The RT2000 is a perfect solution for digital video editing in its class. For $1099 you will get all the editing components you require. Matrox put an effort in not just supplying all the hardware necessary but also in bundling useful software packages that are needed by a home-user or semi-professional artist.

At this point there is one last question to answer. What platform is the minimum requirement for this kind of application? Matrox provided us with an 1 GHz Athlon KT133 reference platform that performed very well. Even though Matrox boasts about "REAL Realtime Editing" it is an illusion to believe that everything can be achieved in realtime. Bear in mind, there should be enough headroom for additional tasks such as converting or exporting your video clips that require a lot of rendering time. Therefore we recommend the following minimum requirements.

Recommended Minimum System Requirements

• Microsoft Windows Me or Windows 98 SE (NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 currently not supported)
• Pentium III or AMD Athlon CPU running at 750 MHz or faster
• 256 MB or more RAM
• one free AGP slot and one free PCI slot
• System drive hard disk with 500 MB of free space for software installation
• Separate hard drive for A/V content, more than 40 GB, formatted using FAT32
• 16 bit sound card.
• CD-ROM drive for software installation
• Video camera or VCR
• DV video camera (to use 1394 connections).
• NTSC or PAL video monitor