By Frank Capria, December 2, 2005
Recently an NLE manufacturer ran an ad reminding readers that not all editing systems had to begin with an A, a reference to the NLE Big Three of Adobe, Apple, and Avid. The ad made it seem like all the typical NLE buyer does is choose one of the three and get to work, but it's not nearly that simple. No editing system is an island-it's a part of a comprehensive postproduction ecosystem.
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Each of the Big Three has taken a different approach in its attempt to dominate that ecosystem. Apple and Avid use a mixed bag of proprietary and third-party software and hardware development to create their NLEs, but Adobe is all about the software. Because it has no hand in CPU, OS, or I/O hardware design, Adobe has control over the fewest parts of the ecosystem.
With Axio, Matrox fills in some of the blank space in Adobe's approach. The company isn't presenting Axio as simply an I/O boardset, but as a turnkey editing solution, which Matrox supports in its entirety. Matrox fields all of the support calls, whether they're about the Matrox hardware, the Adobe software, or the HP workstation. This single-point-of-contact strategy has kept many Avid customers loyal for years. Matrox is attempting to give Axio customers similar peace of mind.
Real-time overachievement
The first thing you notice with an Axio-powered Premiere Pro system is the responsiveness. Hit play, and playback commences instantly. There's no delay for buffering, even for sequences with multiple video layers and real-time effects. The confidence inspired by Axio's performance allows you to concentrate fully on editing, rather than worry whether the system is behaving as it should.
The specifications sheet for Axio makes some impressive claims, starting with guaranteed real-time playback of two layers of uncompressed 10-bit HD, plus an additional two layers of graphics with effects. In SD, the guarantee covers four layers of video and six layers of graphics. Nice, but spec sheets tend to be best-case scenario-I was looking for real-world numbers.
In HD, I built a sequence with four video tracks and two graphics tracks and applied to each track one commonly used effect, such as a blur, a picture-in-picture, a color-correction, or a garbage matte. That sequence played without a single dropped frame. I finally forced a dropped frame by adding a 3D effect to a video track. In SD, I became bored well before I forced a dropped frame.
Somewhere around eight video layers and 12 additional graphics tracks (each with effects), the system finally hiccupped. No system I've tested has ever exceeded its promised real-time performance by such a wide margin.
With Axio, real-time performance warnings are based on actual performance. When the numbers of recommended tracks or effects are exceeded, the potentially problematic area is flagged in the timeline.
But after playing the section, if Axio determines it can be played without dropped frames, the warning is removed- another subtle feature that builds confidence.
The Matrox Playback Settings allow the user to set the threshold for the performance warnings. A slider lets you choose between safe and aggressive, which is very useful. You can offline your show in aggressive mode, then move the slider to safe before going to tape. Axio also gives the option of reporting lost genlock during playback and dropped frames.
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Some of the best features of the Axio system are found in the smallest details. The ability to set the thresholds for real-time performance warnings is welcome.
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Accelerated effects
In order to get as much real-time performance from the system as possible, certain Premiere Pro effects, such as Motion, are handled by the Axio hardware rather than the CPU. Other effects, such as chroma keys and the 3D DVE, have been totally rewritten by Matrox. The Matrox versions of the effects have the familiar Premiere Pro interface. The interface differs only where Matrox has added features.
Matrox's 3D DVE is one of the best I've ever used, and significantly outperforms the DVEs in both Avid and Final Cut Pro. Motion and edges are smooth, and-no surprise- real-time performance was superior. Multiple DVE moves can be played in real time in SD. Other nice touches include rounded edges and the option of placing borders inside or outside the image window.
One of the nicest features of the Axio system is the ability to add a shadow to any keyed element. It's an amazingly useful feature for greenscreen work, as the slightest shadow is enough to make the foreground subject appear to be on a different plane than the background. Implemented correctly, it can look quite natural. Small touches such as this, peppered throughout the Axio editing environment, add up to significant time-savings over the course of a project.
The color-correction effects have also been rewritten for Axio by Matrox. Both the primary and secondary corrections get the added feature of color matching. This is incredibly useful when trying to match skin tones from scene to scene. Color matching can be confined to shadows, midtones, or highlights, or adjusted globally. The added performance and features of the Matrox color-correctors are a significant improvement over Premiere Pro's standard color-correction tools.
