Axio Awards and Reviews
Matrox Axio Awards |
 Millimeter Pick Hit 06 for Matrox Axio LE  DV Award of Excellence for Matrox Axio HD (DV Magazine, US, January 2006)  |
 Matrox Axio Wins "Making the Cut" Award (Bob Turner, US, April 2005) "As I usually do after the show, I've considered the large group of new products and chosen from the best of the best for my Making The Cut Awards," said experienced video editor and acclaimed journalist Bob Turner. |
 Matrox Axio Wins "STAR" Award (TV Technology, US, April 2005) “Our panel of editors and columnists walked the show floor in search of innovative and ground-breaking new products,” said Tom Butts, Editor of TV Technology. “The products we selected made the cut – they demonstrated their ability to help advance the acquisition and dissemination of audio and video in the professional video marketplace.” |
 The Vidy Award 2005 for Matrox Axio (Videography magazine, US, April 2005) "Recognition with an award is a true vote of confidence and admiration from the editorial teams of these leading publications," said Videography magazine editor Cristina Clapp. |
Matrox Axio Editorial Coverage |
| Matrox Axio ( Australasian Camcorder Magazine - By David Smith, June/July 2007) Matrox has long had a reputation for producing high quality, reliable video systems including useful breakout boxes with unusually thick connector leads says David Smith. "… this machine will pay for itself in a relatively short time simply by overcoming the time constraints of rendering. Your productivity will rocket!" "This is a superbly presented turnkey system that really works.” Read entire article |
| Matrox Axio Powers Georgiew (TV Technology – By Nikolaj Georgiew, November 2006) “Since we started using the Matrox Axio system, I’ve been able to expand the business. The feature I most appreciate is real-time color correction. In the past, we color corrected with a program that took too long. With Axio, it’s instantaneous. We also save time with the shine and 3D effects on Axio.” “I’m eagerly awaiting future developments on the Matrox Axio platform. The upcoming software release will enable us to fully exploit the capabilities of the Panasonic HVX200 camera with P2 support and the new 720/25p DVCPRO HD codec. We’re looking forward to moving to a tapeless workflow.” Read entire article |
Matrox Axio - Overall Rating: HOT REV UP PREMIERE PRO WITHOUT A LOT OF EXTRA DOUGH (Studio Monthly Magazine - Will Holloway, November 1, 2006) "I tried to kill AXIO HD, but I failed. I went through a shopping list of tasks to overlap at the same time to try to tax the processors. I mixed HD and SD video on the timeline, added several tracks of video (no HDV), color corrected a track of video, added two speed changes, added an aspect change with the pan and scan filter, added some titles, added a transition wipe, added audio sweetening and filters and tried to make audio changes with the waveforms and onscreen "mixing board" while the video played back. Not a single frame was dropped." "AXIO performs exceptionally well for the price, adding speed and punch to the nicely evolved Premiere Pro." Read full article Edit Review - Matrox Axio 2.0 (Video Systems - By D. W. Leitner, February 2006) "Fast, good, cheap. In product development, you're told "pick any two." In choosing an HD editing system, you're lucky to get one and a half...Matrox's Axio, [is] perhaps the closest we can get at the moment to 'pick all three.' ...I can report that the experience of editing several realtime streams of uncompressed 1080i HD with realtime effects minus any rendering speedbumps or timeline hiccups is like soaring free as a bird in the clearest blue sky. You could say that Axio distills and showcases everything Matrox has learned about realtime video editing in the past 10 years, and that it supercharges all that's great about the new Premiere Pro 2.0." Read full review DV Award of Excellence for Matrox Axio HD (DV Magazine, US, January 2006) Read full article |
Matrox Axio: A Conversation With Alain Legault (Digital Video Editing - By Charlie White, November 2005) "Digital Media Net's Charlie White visited the Matrox corporate headquarters in Montréal, and talked with Alain Legault, Vice President of Product Development for the Matrox Video Products Group. Legault is the driving force behind Axio and its hardware, which Matrox calls 'The Power of X.' In part one of this three-part interview, Legault talks about the new capabilities of Axio, its real-time performance, and the differences between Axio and its predecessor, DigiSuite." Read full article |
| Accessing Matrox Axio (Videography Magazine - By Oliver Peters, September 2005) "Adobe has made great strides in turning Premiere Pro into an NLE that's truly ready for primetime; Matrox Axio provides the level if hardware sophistication required by broadcaster and post facilities to turn that primetime with into reality." |
| Review: The Matrox Axio (Post Magazine - By Randall Simpson, September 2005) "I was won over by the Axio. If you need true, realtime HD or SD in your post suite, with no compromises, at a very reasonable price, this is a product you need to take a serious look at." Read full review |
