Matrox M264 cards feature hardware-based H.264 encoding and decoding capabilities. Depending on the card used, up to four UHD XAVC streams can be encoded/decoded simultaneously. Viz Engine and Channel Recorder are both capable of using the M264 cards for playback and capture of XAVC material, without affecting CPU performance.

Key Features

  • PCI Express Cards

  • H.264 video encoding and decoding

  • UHD resolution support

  • 4:2:2 10-bit

  • Sony XAVC compliant encoding including 4K XAVC Long and 4K Intra Class 480

  • Panasonic AVC-Ultra compliant

Performance for 4:2:2 10-bit Streams for M264 (S1)

Resolutions

Structure

Format

Number of streams

2160p

I-frame

XAVC Class 300 & Class 480 / AVC-Intra 4K

1

1080p

I-frame

XAVC Class 200 / AVC-Intra 200

3

1080i

I-frame

XAVC Class 100 / AVC-Intra 100

10

2160p

Long GOP

Generic / XAVC 4K Long

1

1080p

Long GOP

Generic / XAVC Long50 / AVC-LongG50

5

1080i

Long GOP

Generic / XAVC Long25 / AVC-LongG25

10

720p

Long GOP

Generic / XAVC Long25 / AVC-LongG25

10

Note: Since the S2, S3 or S4 models host more encoder/decoder chips respectively, the number of possible streams is doubled, tripled or quadrupled.

M264 Configuration

Viz Engine

Viz Engine automatically uses all M264 cores available from the installed M264 boards in the system. There is a configuration to be able to choose the cores to be used by a specific Viz Engine instance:

## Specify which M264 cores the engine is allowed to use (e.g. 0,1,2). Empty string means the engine can use all of them. Use any non-numerical string, such as None, to not use any M264 cores.
#* Matrox.Clip.M264CoresToUse: Default=
# Matrox.Clip.M264CoresToUse =

For example, when using dual channel with an M264S4, it might be desirable for the first instance to use a different set of cores than the second instance, so the configuration for the first instance would look like this: Matrox.Clip.M264CoresToUse = 0,1

The second instance configuration would look like this: Matrox.Clip.M264CoresToUse = 2,3

These configurations mean that the first instance can only use the first and second core, while the second instance can only use the third and the fourth core of the M264S4.

Channel Recorder

When the XAVC UHD codec is used, Channel Recorder automatically detects any installed M264 card and uses it for encoding. No further configuration is necessary.