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Matrox rewrote many of the most popular Premiere Pro effects to be optimized for the Axio hardware. In the process, Matrox added useful features. For example, the Matrox Color Corrector includes color matching.
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Formats, codecs, and quality
Axio captures a variety of formats and codecs. Standard-definition codecs include Matrox's DVCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, 8-bit uncompressed (601), 10-bit uncompressed, and MPEG-2 I-Frame. In HD, Matrox supplies an Offline HD codec and an MPEG-2 I-Frame codec, and can edit uncompressed as well. The MPEG-2 codecs allow the editor to select a data rate (from 50 to 300 Mbps in HD). At 200 Mbps, the HD image was definitely acceptable for broadcast. In fact, simple scenes such as talking heads looked quite good even as low as 100 Mbps. With the test footage of dancers I used, never did I feel the need to allot more than 200 Mbps for the shot. Without the benefit of a side-by-side split screen, I can only say that, to my eye, the Matrox codecs are comparable to the Avid DNxHD codecs at similar data rates.
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Top to bottom:
Uncompressed 300 Mb, and 100Mb.
The different mattes are to the right.
The Matrox MPEG-2 I-Frame codecs yield excellent results. To test for subtle artifacts, I sampled some MPEG-2 frames into After Effects and used the difference transfer mode to compare them to the original HD image. Only by increasing the contrast by a factor of 10 was I able to see any differences, and they were quite negligible.
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What about HDV? Support for HDV and DVCPRO HD have been announced for the 1.5 release, scheduled for late 2005 as of this writing. Version 1.5 will be a free upgrade for version 1.0 owners. Also announced for the next release is the ability for SD systems to play and edit HD material, allowing a facility to use a single HD system as ingest for several SD workstations.
Because Axio allows for multiple codecs to be played in real time from the same timeline, it's possible to save a lot of disk space by tweaking the capture data rate based on the shots' requirements. Unlike Final Cut Pro, Axio won't allow mixed resolu-tions to be played from the same timeline. Although I haven't found the need for it in my work so far, I can imagine the day in the not-too-distant future when a docu-mentary may include both SD and HD material in the same timeline. For now, Axio switches effortlessly between SD and HD projects. Close one, open the other, and the system adjusts automatically.
Because Axio is so tightly integrated with Premiere Pro, experienced Premiere editors will have no trouble adapting to the Axio environment beyond remembering to use the Matrox versions of the Premiere Pro plug-ins. A nice feature would be a project management utility that would allow the editor to replace standard Premiere filters and effects with Matrox equivalents where applicable, maintaining the original set-tings. This would help in situations where a project moves from a non-Axio offline system to an Axio for finishing. It would be a lot of work to replace every color-correction effect manually with its Matrox counterpart.
Final analysis
After spending some time with Axio, I could really get used to it. It makes editing in Premiere Pro a better experience.The relationship between Adobe and Matrox makes a lot of sense on the grand scale of the postproduction ecosystem. Premiere Pro's market presence is huge-it's come a long way in its capabilities, and Adobe continues to pour resources into its development. It's a good fit for Matrox's product line in general, and its implementation in Axio is impressive. So, although it's easy to understand Matrox's reasoning in making Axio work exclusively with Premiere Pro, it's an approach that presents some difficulties in terms of how Axio fits in its target market.
Most facilities have already chosen an NLE platform, and, generally speaking, it's not Premiere Pro. I've heard of several Avid shops that have switched to Final Cut Pro, and a few Final Cut Pro shops that have done the reverse, but I haven't come across a facility working in SDI and HD that has abandoned either Final Cut Pro or Avid for Premiere Pro. It's those facilities, already working in those formats, that are Axio's prime market. I'm not sure there's enough growth in the high-end postproduction world to generate sufficient sales, so Axio will have to win converts from other platforms. And there are some likely candidates-a lot of Avid Meridien systems are about due for replacement. Meridien owners will find a lot to like in Axio at about half the price of a Media Composer Adrenaline, but asking them to trust Premiere Pro will be a difficult task. Although Premiere Pro is a fine tool, it suffers in the marketplace for the sins of its ancestors- the name has baggage. Many Final Cut Pro owners could also appreciate Axio, but how many will switch editing applications and operating systems to do so?
Axio is good enough to make Premiere Pro a viable alternative for most any shop needing real-time SD and HD performance. It will be interesting to see if enough shops give it the chance.
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