By Staff, April 22, 2008
Sony announced a
professional solution for Blu-ray Disc encoding, with the introduction of the BAE-VX1000 multi-codec video encoder. It is designed for
real-time encoding of MPEG-2 or H.264/AVC primary and secondary video streams
suitable for the Blu-ray Disc format.
“With Blu-ray technology
now being recognized as the HD optical disc format for the consumer electronics
industry, more studios are increasing production of BD titles,” said Chris
Marchitelli, marketing manager in Sony Electronics’ content creation division. “This
encoding solution provides a range of features to speed the BD-ROM workflow,
offering high-quality and ease of operation for BD-ROM authoring professionals.”
The BAE-VX1000 encoder is
designed to meet the needs of the growing encoder market as applications grow
beyond BD-ROM to BD-Live for network enabled features, and BD-R/RE for small
quantity production. The new solution is affordable and can decrease total
encoding time by up to 30 percent over the existing BAE-VA700 solution. This is
accomplished through enhancements such as parallel capturing and
pre-processing, the elimination of LDEC checking, and increased encoding
algorithm efficiency.
It can support a simple
and affordable single PC configuration that can accomplish AVC encoding in
real-time, ideal for smaller production houses. It can also be easily expanded
to a networked distributed processing configuration, in order to achieve the
higher performance required by some production facilities.
A multi-codec design
enables compatibility with most common Blu-Ray authoring applications, such as
Sony Creative Software’s Blu-Print and Sonic Solutions’ Scenarist
. The option
of using of AVC or MPEG-2 technology will give production professionals more
flexibility, depending on their timeframe, client preference or other
individual workflow requirements. MPEG-2 encoding for traditional DVD authoring
is also available.
The BAE-VX1000 offers
multiple settings that are engineered to suit individual production needs. An “Express”
mode supports AVC real-time encoding with one PC, when encoding speed is the
top priority. When using additional networked processors, “Fast” and “Quality”
modes are also available to meet higher performance and quality priorities. The
BAE-VX1000 also offers a built in real-time AVC elementary stream decoder that
greatly improves the efficiency of quality checking procedures.
New features also include:
template parameters, batch processing, support for one PC standalone encoder
and compatibility with Windows Server 2003, XP, and Vista (64-bit operating
system required in each case).
“It is designed to maintain
a high picture quality BD workflow,” Marchitelli said. “Through distributed
processing, it can control a large number of PCs for real-time performance,
making it possible to build a scalable system and shorten your overall encoding
time with no compromise in picture quality.”
The BAE-VX1000 encoder is
expected to be available this summer.
|