| Matrox Axio HD Review, Part 1 Turbocharged Premiere Pro editing (Digital Video Editing - By Charlie White, September 2005) "Axio's claim to fame is its real time capabilities. In our testing, it was a thrill to see the amount of high definition footage through which this monster could slice. Matrox says Axio is capable of at least two layers of video and two layers of graphics, and that can be 10-bit uncompressed 1080i high definition footage. That's the calling card that drew me to the Axio, but it got even better as soon as I saw the performance of Axio on a dual processor dual core Opteron machine. In short, the machine is able to play back real-time effects at nearly twice that speed. How could it do that? The beauty of this design is that when processors get faster, Axio gets faster, too." "A key component of this system, and perhaps the part that could be called the "secret sauce" of this setup is its input and output capabilities, which include both 8-bit and 10-bit uncompressed video, and then there's the compressed codec which is configurable, so you can go from 50 Mb per second up to 200 Mb per second or anywhere in between." "One of Axio's strengths is delivering lots of real time effects using high-resolution files. A design goal for Axio's developers was to enhance Premiere Pro while keeping the same user interface that has become so familiar to Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects users...What Matrox has done here is overwritten the Premiere Pro effects, so there's no extra user interface to learn - if you know Premiere Pro, you'll instantly know what to do with the Matrox effects . They're virtually indistinguishable from the original Premiere Pro effects and can be used in perfect harmony with each other." Read full review Matrox Axio HD Review, Part 2 "Highly Recommended" Putting the Premiere Pro powerhouse to the test (Digital Video Editing - By Charlie White, September 2005) "...a general comment about what it's like to use Axio: It feels fast. When editing with any real-time system, I always look for instant response, and that's what you get with Axio. When you hit the Space bar, it starts playing the video immediately, no matter how many effects layers you have stacked up. You scrub your cursor on the timeline, and the response is instant. There's no waiting for a frustrating second or two for something to start. That might sound like a small detail, but if you're an editor, you know how all those two-second pauses can add up over a long day's (or week's, month's, year's) work. Bravo, Matrox - the thing responds instantly, and I like that. One more important point: In all of this extensive testing of almost every aspect of Axio, not once did I experience a crash of the system. It was completely stable and its performance was highly refined and trouble-free." "Summing up, you get a remarkable amount of power for your $30,000 with this Matrox Axio HD system. I especially like its ability to combine the strengths of all the best of today's hardware to give you the most real-time effects power and high definition that you can get for the money." "Highly recommended. 9 out of 10 stars." Read full review |
| First Look: Matrox Axio 1.5 Exclusive sneak peek; HDV and DVCPro HD
acquisition added (Digital Video Editing - By Charlie White, September 2005) This version 1.5 upgrade to Axio will certainly be a must-have when it's released toward the end of this year. It will be a particular boon for those who have opted to use the DVCPro HD format, which I believe is the best high definition format on the market today, striking a perfect balance between performance and practicality. I'm also glad that Matrox was able to bring Axio's realistic and appropriate implementation of the HDV format to market, a method which doesn't molest the already-compressed HD video too much. Given today's real world use of HDV and the realities of deploying high definition in a mostly standard definition world, the sleeper new feature might just be Axio's ability to downconvert its output to standard definition in real time. Altogether, this upgrade brings to the table a winning platter of features that round out the Axio package. Best of all, it's free. Read full review |
| Showreel UK reviews Matrox Axio (Barrie Williams in Showreel issue 9 autumn 2005, Owner pixelfantastic, London "...this system is, as it claims, realtime. At least four streams of SD video with DVE, colour correction, blur, speed change and even a handful of 32-bit graphics over the top, and still the system keeps playing. There is no hint of hesitation, or even a threat of a dropped frame. As CPUs increase in speed, the system produces more realtime streams before reaching saturation point. This is really a solid and professional product, and from the performance it is clear that this is going to become the new DigiSuite, only this time in HD too. The performance in HD is equally impressive, with two streams of uncompressed 10-bit HD guaranteed with effects. So at last we have an affordable system which can perform a really good chroma key on uncompressed 10-bit video in realtime, with spill suppression and edge softening in realtime, and still have some spare capacity for realtime titles." "The Axio system comes with just one heavy item of legacy: the preconception that Adobe Premiere is not a 'proper' editing tool. But the way it has changed over the past year has really taken a lot of professionals by surprise. This is largely due to Adobe having plucked one or two award-winning edit professionals from the basements of Soho and really listened to their real-world edit requirements. Premiere Pro is now a highly capable edit system. In all our testing we have not experienced a single crash or even a moment of anxiety. With the inclusion of keyboard mapping templates, Final Cut Pro and Avid users are now able to immediately switch the system to behave as they are accustomed to working. This means a lot of new keyboard shortcuts have been added and remain unmapped by default. I personally do not like using a trim-window for editing, but rather use the trim and discard method of editing, where we stop the timeline at the point we want to trim a clip, and press one key to automatically perform a razor. I was relieved to find this powerful shortcut exists, and I was able to map it to my own favourite keyboard setup. I was amazed that as soon as I had set up Premiere to emulate my current edit system's shortcuts, I felt completely at home." Read full review Visit the Showreel website |