Matrox CompressHD The Need for Speed

LAFCPUG by David A. Saraceno

Anyone involved with delivering video content knows how incredibly efficent and stunning beautiful the h.264 codec is. It produces exceptional video quality at impressively low data rates for both streaming and stored formats. It is used for streaming and messaging video delivery, popular web sites like YouTube, Vimeo and ExposureRoom, and it is the codec of choice for blu-ray discs. The downside: encoding to h.264, even on powerful computers, takes forever.

The CompressHD PCIe board, from Matrox, addresses this bottleneck in a cross platform solution by significantly accelerating h.264 encoding for most delivery formats. Its encode presets are highly customizable, easy to use, and work within the Compressor interface in FCS2 and FCS 2009 on Intel MacPros. More importantly, the company has advanced the board’s capabilities through a series of firmware, and software updates

The Basics.
The CompressHD (CHD) package consists of a PCIe half length board, and basic install instructions. You’ll need a Phillips screwdriver and about five minutes to install the board on an available PCIe slot in your MacPro. Once installed, download the most current version of the software compatible with your OS from the Matrox web site, and install the software. A reboot is required.

Then access the CompressHD pane in your Systems Preferences to confirm the program is activated. Launch Compressor, and you’ll notice several new groups of Matrox encode presets. read more...