Ready For the Masses - Video Editing With Matrox RT2000

Windows 98 - Not As Professional!

At the moment Matrox only provides Windows 98/ME drivers for the RT2000. Windows 98 or ME is definitely very common amongst PC users but it is not the ideal platform for video editing. Compared to NT 4.0 or Windows 2000, it is a well-known fact that Windows 98 cannot manage system memory in an economic way. For example, we upgraded our PC from 256 MB to 512 MB of RAM - no improvements in performance could be noticed. No wonder, Windows 98 wouldn't get faster with this amount of memory. In addition to that, Windows 98 or ME are not as stable as NT4 or Win2000. If you work on simple projects you may not experience any problems. However, our extensive testing showed that Bill Gates' Blue Screen Department took revenge from time to time. Drivers for Windows 2000 are more than overdue. Matrox promised to releases them by the end of this year. Well, they have only a couple of hours left...

Another Deficit - No Color Correction Possible

Many users who plan to edit digital videos will be satisfied with the features of the Matrox RT2000. But we noticed another deficit. Color correction is impossible after saving your project on DV tape. You can only adjust color schemes while capturing. This is the only big difference between the RT2000 and a professional video-editing card.

High Quality Of The Analog Video Signal

The quality of the analog video-out signal of the breakout box is very good. Compared to products of the same price range the Matrox RT2000 sets a new standard. Even at a refresh rate of 60 Hertz the RT2000 manages to produce an impressive picture. Everybody who knows the bad TV-out quality of standard VGA cards will be positively surprised.