Lightning Fast H.264 Encoding Card for Professionals
If you’re a professional content creator delivering H.264 files for Blu-ray, the web, and mobile devices, you need a fast, flexible, high quality encoding workhorse. Matrox CompressHD is the first implementation of Matrox MAX technology in an amazingly affordable H.264 accelerator card.

It works in systems with or without a video I/O device and extends the life of your current system investment, giving you the power you need to deliver today’s premium H.264 formats faster than ever. This low profile, half-length PCIe x1 card fits into Intel-based Mac Pros and Apple Xserve systems. Get yourself a Matrox CompressHD card and deliver your projects in a fraction of the time!

Matrox CompressHD can also be used with Windows-based systems.

Powered by Matrox MAX Technology

Matrox MAX 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 Blu-ray, the web, and mobile devices. 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.

• Accelerated encoding of H.264 files, for resolutions ranging from iPod to HD
• Works in systems with or without a video I/O device to enhance your delivery workflow
• Extends the life of your current system investment, giving you the power you need to deliver today’s premium H.264 formats faster than ever
• Low profile, half-length PCIe x1 card
• Works in systems with Mac OS X 10.5.6 or higher
• Three-year hardware warranty and complimentary telephone support

Support for Apple Compressor

Matrox MAX technology taps into Apple Compressor to let you quickly and easily create H.264 files from a variety of video sources including SD, HD, and RED proxy files up to 2K. You can use the three categories of Matrox MAX presets – Fast Encode, High-Quality, and Blu-ray – or you can create your own customized settings.

Matrox Fast Encode presets and Matrox High Quality presets are used to create H.264 deliverables such as those destined for Apple TV, YouTube, Flash, the web, and mobile devices including iPhone, and iPod. Matrox Fast Encode presets use the MAX hardware and your CPU to deliver H.264 files faster than realtime. Quality is better than Compressor Single-pass. Matrox High Quality presets use the MAX hardware exclusively, thereby freeing up your CPUs for other tasks. Quality is comparable to Compressor Multi-pass. Matrox Blu-ray presets use the Matrox High Quality technology to create Blu-ray compliant H.264 files faster than realtime. The Matrox MAX hardware performs proper color space conversions from HD to SD and SD to HD as well as proper color space conversion from RGB to YUV to prevent gamma shift.

Matrox MAX technology lets you create Blu-ray H.264 video files, directly from Compressor that can be authored in Apple Compressor, Adobe Encore, or Roxio Toast and burned without re-encoding on either Blu-ray or DVD media. Use H.264 level 4.0 if you want to create Matrox MAX H.264 files intended for mass replication of Blu-ray discs. Use either H.264 level 4.0 or 4.1 if you want to author and burn individual copies that are compatible with Blu-ray disc players.

Additional customizable encoding parameters supported in Compressor include:

• Variable bit rate to squeeze out the highest quality possible at the target bit rate. Matrox MAX analyzes each video frame and determines which frames require more or less compression data to deliver the highest possible quality at the targeted bit rate. You set the minimum and maximum bit rate per job.
• Scene detection to give you multi-pass quality in a single pass
• Source video complexity adjustment that lets you redefine the low and high clipping limits
• Data rate slider control to produce smoother or more abrupt transitions
• Sample rate option to monitor compliance with targeted data rate
• Frame rates: 15, 23.98, 25, 29.97, 50, and 59.94