Kona 2 vs Axio

you did not receive a response, becuase most professionals never took the Matrox line seriously. Even when Matrox had a deal with Discreet for the Digisuite card set, their support was non existant (and Discreet refused to discuss the Matrox hardware if you had a problem). Bottom line is that with excellent products on the market from AJA, Blackmagic, Aurora, etc., and with professional solutions from companies like AVID and Sony, Matrox is the cockaroach in the mix. You wander around these trade shows, and see companies like Matrox, and have some prior experience with dealing with companies like Matrox, and you say "who buys this crap anyway".

Another excellent example of this is Bluefish, which is really Digital Voodoo. Everyone who has been dealing with FCP for a long time has dealt with Digital Voodoo - long before the original AJA Kona card. Digital Voodoo was SUCH a nightmare to deal with, that the company had to "hide" behind the Bluefish name, and even with amazing specifications in the Bluefish cards, NO ONE CARES, becuase no one needs that kind of abuse. Without knowing anything about Matrox Axio, I do know one thing - AJA support for their products is AMAZING, and Matrox support for their products is TERRIBLE. Will support for the Axio be different - will Matrox be more responsive, and respond to bugs, and changes from Apple - I don't know, but I would not want to be the one to find out.

This is a pro AJA forum, but with all the grunting, there is nothing wrong with products from Blackmagic and Aurora. And there was nothing wrong with the Pinnacle Cinewave line either, until Pinnacle pulled the plug. But Matrox - "forgetaboutit".
One thing is for sure, Apple screws with FCP and the OS, and if the hardware company isn't willing to respond almost instantly, you can take your wonderful hardware and shove it up where the sun don't shine.


Bob Zelin

I was hoping if Matrox would develope the Axio for The the New G5's and we get some awesome RT performance in SD and in HD

RT chroma, Titles, Slomo etc etc 2 graphic layers etc tc

I dont understand why are they only sticking to PPro even Incite is shut down now

They will sell more cards for the OSX than the PC. Axio is expnsive and comes with 1 year warranty repairs for them will be expensive like digisuite


Mody

[Walter Biscardi] "As for what you're looking for, we get RT CC, Slo Mo, multiple graphics layers, plus a lot more here no problem running a Dual 2.0 with a Fibre Channel Array."

We're in HD - so this doesn't work for us. Again, I'm not writing from frustration with Kona2, just curious about what Axio really does.

mixed formats in the same timeline.....ohhh I dream of the day......please, pretty please....animation codec in RT with alphas in an uncompressed or DV or HDV timeline.....ohhhh think of it.....nice graphic renders.....

Paul

[gary adcock] "Apple is a hardware company that wants to sell more machines, faster, newer machines, that is the driving reason not to allow for hardware acceleration."

The first sentence is correct, the second not so. While the initial success of FCP (3.0 and before) was mainly due (IMHO) to the many Mac faithful having another viable and reasonably priced NLE option, FCP's recent juggernaut (4.0 and current) IS due to it's superior performance in many (not all) ways. If Apple is to remain competitive
it MUST continue to offer hardware performance in whatever way they can.

[gary adcock] "on the AJA vs Axio - how many broadcast pro's are running matrox hardware? really?"

Agreed. As I pointed out somewhere here, I'm in no way interested in the Axio since it relies on PPro.

Finally it's not really Apples & Oranges - performance is performance.

[Walter Biscardi] "And if you don't care about PPro, why the heck are we even having this discussion? Without PPro you can't use Axio.
Usually when a person starts a thread like this it's because they are considering purchasing one or the other. You don't care to use PPro and I really don't know a single person who is using PPro / Axio in production so honestly, who cares about a comparison?"

Hi Walter,
First, the reason we're having this discussion is because I simply wanted to know how the cards compared. THAT'S ALL - HONEST. I thought that perhaps, just maybe, there was someone here familiar with both cards and who could answer my question without getting their hair mussed. So perhaps the question for you is... Can't someone be interested in KNOWING about the Axio without being interested in PPro? I'm in a purely HD environemnt, and while some of the features in Axio would be helpful if they ACTUALLY WORKED in a real world scenario, I'm not prepared, nor is the company I work at, to compromise with PPro. I doubt that will change with the releases of PPro 2 or 3 or 4 or whatever.

