Time to burn a 2-hour DVD

[Michael Slowe]

Well Kevin, I can’t answer for Encore but the current version of BitVice would downscale (from my HD ProRes file), encode over two passes within about 50 minutes. Then there’s the burn, for me in Toast and taking about ten minutes, including verification. If you have an SD file then the encode would be much quicker. With a two hour programme you will have to watch your bit rate setting very carefully. I would have thought that anything over about 5.5mbps might not fit on the disc. The most I’ve ever put on would be ninety minutes.

Michael Slowe

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Kevin,

Most users avoid letting Encore transcode their material. Better to take charge and use Adobe Media Encoder right from Premiere, then use the resulting assets in Encore.

A good rule of thumb for bitrate is 560/minutes = bitrate, and I round down slightly to allow for menu overhead. etc. So for instance 560/120 = 4.66, encode at 4.5 and good to go! Or use an online “bitrate calculator” – there are many to choose from, just do a search.

How long? Depends on system speed for starts, and of course are you encoding from SD or HD source? On my older Core i7 PC, a 2-hour SD video will encode to MPEG-2 DVD in maybe 10 minutes, then another ten or so to author/burn in Encore. HD video might take closer to realtime to transcode to SD DVD.

Of course, any effects applied to the original video can increase render times a little or a lot, your mileage may vary.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Michael Slowe]

Jeff, I too would like to use Media Encoder but I’m darned if I’m going to rent it from Adobe. I edit on Media 100, not Premiere, and Media Encoder is not available on its own, only for rent.

Michael Slowe

[Kevin Kamin]

Thanks so much, guys. Also from your professional experiencs, how much 1080p footage fits on a Blu Ray? I googled it but the answers are varied. I’m looking to put 4 hours of robust, nice data rate 1080p footage onto a BD-R. Is the write time similar to DVD burning? Thanks so much. Newb to these tasks.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Kevin,

I have admittedly burned very few Blu-rays due to lack of interest from my clients, and it’s been probably a year since I did one. I have gone up to 3 hours, but that was with 1080i at 1440×1080. I think 4 hours is going to push the quality too low for full HD. I just ran an online bitrate calculator and it suggested a 12.9 encode rate, where I’d prefer to keep it up to 18-20 range at least, if not better.

Now there are 50GB Blu-ray discs, but I don’t know that those are actually supported by Blu-ray players…might be just for “data applications”. As for burn time, will be somewhat longer than DVD as I recall, but don’t have any numbers in my head, been too long since I made one.

Perhaps someone with more Blu-ray expertise can chime in here?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Michael Slowe]

I don’t think that the actual burn time differs much whether it’s DVD or BD. In fact the whole process takes about an equal amount of time if you take into account the time taken by the downscaling of HD media for encoding a DVD, the encoding straight to BD seems about the same but I’ve never put a stopwatch on it.

Michael Slowe

[Kevin Kamin]

Great thanks everyone! Much help and all the info is very much appreciated!