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March 7th 2011

A live "as it happens" test! On the morning of the 1st March I filmed the launch of the new Morgan Three Wheeler at the Geneva Motor Show. (Watch it here.) In the afternoon I edited my efforts and by the end of the day uploaded it to my PickProd.co.uk website. The encoding into H.264 was thanks to a loan of a Matrox Mini Max and, I have to say, it did its job superbly. But how does it compare to the alternatives? We took about 1 minute of my finished piece and exported it as a self-contained Quicktime movie with the same timeline codec: 1280 x 720 50p ProRes 422. It came out at 1.09 GB. Next we stuck it into Compressor to use the software to turn it into an H.264. Still 1280 x 720 50p but with 44.1 KHz AAC audio at a bit rate of 4.403 (Mbps). The resulting file came out at 40.5 MB - some difference! But, it did take just a shade over 13 minutes!

Next up was Nick W-B's Elgarto Turbo HD stick using the Turbo.264 HD software supplied. Pretty much the same technical settings were used (4.4 Mbps, etc...) and the resulting file came out at 40.8 MB but it took just 2' 07". Has to be said, pretty impressive.

Finally the Matrox MXO2 Mini with Max H.264 encoding built in. This is accessed via their own presets within Compressor and matching the settings of the previous two examples we sat back to wait as it did the encoding. A file of 41.9 MB was produced in just, wait for it, one minute and nine seconds! We were all impressed.

But what did the files look like and how did they compare? Well you can watch them here (give them a minute or two before trying to get them to play!) and download them yourselves from the right hand side and judge for yourself full size. We put all three up alongside the original and, without a doubt, the Matrox encoding had the most accurate colour redition and the "sharper" looking picture. Has to be said, though, that none of them disgraced themselves.

So, compared to Compressor encodeing the Elgato Turbo HD was a bit over SIX times quicker but encoding with the Matrox box was ELEVEN times quicker - with the most impressive picture too.

If that was all the Matrox MXO2 Mini did then few would agree that it was good value for money at 659 (incl VAT) compared to the Elgato at 81 even if it did produce the best "quality" picture. But its everything else that this little box does that really makes it shine: most noteably the ability to turn your HDMI screen (i.e. your normal telly) into a pretty colour accurate video monitor using Matrox's colour calibration tool (I tried it with a Panasonic 32" - superb!). Check it out, I think every edit suite should have one and the fact that you can pack it in your suitcase and encode in the field is a real added bonus.