As for my original motive in asking, could it be that perhaps I'm interested in the Axio simply because there's been a bit of activity about the Axio over at the discrete edit COW forum and I wanted to be better informed?

[Walter Biscardi] "This is really a better question for the folks over in the PPro forum. "Is anyone using Axio and what realtime are you gettting?""

No. I asked here because I wanted professional responses, and I doubt there's anyone over at the PPro forum working in a similar situation to mine that could give me a valuable comparison with the Kona2 card (which btw we've all been very happy with). Besides, if the responses here are any indication, there'd be someone over there getting their nose out of whack because I asked about the Aja cards...

Regards,
-Les Kaye

[gary adcock] "Apple shuns all 3rd party vendors and/ or developers that try to offer hardware acceleration for FCP."

Thanks Gary. Which raises the question - wasn't the Cinewave card accelerated? Since I'm relatively new to FCP, and am returning back to the Mac world I where I started, I defer to you (and everyone's knowledge) here. Are you saying that Aja and/or other hardware developers could offer hardware alternatives, but don't?

I don't doubt that you're right, but I'm sorry, I just don't understand that. Unless Apple was developing their own hardware acceleration down the road...

-Les

[Les Kaye] "Thanks Gary. Which raises the question - wasn't the Cinewave card accelerated? "


Sorry Les
the Cinewave card you are referring to was discontinued 2 years ago,
BUT when it shipped for FCP 3 and 4 --yes, it did offer acceleration, mixed content for FCP just as the
Matrox RT cards did to a lesser extent, but apple has not really allowed any of the other hardware companies to accelerate anything since. That would not keep you buying a new computer every 12-18 months. ( my replacement schedule --yours may very with with the economy)

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

I love it when I hear that someone has had a Matrox system since 1997 and it looks like "FCP is in my future".....

So success does breed failure(by Matrox)? I guess your Digisuite cards sucked so bad that you're still in business.

Les

Up until two months ago I was the Senior Product Manager at Matrox, Axio was my product, I helped develop it from an idea on paper to a shipping solution. I have also been an editor and director for the better part of the last 10 years. I cut my short film on edit. Have worked on music video, DVDs etc. I recently left Matrox to focus exclusively on a new post production and production business, although I still do some demoing for them. Our main editing system is Final Cut Pro. I really disliked FCP until I saw version 4, to me it became really useable at that point. We are in the process of evaluating systems for online HD work. Axio is clearly the front runner, though the likelihood is that we get both a Kona 2 and an Axio. So I think I am in a pretty strong position to discuss this. Axio does everything they say it does on the brochure. Everything. An it will do even more moving forward. I have never lied on any brochure that was ever created for one of my products. There are many people in the industry who consider Matrox support to be outstanding. This has not always been true when the Matrox hardware was used with 3rd party software that did not use Matrox developed plugins. Axio does way more in realtime than Kona does. This is fundamentally because Matrox is able to not only accelerate Premiere Pro, but take over playback completely so that it is the Matrox engine that does the playback. Apple does not promote this type of environment. They prefer the simple I/O model. Axio is not appropriate for all users and of course if you do not like the editing application there is not much of a point to go any further. If this discussion is not appropriate for this forum, you can email me directly to discuss it further.

I have a question for the Kona 2 guys. What can you actually do with dual link and Kona2 today. I think I saw a demo of 444 capture at NAB but does that work at all inside FCP now? If this has already been addressed please point me to the info. Thanks.


Tony Manolikakis
Rev13 Films

Thanks for the reply. I DO think the Kona2 is an interesting product. I would be interested to hear other users experience with dual link HDCAM SR specifically. Thanks.


Tony Manolikakis
Rev13 Films

[AJA Sales Department] "KONA 2 has been capable of Dual-Link 4:4:4 capture and playback within FCP for the past six months. Perhaps some Cow users can chime in on their experiences with the card."

Tony
I concur, I have done 4 DL projects and one direct capture DL on set. I am currently working on another project that will be conformed in 4:4:4.
I have to admit that one of the coolest things is being able to do a real time Downconvert of any HD content. I have more than a few people that are amazed that I can send out a lowly composite NTSC signal from a DL video stream.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA