The Matrox DSX hardware components are designed for optimal performance, flexibility, and scalability. They share a memory centric, asynchronous architecture that provides high-speed transfers of video, audio, and graphics data between I/O peripherals, co-processors, the CPU, and host memory.

Matrox Hardware Platforms for Mac

Matrox hardware components are designed for optimal performance, flexibility, and scalability. They share a memory centric, asynchronous architecture that provides high-speed transfers of video, audio, and graphics data between I/O peripherals, co-processors, the CPU, and host memory. On-board DMA engines allow data transfers to occur without any intervention from the CPU. Dedicated on-board 10-bit hardware scalers off-load CPU or GPU processes.

The full range of broadcast-quality video/audio inputs and outputs are supported in NTSC and PAL as well as 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 1080i HD resolutions at all frame rates. Support for 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios is provided. A variety of I/O configurations are available to meet your specific application needs. All of the hardware components are supported by the Matrox SDK for Mac.

The Matrox Multi input/output cards bring a new level of channel density to Mac-based systems.

Matrox Multi-Ingest – Four-channel 3G/HD/SD input card
Matrox Multi-I/O – Simultaneous, independent, two-channel input and two-channel output 3G/HD/SD card
Matrox Multi-Playback – Four-channel 3G/HD/SD output card

Matrox Multi-Ingest

Four-channel 3G/HD/SD input card

Single-slot, ¾ length PCI-e x8 card fits into Mac Pros and Apple Xserve systems
Video inputs: up to four multi-rate 3G/HD/SD SDI or two 3G level B, or two Dual Link, or two video + key
10-bit hardware scaling engine supports up to four HD streams or eight SD streams
16 embedded audio I/O channels per SDI stream
4 unbalanced analog audio channels for monitoring
Support for SDI ancillary data – ATC, AFD, CC
Analog blackburst reference input (tri-level or bi-level) with loopthrough
Auto-detection of input video resolutions
One analog LTC input
RS-422 port for device control

Matrox Multi-I/O

Simultaneous, independent two-channel input and two-channel output 3G/HD/SD card

Single-slot, ¾ length PCI-e x8 card fits into Mac Pros and Apple Xserve systems
Video inputs: up to two multi-rate 3G/HD/SD SDI or one 3G level B, or one Dual Link, or one video + key
Video outputs: up to two multi-rate 3G/HD/SD SDI or one 3G level B, or one Dual Link, or one video + key
10-bit hardware scaling engine supports up to four HD streams or six SD streams
16 embedded audio I/O channels per SDI stream
4 unbalanced analog audio channels for monitoring
Support for SDI ancillary data – ATC, AFD, CC
Analog blackburst reference input (tri-level or bi-level) with loopthrough
Automatic video bypass and A/V watchdog support
Auto-detection of input video resolutions Onboard live video mixer with zero frame delay
One analog LTC input
RS-422 port for device control

Matrox Multi-Playback

Four-channel 3G/HD/SD output card

Single-slot, ¾ length PCI-e x8 card fits into Mac Pros and Apple Xserve systems
Video outputs: up to four multi-rate 3G/HD/SD SDI or two 3G level B, or two Dual Link, or two video + key
10-bit hardware scaling engine supports up to four HD streams or four SD streams
16 embedded audio I/O channels per SDI stream
4 unbalanced analog audio channels for monitoring
Support for SDI ancillary data – ATC, AFD, CC
Analog blackburst reference input (tri-level or bi-level) with loopthrough
One analog LTC input
RS-422 port for device control

For more information, please contact a Matrox Sales Engineer

Matrox SDK (Software Development Kit) for Mac

Designed to enable rapid application development, the Matrox SDK for Mac is modeled on an asynchronous architecture that provides a common API across all Matrox hardware for Mac. A single development effort lets you create a variety of products at different levels to suit your target customers. The Matrox SDK for Mac provides comprehensive development tools for ingest and playout including stream synchronization. A dedicated team of talented applications engineers is available to provide assistance at every stage in your development so you can get to market quickly.

The Matrox SDK for Mac software modules are designed to give you the widest possible flexibility in developing cost-effective HD/SD video I/O products to satisfy the specific needs of your customer base.

Multi-stream scaler and de-interlacer
Supported buffer formats
Onboard live video mixer (Multi-I/O card only)
Ancillary data
SD and HD format conversion
Development environment

Multi-stream scaler and de-interlacer

10-bit hardware scaling engine supports up to four HD streams or eight SD streams
Scaling of multiple SD and HD streams simultaneously
Pixel-based scaling, positioning, and cropping
Downscale to any resolution with one-pixel accuracy
Horizontal and vertical upscale up to 8x
Spatio temporal de-interlacer for upscale
YUV 4:2:2, 8- and 10-bit surface formats
SD/HD colorimetry conversion

Supported buffer formats

V210, 2VUY, ARGB, Matrox 4:2:2, and Matrox 4:2:2:4

Onboard live video mixer (Multi-I/O card only)

Two live video mixers with vertical positioning and transparency control
Zero frame delay
Mix live video with video/graphics from the host
Supports YUV 4:2:2 8-and 10-bit, SD and HD live video
Supports YUVA 4:2:2:4 and ARGB 4:4:4:4 video/graphics from host

Ancillary data

Active Format Description (AFD) as per SMPTE 2016-1 and SMPTE 2016-3
Closed Captioning (CC) as per SMPTE 334-1, SMPTE 334-2, (CEA-608/708)
Ancillary Timecode (ATC) as per SMPTE 12M-2 (RP-188)

– ATC-LTC, ATC-VITC-1 and ATC-VITC-2 data

Insertion and extraction of AFD, ATC and CC as per SMPTE 291M
AFD and CC support via Matrox 4VANC
AFD, CC, and ATC direct data access support

SD and HD format conversion

Development environment

Operating system: Apple OS X Snow Leopard - version 10.6 and higher
Apple Xcode 3.2 and higher