What Are The Real Differences Between Storm & X100?

[leebo]

There is so much hype at both Canopus' and Matrox's web sites I can't make out what are the pertinent differences between the cards.

For instance, Canopus shows a rendering comparison using one of it's realtime efects - an effect the X100 dosn't have! What the hell kind of comparison is that??? It shows this effect as taking about 12 minutes to render with the X100.

Then, on the Matrox site, they state:
"If you exceed the realtime capabilities of the card, the Matrox TurboDV multi-layer compositing engine kicks in to render your segments in a flash."

How long is a "flash", exactly?

And Matrox, claiming that sometimes it's better to process effects in RGB, says :"This means higher precision for chroma keying, smoother zooms, and cleaner edges on DVE moves."

Over at the Canopus site, they show two graphics claiming to show how the anti-aliasing in their DVE effects produces "cleaner edges".

Canopus says their Storm card has:

Better compression
Better quality Mpeg2
More realtime tracks and filters
Vectorscop and Waveform monitors

Matrox says the X100 has:

More realtime transitions
Lower price
Better keyframing
Better color correction


Niether company claims it's card will get you laid, but you can always hope.

So, anyone out there have actual experience with these cards?

[darkufo]

I have been using the Storm2 Card now for a month and I'm very pleased.

The Hardware and Software encoders are both fast and produce great results. Using the large quantity of Canopus Transistion and Effects are very good, and require no rendering.

But the question for you is what do you want to use it for.

I use it along side Adobe Premiere 6.5 , and want to render quickly, and produce good mpeg results for final burning on DVD.

I have a miny review here in the Capture Card reports section.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCardRead=Canopus%20DV%20Storm%202&Search=Search

[VideoMann]

You will find your answer at CreativeCow.net under the Canopus User Forum

Post here:
http://www.creativecow.net/index.php?forumid=29


Good Luck

[mattcham]

The Canopus publicity documents are false and misleading.
This document from Matrox addresses the issues initially raised by Canopus, and makes a lot more sense:

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/pdf/canopus_got_it_wrong.pdf

Matrox also compares their X100 to Canopus DVStorm2 here:

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/rtx100xtreme/rtx100xtreme_vs_dvstorm2.cfm