Media 100i to DVD Studio Pro

[Floh Peters]

Since your Media 100 version has not been updated in years, the “old” article is still valid for your system. And, yes, if you want a great result, BitVice is still the way to go. The only real question is where you want to encode, on your G4 or on your iMac. I would recommend doing the encoding on the iMac, since it will be MUCH faster with the new BitVice 2. But one thing you then have to do is to bring your material over to the iMac, either via Network or via e.g. a FireWire drive, which will take longer than only a by-ref export. If you want to bring it over to the iMac I would recommend a “self contained” export from Media 100 i instead of the by-ref export, since you will get a QuickTime with your whole material. If you do the export to a FireWire drive you can use as a transfer disk, you could simply bring the disk over to the iMac and do the encoding there.
Make sure that you download the Intel-compatible Media 100 codecs from the Media 100 website (found under Support->Download->V12+). Or, if you want to do yourself a favor, get a copy of Media 100 Producer for the iMac to see the benefits of the new releases.

[Robert L. kopf]

Thanks for the reply. Can you elaborate on what you mean by “self contained” export? What choices, settings, etc. do I make? And can I get by with BitVice Lite?

[Floh Peters]

I mean self contained as in Export the clip as “Self Contained” instead of “By Reference”. By Ref exports create a file which is small and points at your original media files. Self Contained exports contain the actual media files and don´t rely on linking to your original media files.

[Robert Kopf] “And can I get by with BitVice Lite?”

If you want to create DVDs with a great image quality? No. If you want to create DVDs with bad image quality, you can even get by with Compressor.

[Robert L. kopf]

Yes I get the part about it being self-contained so as to contain the actual media files. But as I recall, there are many different choices, Quicktime movie, 3G, AVI, DV Stream, etc. Are you saying that I should just select “Self-Contained Movie?” Are there any other things to select like quality choices or whatever?

Sorry to be such a newbie. But this is the first time in all the years I’ve been working with Media 100 (I go all the way back to the 2.6 Nubus systems) that I’ve ever done anything but master back to tape. So I just take the resulting files over to my new iMac where I will have installed the Media 100 codec (which one?) and run them through BitVise 2 to produce MPEG-2 files that can then be used in DVD Studio Pro, right?

I might “do myself a favor” as you suggest, and get Media 100 Producer. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine anything it could do for me that I can’t do with Media 100i 8.2. Since I work pretty much exclusively from Beta SP tapes, and use only cuts and dissolves, what new features could I want?

As for Bitvise Light only being capable of bad image quality, why do they make such a product?

[Robert L. kopf]

I found and downloaded the Media 100 codec for intel Macs. I’ll order BitVise.

[Floh Peters]

[Robert Kopf] “Yes I get the part about it being self-contained so as to contain the actual media files. But as I recall, there are many different choices, Quicktime movie, 3G, AVI, DV Stream, etc. Are you saying that I should just select “Self-Contained Movie?” Are there any other things to select like quality choices or whatever? “

If you look at the “Export from Edit Suite…” dialog, you will see options for export: Self-Contained, By Reference and Other. For Self Contained and By Ref you don´t have additional quality/size/whatever options.

[Robert Kopf] “As for Bitvise Light only being capable of bad image quality, why do they make such a product?”

I did not say that BitVice light will only create bad image quality, I said if you want to create DVDs with bad image quality you could use Compressor. One of the most important features of BitVice, the DVNC noise reduction is missing from Light. Plus, the light version is based on the “older” 1.8 version of the software and is therefore not optimized for Intel-Macs, which means it will be much slower.
If you really want to save the money, try some encoding with Compressor first, and try to adjust your brightness/contrast/saturation/gamma levels to somehow match your incoming video (Compressor does not support Media 100s RGB 16-235 colorspace). Download a trial version of BitVice and look if the difference in image quality is worth the money for you.

[Robert L. kopf]

Thanks. You’re right of course. I should have looked at that again before asking that.

Do you know where the document referred to in this old post went? Is it still relevant to my situation?

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Re: Exporting Media100i v.8.2.1 programs out to DVD Studio Pro 4
by Floh on Jul 19, 2005 at 11:46:48 am

Take a look at this document. There more or less everything is explained and still true for DVDSP4. I would suggest installing the software codec to lower rendering times and to avoid problems. Then you don
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[Robert L. kopf]

Well I WOULD order the BitVise product (after trying the demo), if their website would accept my e-mail address. Apparently they don’t consider e-mail addresses at hotmail.com to be “official” enough! I can’t even e-mail them a message saying that I don’t have any other e-mail addresses. I’ll be damned if I’m going to go buy a domain name just to be “official” enough to order from some rinky-dink compression product company.

[Floh Peters]

You mean you cannot download the demo because of your Hotmail address? This would definitely not be a good idea from them. I will get in touch with the developer to see what is going on there. I´ll let you know.

[Michael Slowe]

Robert, I wouldn’t be too ‘snooty’ about BitVice, it’s bloody marvellous and the company Innobits in Sweden do a great job. Wait ’til you use it, you’ll see.

Michael Slowe