVinci room, 6 hours max is all they will ever pay for so no stylistic additions - they love my test looks from MB and have asked me to CC the entire film for the look and then have their DaVinci guy make sure it's all legal for distribution - there's a 1% for theatrical so my main concern is DVD). I'm on a Mac Pro quad 3.0 ghz, 12 gigs of ram, ATI 3870 card, 10.5.7, FCP 6.0.5, footage on an internal SATA drive.
1. My plasma is 3 years old now, and is a 42inch EDTV Panasonic professional "monitor" with an extra input board I purchased to add an HDMI port. Obviously it can't show a pixel accurate representation of 1080p video but will the MXO2 Mini support an EDTV plasma at all? My TV does support 1080 signals and everything in between and has many advanced color controls such as gamma etc.
2. I export cuts of of the film all the time to H264 for iphone playback (the director loves seeing cuts of scenes on set on his iphone). Does the MXO2 mini w/ MAX speed the encoding of H.264 from ANY other codec like XDCAM, DVCPRO HD or RED files or is it just a set few that it can accelerate?
Thanks!
FCP / AVID EDITOR
Features : Television
www.DefiningFilms.com
Re: MXO2 Mini quick questions... by Matrox_TM_ChrisE ellis on Jun 22, 2009 at 8:29:22 pm
Hi Bryan,
What is the frame rate of your feature? With the Mini, when editing 23.98 the outputs are set to 59.94. The HDMI on the Mini will output 1080 and if your plasma supports this resolution then you should be able to play it back like you would from any other HDMI source. As you mentioned though, the scaling will be handled by your monitor.
With regards to your H264 question, the Max option will accelerate H264 encodes from any codec.
