#MAX ? Comdex demo
Well I just got back from Comdex and was eagerly looking forward to seeing the
MAX in operation. Unfortunately, I was only able to get a demo of the
operational software showing the file handling capability and the editing
features. I went back on all three days to see it in operation but all I got
was excuses about still being in beta and still a little buggy. When I
pressured the guy to demo it actually running I saw the same old rollercoaster
file for 15 seconds and then it switched to another glob 3DS sample file and
after 3-5 seconds it crashed the system back to the dos prompt. After
rebooting the system and starting up again it ran for about 5 seconds and then
the system locked up. I took a very close look for artifacts and what I saw was
very comparable to the PAR in aliasing and pixelization in the busy areas of
the picture. Apologies were made and I was told it may be out later on in the
summer after some of the "SCSI interface" bugs are worked out. He also said
that there will only be one initial drive/controller that will be certified
because it is quite sensitive to drive/controller performance.
I saw the targa 2000 in operation at the Adobe premier booth and it sure ran
great. Some artifacting, more pixelization than the MAX, but the picture
looked real good. They had simultaneous SVGA and NTSC playback. The picture
was 640X480 24 bit. There was simultaneous sound and video being played back
from the 1.8 G. hard drive.