Matrox MAX Technology 2.0 for Mac Delivers H.264 Video up to 500% Faster Without Sacrificing Quality

(Montréal, Canada--July 14, 2010) Matrox® Video Products Group today announced the immediate availability of Matrox MAX Technology 2.0 for Matrox MXO™2 I/O devices and the Matrox CompressHD card for Mac. Matrox MAX 2.0 for Mac is a unique technology that implements faster than realtime H.264 encoding for resolutions ranging from iPod to HD. It uses a dedicated hardware processor to accelerate the creation of H.264 files for the web, mobile devices, and Blu-ray.

By using specialized hardware acceleration, jobs are finished with amazing speed and system resources are liberated for other tasks. Quality and flexibility are ensured through direct integration with Apple Compressor and support for other applications on the Mac such as Telestream Episode, Final Cut Pro and QuickTime Pro through the QuickTime codec component.

The key feature of this release is the addition of many new control parameters such variable bit rate, constant quality, scene detection, noise filtering and many more, that let users optimize encoding speed and video quality. Web video publishers, in particular, will appreciate the ability of Matrox MAX 2.0 to deliver superb quality video at low bit rates.

“Video professionals delivering H.264 content for the web, iPad, iPhone, iPod, or Blu-ray discs, know how painful it can be to wait for the long encoding times needed to create high-quality video files using software only,” said Wayne Andrews, Matrox product manager. “They might even be tempted to sacrifice quality for speed. With Matrox MAX 2.0, they no longer need to even consider making that trade off.”

Key features of the Matrox MAX Technology 2.0 for Mac

• Faster than realtime creation of H.264 files, for resolutions ranging from iPod to HD
• A specialized, dedicated hardware processor liberates system resources for other tasks
• Accelerated encoding for Blu-ray, Apple TV, YouTube, Flash, web formats, and mobile devices including iPad, iPhone, and iPod from various video sources including SD, HD, and RED proxy files up to 2K
• Direct integration with Apple Compressor to simplify workflow
• Support for Telestream Episode, Final Cut Pro, and QuickTime Pro through the QuickTime codec component
• Customizable encoding parameters including VBR, CBR, constant quality, scene detection, noise filtering and many more
• Creation of Blu-ray H.264 files that can be authored in Apple Compressor, Adobe Encore, and Roxio Toast then burned without re-encoding
• Support for Apple Qmaster to take advantage of multiple systems with a Matrox MAX processing engine for distributed encoding across a network

Price and availability
Matrox products are available through a worldwide network of authorized dealers. The 2.0 release for Mac is available to registered users of Matrox MXO2 devices and Matrox CompressHD cards as a free download from the Matrox website.