Hi

I've made a few blu-rays as tests before, but I've finally got a client that wants a final blu-ray. The timeline is 3 hours long.

My workflow has been:
-Mixdown the sequence as DNXHD 145 (can't export a QT reference as is because xdcam ex is long GOP)
-encode as .m4v with Adobe media encoder, and author in Adobe Encore CS4.

This workflow isn't great because the mixdown need 300 GB (3 hrs at 1080i) and took a really long time.

We just bought the boxed Media Composer 4.0.2 which includes meta sync and Avid DVD (by sonic). I noticed that I can export an AAF from avid without having to do a mixdown, but no other programs seems to be able to take that.

Anyway, what is the best way to get a finished HD project to blu-ray most efficiently in regards to hard drive space and time.

Thanks

HAHA
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I take it that not many people have had to do this yet.

As much as I hate Premiere, Adobe's work flow seems much better. You can bring your Premiere project file into After Effects or Encore without any transcoding at all.

warlock2572:

 HAHA
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It´s just that we have answered this so many times, and Douglas has excellent tutorials, just do some forum search for yourself, we cannot do all the work for you

I found the tutorial you are refering to. It seems as though the way I'm doing it, is the only way. Problem is you can't do a QT ref with XDcam EX due to Long Gop. Doing a video mixdown is an easy way to get around that, but when the program is 3 hours long, the mixdown process if a big deal!

What would be nice is either be able to export a QT ref, or at least export a QT movie and make a smaller file (perhaps with the xdcam codec).

I guess I'll keep doing it the same way, for now.

There seems to be something here: http://www.gaijin-eyes.com/tutorials/MCtoBLURAY/MCBLU01.htm

Part of the problem is the search tools on this forum which don't seem to make a lot of sense and searching those key words turns up very little related info.

I just ordered MC4 so I don't know how that works yet but I heard you can master to XDcam EX files.  Maybe that would reduce your file size.  I'm not sure how you would encode from that though.

I don't have blu-ray yet so I haven't spent a lot of time on it.

Depending on if youre source media is interlaced or progressive there are different codecs to do the transcoding to when you have linked your Ex files, i suppose that you are using AMA, do a search in the render settings  to see if you find any that fills your quality demands, remember that bluray is a quite differnt animal than dvd and that most will be visible, not that easy to trick the eye any longer.

Once transcoded, I very seldom do video mixdowns myself, at least not if the sequense isn´t very complicated.

Just work with it all in HD, render in HD and send a QT ref out to Adobe Mediaencoder or Avid Dvd, I never ends to understand why users does these kind of things so very complicated.

" I don't know how that works yet but I heard you can master to XDcam EX files. "
That would be helpful, but I don't see any way to do that. You can go back to full XDCAM discs, but not SxS cards. I'll probably just get another hard drive and use it for mixdowns.

Avid's AMA system is fantastic for importing. Hopfully they can come up with something just as fast for exporting.

Thanks for the replys