Realtime Flex CPU effects

The Matrox RT.X2 platforms rely on the power of your CPU to perform a variety of realtime and accelerated effects.

The Matrox Flex CPU effects are also available in Adobe After Effects. If you have a timeline in Premiere Pro with any of the Matrox Flex CPU effects and you copy/paste the timeline into After Effects, the Matrox effects will remain intact. This is a huge time saver, given that these effects are realtime in Premiere Pro.

Realtime primary color correction
Realtime secondary color correction
Realtime chroma and luma keying
Realtime speed changes
Realtime transitions
Realtime track matte
Realtime move & scale
Realtime SD clip upscaling in an HD timeline
Realtime HD clip downscaling in an SD timeline
Native Adobe Premiere Pro effects and transitions
Realtime timecode

Realtime primary color correction

Primary color correction is a critically important effect for all productions, whether to achieve continuity when cutting between shots, ensure broadcast safe levels, or establish and emphasize a “look”. The primary color corrector provides basic proc amp control; three-way color correction complete with master, shadows, midtones and highlights control; input/output level control; and RGB curves control.

Color correction
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Realtime proc amp controls

The Matrox RT.X2 platforms let you easily adjust four proc amp controls - hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast. Hue adjusts the tint of the colors in the image, saturation adjusts the vividness, contrast adjusts the difference in luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of the image, and brightness adjusts the level of black. You can also use these controls to create special effects, such as black and white, in real time.

Realtime proc amp controls
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Realtime color match and color balance

Colors can be corrected using nine parameters related to the black (shadow), midtone, and white (highlight) levels of your clips. You can easily match colors or balance blacks, whites, and grays against a reference shot in one simple step.

Color match
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Reference

Match

Corrected

Realtime input/output level control

Using the histogram display and level controls, luminance levels can be remapped to maximize the dynamic range of a clip. For example, bright areas can be made brighter and dark areas can be made darker. Five parameters are available - black, white, and gamma levels on the input; and black and white levels on the output. Auto white and auto black controls are also provided.

Input/Output level control
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Realtime RGB curves control

RGB curves control offers a fast, natural way to fine-tune the colors in your video. If, for example, you want to remove a blue tint from your video, you simply drag the blue curve down. With RGB curves you can also achieve wild color effects and other looks that are otherwise impossible.

Realtime RGB curves
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Realtime secondary color correction

The secondary color corrector is an advanced tool used for fine-tuning or dramatic effects creation. It offers all the controls found in the primary color correction filter with the added capability of limiting the effect to a specific range of pixels. Pixel selection can be done using color and/or brightness. Using the simple garbage matte tool, you can also limit the effect to a specific region. The pixel selection can also be inverted.

The secondary color corrector lets you achieve effects such as color pass and color replace. It can be used, for example, to change the color of a dress, deepen the background sky color, or to achieve an effect similar to the film Schindler’s List where only one object or person remains in color while the rest of the image becomes black and white.

Secondary color correction
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Realtime chroma and luma keying

The Matrox RT.X2 platforms provide one of the finest realtime chroma keyers in the industry. Clean blue- and green-screen keys are easy to achieve, even with DV and HDV material shot in less than optimal lighting conditions. Your video is upsampled to 4:4:4:4 resolution and advanced noise reduction algorithms are used to ensure superior results. The auto key button intelligently adjusts the key with soft edges, spill removal, and shadow preservation. If needed, you can further refine the key with manual controls. You can key on any color, not just blue and green. You can also invert the selection and display the matte being generated to fine tune the key.

Realtime chroma key
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The realtime luma keyer gives you low clip, low gain, high clip, high gain, and transparency controls.

Realtime luma key
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Realtime speed changes

You can use speed changes to emphasize special moments, extend the duration of shots to match voiceover timing, or enhance the feeling of dramatic shots. You can apply smooth slow and fast motion with field or frame blending.

Realtime transitions

The Matrox RT.X2 platforms support standard dissolves, SMPTE wipes, and organic wipes with soft edges and color borders.

Realtime transition
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Realtime track matte

The realtime track matte effect lets you superimpose one clip onto another using an animated matte, sometimes called a traveling matte, to determine how the two clips are composited (keyed). You can use a grayscale video or graphics clip as your matte, or use a graphics clip or graphics sequence with an alpha channel as your matte. When using a grayscale clip as your matte, areas of black in the matte create transparent areas in your foreground clip, areas of white create opaque areas that prevent the underlying clip from showing through, and gray areas create semi-transparent areas in your foreground clip.

Realtime track matte
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Realtime move & scale

This effect lets you apply multiple 2D DVEs simultaneously in real time to easily set up picture-in-picture effects. You can also use the move & scale effect to animate multiple titles in real time.

Realtime SD clip upscaling in an HD timeline

This effect is enabled by right-clicking on an SD clip in an HD timeline and selecting "scale to frame size". It provides realtime playback of SD clips upscaled to HD to let you mix NTSC material into a 1080i at 29.97 fps timeline or PAL material into a 1080i at 25 fps timeline. It also provides realtime playback of 576p or 486p SD clips upscaled to HD to mix into a 1080p timeline. (Does not apply to RT.X2 SD)

Realtime HD clip downscaling in an SD timeline

This effect is enabled by right-clicking on an HDV clip in an SD timeline and selecting “scale to frame size”. It provides realtime playback of HDV clips downscaled to SD to let you mix 1080i at 29.97 fps material into an NTSC timeline or 1080i at 25 fps material into a PAL timeline. On RT.X2, MPEG-2 I-frame HD clips can also be downscaled in an SD timeline. It also provides realtime playback of HDV 1080p clips downscaled to SD to mix into a 576p or 486p SD timeline. On RT.X2, MPEG-2 I-frame HD clips can also be downscaled in an SD timeline.

Native Adobe Premiere Pro effects and transitions

Some of Adobe Premiere Pro’s most popular native effects and transitions such as Opacity, Crop, Dip to Black, Black and White, Dissolve, and Additive Dissolve can be used in real time in SD. RT.X2 accelerates these effects and transitions in HD.

Realtime timecode

The RT.X2 platforms overwrite the Adobe Premiere Pro timecode filter so that it becomes realtime. The realtime time code effect lets you generate and overlay a time code counter on a video production. You can use it to make a dub of source tapes with time code "burn-in" then use these tapes to log scenes, create edit decision lists, or get client feedback on your finished production.

Realtime timecode
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