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Matrox CompressHD Test Drive: PC

Oct 26, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

Last time out, I promised a look at the Canon Vixia HFS10 camcorder for this edition, but I couldn't get enough lab testing done to feel comfortable writing about this wonderful little camcorder. Give me a few weeks. Anyway, in this issue, I'll substitute a review of Matrox's CompressHD H.264 encoding accelerator card for Windows.

By way of background, I looked at CompressHD for the Mac a few months ago, and found a very compelling value proposition: The hardware was better and faster than Apple Compressor at all tested configurations. In Windows, using the same exact hardware, the value proposition is narrower—primarily because Adobe Media Encoder, which uses MainConcept's H.264 codec, is both faster and higher-quality than Compressor, which uses Apple's own H.264 codec. Since the Windows version of CompressHD is designed to be used within Adobe Media Encoder, the starting bar is higher, and it's tougher to make a strong impression.

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To summarize my findings, on Windows, CompressHD is best suited for rendering HD input to high-resolution, high-data-rate formats such as Blu-ray or 720p files to upload to YouTube. Files produced at this resolution were equivalent in quality to those produced by Adobe Media Encoder, and they generally encoded significantly faster. In addition, I was able to load the Blu-ray files that I produced into Adobe Encore and compile a Blu-ray disc with no problem.

In contrast, I would avoid the Windows version of CompressHD for producing H.264 files for streaming; CompressHD couldn't produce files that met the target data rate of my standard 500kbps H.264 file, which Adobe Media Encoder easily could. Even at the higher data rate, the low-bit-rate files produced by CompressHD were substantially lower in quality than those produced by Adobe Media Encoder. In addition, with a minimum audio data rate of 128kbps, CompressHD is not well-tuned for streaming, since 64kbps, or even 32kbps, can often suffice for speech-only files.

On the Mac, CompressHD met my streaming target and produced good-quality output, so I expected the Windows version, which uses the same hardware, to get there as well. If you're reading this review sometime in mid-2010 or beyond, you should probably assume that Windows quality has improved, and see if you can find a more recent review assessing CompressHD's H.264 quality in streaming configurations.

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