Apparently it was a long winter in Canada, as Matrox has just announced two relatively awesome products.
The first is the Matrox MXO2 Mini, a stripped down version of their MXO2 PCI-E/expresscard capture box. The MXO2 provides input and output for HDMI, analog component, plus svideo and composite. So, for all the folks who want to capture the 4:2:2 HDMI output for their cheap consumer cameras, this box makes that a reality for less than $500. That’s a pretty amazing deal.
At the same time, Matrox has announced the CompressHD. It’s a PCI-Express card which offers hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding. Unlike other solutions, it appears to directly integrate into transcoding products like Compressor, so it can plug into existing workflows.
Priced at less than $500, the CompressHD could become a no-brainer addition to many edit suites, assuming it does what it claims. Matrox just jumped a few slots on my “must visit booths” list.