Matrox MAX not allowing resized movies

[Living Truth]

I've purchased an MXO2 Mini with MAX to accelerate the creation of proxies within our CatDV cataloging system. Whether I create them within CatDV or in Quicktime Pro I get a "Failed (-47)" or "Failed: qtKitErrorCatchAll (-50)" error -- unless I make the destination file the same pixel dimension as the original (in this case 1920x1080). That's pretty big for a proxy...

I'm sure Matrox MAX must let you resize your video. What might be my problem?

Ray

[Matrox_Support_Sam]

Hi Ray,

Can you confirm your MXO2 Mini MAX software version?
To confirm, are you exporting within CatDV or Quicktime Pro and you get the same error?
Have you tried performing export using supported encoding application such as Apple Compressor?
What version of Quicktime Pro are you running?

Please note the following specs for custom sizes when encoding to Quicktime .mov:

[Living Truth]

I took the MXO2 Mini home to test it with a MacBook Pro (I have both the PCIe card in my Mac Pro and the Express card for the MacBook Pro). Unfortunately, I don't have Compressor, but I'll consider downloading it from the iTunes store. (Quicktime Pro isn't supported?)

I'm not familiar with the width restrictions table -- where is that from? At any rate, my testing results have been really erratic. I have managed to get CatDV to "build proxies" at different file sizes, but surprisingly they are outside of the width ranges you've mentioned. I managed to get an 800 x 600 movie to convert to 800 x 600, but after trying out a few other frame sizes 800 x 600 wouldn't work anymore. While importing and testing different media of different dimensions to try to compress, I set CatDV to make 873x480 proxies of an 873x480 movie. It worked for the movie and seems to work for everything else (again, 873 is outside of the listed ranges). I've noticed that the Quicktime preset of 720x480 (16:9) does not work, but padding out the square pixel raster of 873x480 successfully gets the desired result.

When I start getting erratic and inconsistent errors I'm going to relaunch the software; it seems to increase the likelihood of success. Also, when I get the proxy creation to work it usually keeps working as long as I don't get creative or curious...

By "erratic and inconsistent errors" I mean that a clip might get a failed (-47) and when I retry it gets a (-108) error. Other errors I've gotten doing the same Build Proxy Media process:

(-50) (-8972) (-6662)

Now that it's working (and cross-my-fingers-stays-working) it's blazing out h.264 proxies 2 to 4 times faster than real time. It runs pretty hot though -- even at rest it's hot to touch. Though, the longer I run it the more consistent it gets...

[Matrox_Support_Sam]

Glad to hear the exports are working with certain resolutions. Have you tried the exports results using Quicktime Pro? Quicktime Pro is supported however, CatDV has not been tested or certified with MXO2 therefore, we cannot guarantee its results.
_________________
Regards,
Sam
Matrox Video Technical Support

[Living Truth]

I've had the same Apple errors and the same conditional success using Quicktime Pro, which isn't surprising since the actual work in CatDV is handed over to the Quicktime encoder.

I can live with the 873x480 for most of my proxy needs, but I may need a smaller "kept for posterity's sake" compression and frame size (mainly to show the contents of tape library material to prove it isn't of any use!). If your minimum height is 162 pixels, that means a 16:9 proxy would have a width of 288 pixels (162 x 1.7777) and a 4:3 proxy would be 243 (162 x 1.5), both lower than your suggested minimum width of 306. This would imply a minimum dimension of 306 x 172 0.5625 (306 x 0.5625) for 16:9 and 306 x 230 (306 x 0.75) for 4:3 media.

I don't have the MXO2 Mini set up at the moment but I'll try all of these, including the unsupported dimensions. Just so I understand, why are only certain widths supported?

[Matrox_Support_Sam]

I am not sure why certain widths are supported. Some players might not be able to read the headers of certain dimensions and therefore, not output correctly or at all.
_________________
Regards,
Sam
Matrox Video Technical Support