QC, Matrox MXO2 mini & CMIO vs Quicktime... please help.

cwilms's picture

Last summer I designed/built/operated a live graphics system for an event but found some scary potential issues that I wanted to ensure I had eliminated them for this years event. I like to prepare things early and so still have 4-5 months to resolve any issue I run into. But right off the bat an issue has come up after I had to upgrade to 10.8.2 that I'm not sure what to do with; but first I'll explain my setup so you can follow my train of thought:

Last Year's System: - 17" MacBook Pro (2.2GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM) - DisplayPort served a Matrox DualHead2Go DP Edition with two 720p shorthrow projectors attached with projected image area of 2560x720. - 1st USB port powered the Matrox DualHead2Go) - 2rd USB port was not used as I think it shares the same power bus as the 1st USB port and was MAXed out. - 3nd USB port was for a Logitech c910 webcam on a USB extender that optically captured Datamatrix codes that I used as a string generator for live onscreen graphics. - Expresscard 34 slot was used for live video input through a Matrox MXO2 mini connected to a 720p camera via HDMI. - OSX Lion 10.7.4 - Quartz Composer 4.5 (running in 64-bit mode) - Matrox Drivers 3.01 (Quicktime compatible)

Main Issues from last year: - Matrox MXO2 not always displaying the HDMI video signal correctly. I think I have a power-up procedure that reliably resolves this issue. - Some major performance tweaking to the QC comp to get a stable and smooth running graphic output. - A major memory leak issue in QC when using a video input patch but not displaying the output on a billboard or sprite. An offscreen billboard resolved this issue.

As I mentioned earlier I had to upgrade my OS to 10.8.2 but in doing so I am now under the unsupported software list for the Matrox MXO2 mini, at least as a capture device, apparently it is supported now as a delivery device as of last week. To be honest the Matrox driver release is VERY confusing. I understand the main issue to be Matrox move to support CMIO (CoreMediaIO) rather then QuickTime-based IO and some major change Apple made in that area between 10.7.4 and 10.8.2

Changes to this years system: - OSX Lion 10.8.2 - Quartz Composer 4.6 (running in 64-bit mode) - Matrox Drivers ??? (Quicktime compatible???)

1) Does anyone know of an HDMI capture device that works over an expresscard34 slot? As you can see above my MacBook Pro is pretty maxed out so my input choice is very limited. 2) Does anyone have the inside scoop on wether the Matrox drivers will better support video input under 10.8.2 in the coming months? 3) Are there any Quartz Composer video input plugin/patches that work under OSX 10.8.2 that are CMIO based rather then QuickTime-based that may work better for me? Kineme VideoTools is CMIO based right? Is a release planned to run under 10.8?

I do have my eye on the VUO project, it looks very exciting!!!