-
Optibase or Sonic SD-Series ?
I try to see which is the most quality/price valuable between the Optibase Basic Card and Sonic SD-1000 encoder ? I need a mid-high quality realtime encoding card, but I hesitate these two cards, have you some advices ?
Thanks
Pete -
5 Replies
-
Pete,
I think that the SD-500 is more like Optibase Basic card. You have to move up to the Optibase Publisher option before you can compare with the SD-1000.
I suggest you carefully read the specifications for the Optibase 200S Basic. It lacks what could be some critical things. Look close and you will see that the Basic does not have balanced audio inputs or support for Dolby AC3 encoding. But the most important factor may be that the full D1 resolution is 704×480 (704×576 PAL) and not 720×480 as is typcally used for DVD. 720×486 is an option – at additional cost no doubt. In addition, VBR encoding is optional extra.
Hope this is useful.
Dave
-
I would recommend you go the SD-500 route.
There really is nothing wrong with 704×480 mpeg2 streams per se,
but some authoring apps like ReelDVD have issues. If you make
any menu’s on a DVD with 704 encoded content you get a weird
10 pixel shifting to the right of your overlays. I have informed
a technical contact I had at Sonic about it many times and they
have chosen not to fix it. -
Hi Dave,
For Optibase basic, I was talking about Mac Encoder MPEG Master Basic VBR, but I think MPEG Master SDI is more appropriate. So to compare with Sonid SD-1000, did you ever see a quality difference that worth the price ?
Thanks
Pete -
Pete,
[Pierre-Luc] “I was talking about Mac Encoder MPEG Master Basic VBR”
Oh. Never mind. 🙂
[Pierre-Luc] “I think MPEG Master SDI is more appropriate”
Perhaps the MPEG Master DE would be closer still as the MPEG Master SDI does not encode Dolby stereo or pass through Dobly 5.1 – and you really should do the audio as Dolby.
[Pierre-Luc] “So to compare with Sonic SD-1000, did you ever see a quality difference that worth the price ?”
The SD-1000 is what, probably twice the price of the MPEG Master DE? No the quality difference is not worth the price. But if you are still thinking about going the Scenarist route you will probably find your work flow is a bit smoother sticking with Sonic products. Again it is probably not worth the price difference but should be considered.
Since we are talking about the Optibase Mac card you are now thinking of going the Studio Pro route?
Dave
-
Well, to be honest, I’m not sure yet which route to take. We always own DVD Studio Pro 3 and Sonic DVD Fusion. Our studio need many technical changes, we need many software/hardware updates to stay competitive. I would like to offer us more capabilities with a DVD authoring system workflow such Scenarist, but I really don’t know what’s worth the price for the quality and could let us push some limits with DVD specifications. We have 4 MACs and 2 PCs. I could stay on Mac with DVDSP and go with Optibase Master DE, but many potential clients told me they were not totally entrusting by a DVDSP workflow, especially for commercial titles. Although commercial titles is not yet a big part of our business, it could be great to go that way. But if SD-1000 doesn’t worth its price compared to Optibase Master DE, its a challenge question. So I’m asking many advices to many people to know what would the best to stay on the quality and satisfy future clients.
Not so obvious!
Thanks!
Pete
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up