Matrox MXO2 family and Adobe CS5 support

Over the past few days there has been some confusion about whether or not the Matrox MXO2 family of products work with Adobe CS5 Production Premium and Premeire Pro CS5. They do! All flavors of MXO2 including the Mini, Mini MAX, LE and LE MAX support Premiere Pro CS5!

The confusion appears to be caused by Matrox press release of CS5 drivers for MXO2 MAX products coming in June.

Matrox Announces an Integrated Toolkit for Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium
NAB 2010 – Las Vegas – April 11, 2010 — Matrox® Video Products Group today announced support for Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Production Premium software with Matrox MXO2 I/O devices for Windows. The key features of this new release include: full-resolution, full-frame-rate, multi-layer, realtime video editing via Matrox RT™ technology; lightning fast H.264 hardware encoding for Blu-ray, the Web, and mobile devices via Matrox MAX technology; and professional audio and video input and output with 10-bit hardware up/down/cross conversion.

"Adobe CS5 Production Premium offers a complete solution that is packed with performance breakthroughs for creating professional video, audio, and interactive content," said Simon Hayhurst, senior director product management, Digital Video and Audio Group at Adobe. "The combination of the new Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 with the tightly integrated Matrox RT technology and fast H.264 encoding via Matrox MAX, delivers time-saving and productivity advantages that positively impact nearly every area of professional editing and I/O."

"Adobe CS5 Production Premium delivers breakthrough performance enhancements. Combined with Matrox’s field-proven RT technology users will get more realtime editing capabilities with today’s popular formats including AVCHD," said Alberto Cieri, senior director of sales and marketing at Matrox. "Matrox technology and Adobe CS5 together offer a fully integrated way to maximize performance of the video production workflow."

Key features of Matrox MXO2 Family with MAX for PC with Adobe CS5

• Matrox RT technology that works with the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine to provide full-resolution, full-frame-rate, multi-layer, realtime video editing and advanced realtime effects
• Lightning fast H.264 encoding with Adobe Media Encoder, Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Encore® using Matrox MAX technology
• Broadcast quality HD/SD video and audio input/output for laptops and desktops
• Convenient form factors for use in studio, on set, in the field, and in OB vans
• Flexible support for leading codecs, file formats, cameras, and workflows
• Captures to HD and SD codecs – 8- and 10-bit uncompressed and highly efficient Matrox MPEG-2 I-frame
• Extensive application support including Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Encore, Adobe Photoshop®, Adobe After Effects®; Autodesk Combustion; and NewTek LightWave 3D
• 10-bit HDMI input, output and monitoring with color calibration controls including blue-only
• 10-bit realtime hardware up/down/cross version on capture and output
• Matrox A/V Tools application for fast capture/playback of audio, video, and still frames
• Three-year hardware warranty and complimentary telephone support

Price and availability
Adobe Creative Suite 5 support for the Matrox MXO2 devices with MAX for Windows will be available to registered users as a free download from the Matrox website in June 2010. Matrox RT features and H.264 encoding acceleration can be added to systems using versions of the MXO2 family without MAX by adding a Matrox CompressHD card.

The above press release is confusing, because you could read it and think that Matrox is saying that CS5 will not be supported until these new drivers are released. This is not the case! MXO2 Family of products (with or without MAX) work 100% with CS5 delivering the same level of features, performance and capabilities as they did with CS4.

The new drivers coming in June will adds the Matrox RT technology that enables the Adobe Mercury playback engine in Premiere Pro CS5 to utilizes the MAX hardware for additional real-time performance. The Matrox Mercury to the MAX drivers will be a free download for all registered Matrox MXO2 with MAX family of products.