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Update:

Based on the above information, I ran a test. It took nearly two hours to write and burn the Blu-ray disc: This was one hour of media, roughly 40 clips at 25 Mb HD MPEG-2 video, 128 Kbps AC3 Audio. 13 gigs total.

Does 2 hours seem a reasonable amount of time for this to take, with a 6X burner and 2X media? (2X media is all I have right now. I'll be purchasing some 4X media this week, and that should help considerably of course.) Based on what information I have provided, does this amount of time like an overly long amount of time? Or does this seem like the amount of time it probably should take.

Additional Questions:

What measures can I take to help improve on the speed of turnaround for writing out to and burning the Blu-ray media within the Encore application, without reducing the bitrate of the media itself.

What measures can I take with my computer hardware to help with this as well?

Thanks,

Stuart

Anyone?

Burn speeds cannot be influenced directly. Doesn't really matter what OS nor the type of project data - any burning program mereley sends a set of control info wrapped around a pre-formatted data stream and they'll do so at whatever maximum speed they can use. In your case probably the external nature of the USB device kills it off. Since it's a whole different device class (in Windows terms), different sensing procedures apply and since USB is a shared bus under constant plug&play surveillance, additional things may factor in. For 2x the result sounds okay, though, but you may not see any notable improvements with 4x. Internal SATA or eSATA would make things a bit better, since they provide better buffering, but depending on the combination of media and burner, there may always be states that spin down to other speeds, resulting in long-ish burns. The actual matter of transcoding assets pre-burn is unrelated and can be resolved with brute force or by converting them in other programs that are more efficient. Since you do not differentiate between the two, it is however unclear where you hope to shave off some time. In general you should just get used to the long times. That's just the way it is. Was no different back in 1998 when we burned DVD-R (mastering type, 3.95) at 1x speeds. Took almost an hour and burnt 100 bucks when it didn't work due to the media being so expensive back then...

Mylenium

Thanks, Mlyenium.

Regarding 2X vs 4X media with our 4X USB burner... You are right, I am not seeing any difference between the two in terms of speed of performance. I may try and do an exchange, get us an internal burner.

I really have to shave down on our transcode times. What suggestions do you have in this area? I'm ready to apply whatever "Brute Force" is necessary. Would you suggest:

1. Maxing out the RAM?

2. An upgrade to Windows Vista or XP 64 bit OS?

3. A different application for the initial transcode of media before importing into Encore? If so, what application would you suggest?

There is always the possibility, I suppose, of lowering the bit rate and complexity of the MPEG-2 files. This would of course be a compromise in quality and is the least attractive solution.

Can't accept the long-ish times. The nature/purpose of our product won't allow it.

Thanks again for your feedback.

-Stuart

      3. A different application for the initial transcode of media before importing
      into Encore? If so, what application would you suggest?




Hardware. QuadroCX with respective specialty plug-in for Premiere or external transcode units such as used commonly in big authoring houses and broadcast. Starting at 3000 bucks up to a few hundred thousand....

The rest is of no consequence. Transcoding is merely a processor thing, so before buying oodles of RAM, buying a new Nehalem-Mac or Core7i would do more on that end. Alternative programs may do a bit better (ProCoder 3 is for instance more multithreaded), but no miracles to expect there, either...

Mylenium

Thanks, Mylenium.

We are currently using a Digital Rapids system to real time ingest and encode the HD MPEG-2 files that we then import into Encore. How would QuadroCX play a role in this workflow? Would this be a redundancy? Or would QuadroCS play an intermediary role in preparing these files for import into Encore, after we get the files out of Digital Rapids.

Or is QuadoCX simply an accelerator that interfaces with the application to improve the transcode speeds?

-Stuart

The QuadroCX is just a normal graphics card with optimized plug-ins that can use CUDA to e.g. transcode assets or accelerate other features in Premiere. Anyway, you should have sufficiently worked out that part with your DR hardware, so it would not do anything for you. It really comes down to the choice of program here, it would seem, and I'm afraid this is the answer you won't like: If you really want to increase efficiency, you would/ should/ could possibly look into script-based authoring in Sonic Scenarist. In my view you are losing time due to how Encore deals with your streams, creates timelines, checks integrity, multiplexes and so on. Scenarist is much more direct in those matters and doesn't waste time and with its script engine, it could be used to quickly generate templates for semi-automatic media generation. It can't change the time it takes to burn, but depending on how full the discs are, make a notable difference for creating the data structures/ images (which then could be burned on another system while your authoring hardware is already doing the next disc). Of course at that point the question is, whether you would be able to shelve out 50000 bucks, so this may be utterly moot...

Mylenium

Thanks, Mylenium. Great points. How do you come to Scenarist having a price point of 50K? Is that the software price alone, or are you stating that as a price point for a complete hardware / software solution?

Do you think it's worthwhile to invest in an internal burner? You're right, I don't seem to be doing much better than 2X, even though my USB burner is 6X working with 4X media.

      How do you come to Scenarist having a price point of 50K?




Last time I saw a price for Scenarist it was $59,999 - not including the $69,999 CineVision encoder.

Yikes. Does it come with a sunroof?

      How do you come to Scenarist having a price point of 50K?




We have been in contact with Sonic regularly and we are also in contact with facilities that use it and have had the opportunity to use the software every now and then (nothing fancy, just to get a feel), but we were never ready to shell out the money ourselves, yet. I agree that it's expensive as hell, but it's the only tool besides Sony's BluPrint which supports all features and a considerable part of the money are licensing fees for technologies included in the BD standard to begin with.... At the moment it's the same exclusive market like back then when DVD started, but at some point things will certainly get better. The more people lust for BD, the more pressure it will put on everyone to lower prices. Ultimately it will be no different than it was, when some DVD license agreements ran out 3 years ago: Sell many licenses at acceptable prices, or sell nothing at all and make no profit. you should trust the market powers to take care of such matters in the medium run, though of course it doesn't help your current situation...

Mylenium