The Matrox Mojito MAX is a new SDI, HDMI and analogue HD/SD video and professional audio I/O card that includes an onboard Matrox MAX H.264 encoding accelerator, which is claimed to be a first on any professional I/O card, writes David Fox.
Besides providing broadcast-quality input and output for such post-production applications as Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium, Apple Final Cut Studio and FCP X, plus the new Avid Media Composer 6, it also lets users deliver H.264 files for the web, mobile devices and Blu-ray up to five times faster than software alone without sacrificing quality.
Other features included in this 3/4-length PCIe card include 10-bit hardware scaling (for up-, down- and cross-conversion, including framerate conversion) and inexpensive HD monitoring with the Matrox HDMI Calibration Utility.
The accelerator can cope with resolutions from 64×64 to 1920×1080, at bit rates from 100Kbps to 50Mbps, at various frame rates, with a choice of constant bit rate, constant quality or variable bit rate, built-in noise filtering, de-interlacing, and scene detection.
“The time-saving benefits of our unique MAX H.264 accelerator have been long appreciated by users of our portable MXO2 I/O devices, but many customers have been asking for an economical card for Mac Pro and PC workstations that can do the same job,” said Alberto Cieri, senior director of sales and marketing at Matrox.
“Mojito MAX nicely addresses the need for a single-slot card with SDI, HDMI, and analogue I/O plus H.264 encoding speed and quality — all at a breakthrough price point” – which is €799, £749 or $995, including the card plus a complete video/audio I/O breakout cable and an HDMI cable.
Matrox Video Products Group has also announced support for Media Composer version 6 for capture, monitoring, and output with its entire range of MXO2 I/O devices (pictured), costing from €382, £338 or $449.
“Matrox MXO2 MAX I/O devices are unique on the market in giving Avid editors lightning-fast H.264 encoding directly from Media Composer 6,” said Cieri. “They are also still the only solutions that connect anywhere, Mac and PC, via Thunderbolt, PCIe, or ExpressCard/34 — with the same versatile unit.”
