The Mini is a small external device that connects to your computer either via a PCI express card (for desktops) or an express card (for laptops) - you choose which version you want to buy, although you can can extra adaptors as needed (if you wanted to plug it into a desktop sometimes and laptop others, for example.)
It has HDMI, component, SVIDEO and composite in and out and works at up to 1920 x 1080 resolution. It can capture into Matrox MPEG I-frame format or into uncompressed video (you will need a decent RAID system to achieve the rates needed for uncompressed HD, just like any other capture card).
The price is only £338 +VAT.
The Mini comes with a stand-alone capture program which lets you capture and playback footage, and will also work with Premiere Pro CS4. Capture of DV or HDV will be handled by Premiere's normal capture module.
The Mini is not a replacement for the Matrox RT.X2 or Axio - those cards do a lot more than the Mini because they improve Premiere, give better realtime performance and add a lot of extra features to Premiere. The Mini does not have any of these extras - it is just an i/o box for Premiere Pro. This is why it is considerably cheaper than the other Matrox card.
If all you need is the extra i/o given by the Mini, or if you are editing on a laptop and want a proper HD output, then you really want the Matrox Mini!
The MX02 Mini will work on both Mac and PC, and is AVAILABLE NOW. Read more on the DVC website.
Matrox Compress HD
Compress HD is a board, rather like the Grass Valley FireCoder Blu, which encodes to H264 for Blu-ray faster than realtime.
The biggest problem with H264 is how long it takes an average PC to encode. Typically an hour will take 5-6 hours to make. Presently the only way to speed up the encoding of Premiere Pro is to use the nVidia Quadro CX card - a high end graphic card whose "CUDA" chip can be used to halve Premiere rendering times. Now Matrox Compress HD will take things further.
It will do both low-res and HD versions of H264 (for IPODs and phones up to Blu-ray) and will work inside the Adobe Media Encoder. This means you should be able to send a timeline to AME, set it encoding using Compress HD, and then carry on working in Premiere with minimal processor hit - as Compress HD will be doing all the encoding on the board, your computer processor should carry on working normally.
Compress HD will work on PCs and Macs. On a Mac it will work inside Apple Compressor, direct from the Final Cut Pro timeline, or even out of QuickTime player, and compress to H264 faster than realtime. Given Apple's reluctance to add Blu-ray encoding to their products, this actually becomes one of the few ways to make proper Blu-ray files with Final Cut Pro.
Compress HD will be £375 +VAT.
Matrox MX02 Mini Max
Effectively the two devices combined - the Matrox Mini with the Compress HD chip installed - so it would even work on a laptop!
The MX02 Max and Compress HD scheduled for release in July. Support for using the Compress HD card with Matrox Axio and RT.X2 is scheduled for August.
To find out more or to pre-order visit the DVC website.