FireCoder Blu

Grass Valley FIRECODER Blu

£379.00 +VAT , £454.80 inc. VAT at 20%

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The FIRECODER Blu is a faster than realtime MPEG2 and H264 encoder. You can convert AVCHD to MPEG2, MPEG2 to H264 and also up-convert and down-convert (change HD to SD) using the software supplied.

We fed it with some AVCHD footage filmed with the Panasonic AG-HMC151 camera and it took around 2 minutes to convert 5 minutes of original footage. Going the other way, converting MPEG HD footage to H264 took about the same amount of time. It was about the same for converting HD footage to standard def MPEG footage, and the quality was excellent.

It runs either using a standalone converter program, or as an export option direct from the Edius timeline. It can be used in systems with other editing software, though you would have to export an AVI file and then convert this with the FIRECODER application. This would still be quicker than exporting into H264 from a Premiere timeline where, even on a really good system, we have had the computer take 7 hours to encode 1 hour of footage.

FIRECODER Blu comes with a simple DVD/Blu-ray writing program which will make discs of either type with just video on. You cannot use it to make menus on a DVD or Blu-ray disc although you can add chapters. The settings are pretty simple - FIRECODER Blu as three quality levels (high, medium and low) and can encode at three different sizes: 720x576, 1440x1080 and 1920x1080.

Why use FIRECODER Blu?

To take your final movie and quickly make a decent Blu-ray disc. Even if you take into account making an AVI file first it will be seriously quicker than encoding to H264 from the editing application just using the power of your computer.

To take AVCHD files, which are hard to edit and make them into something a lot easier for programs to use: MPEG2. You could add it to an Avid Liquid system, for example - Liquid does not deal with AVCHD at all but would take MPEG2 files happily and the FIRECODER Blu would create these a lot quicker than any other software. It would also be useful with Adobe Premiere for exactly the same reason - Premiere Pro CS3 does not understand AVCHD and even though Premiere Pro CS4 does, it is still a struggle to do any realtime effects and using native H264 has a serious impact on the final render times (when you make your final Blu-ray or DVD discs) MPEG would be easier and nice to use.