November 2006 — News
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Hands on with Primera's Bravo SE Disc Publisher
DVD authoring in the classroom is a reality. It may not be literally everywhere, but with the proliferation of the format and the widespread availability of free and easy authoring tools, educators in pockets around the world have adopted this medium for everything from class projects and course materials to multimedia presentations and informational pieces for parents and community members. But for many educators who want to get involved with DVD authoring, there is one significant practical barrier: the time it takes to produce multiple DVDs.
Actual authoring time aside, the time it takes to burn discs and print labels can be prohibitive, especially since the person creating the actual discs can't simply walk away and return later when 15 or 20 discs are done burning and printing. He or she is stuck there feeding discs into the burner and printer manually, which can take hours.
There are tools out there to help alleviate this problem. Videographers, production studios and post-production houses have for years had access to automated disc production systems. However, these tools have generally been prohibitive in another way: price.
But that really changed when Primera launched its Bravo SE Disc Publisher earlier this fall, shown below in Figure 1.
BRAVO SE: HARDWARE FEATURES
The Bravo SE is an automated disc publishing system that's meant to take the "manual" out of the labor involved in burning and printing CDs and DVDs. What differentiates it from previous solutions like it is its price: At a list price of $1,500, it comes in at almost half the price of its nearest competitor.
The Bravo SE, like other models in Primera's Bravo line of Disc Publishers, is fully automated. With its unique robotic arm, it picks up discs one by one, inserting them into the burner, removing them from the burner, inserting them into the printer and finally placing the finished discs into an output bin.
Hence, unattended operation. (Figure 2 shows the robotic arm in action.)
The principal distinction between the SE model and the others in the line (such as the Bravo II and Bravo Pro) is disc capacity. The Bravo SE is designed for short-run jobs, handling up to 20 discs at a time. Other models that I've tested in the past have been able to handle 50, 100 and even 200 discs at once. This doesn't mean that, using the Bravo SE, you're limited to 20 discs total. It just means that at the end of a 20-disc run, you'll need to insert another stack of discs in the event that the job requires more.
Another distinction of note is the Bravo SE's print quality. All Bravo models use a Lexmark inkjet mechanism. Translation: The quality isn't going to be the same as what you might get out of an Epson disc label printer. However, the mechanism in the SE is improved over previous Bravo models. Like other Lexmark printers, the one integrated into the Bravo SE offers 4,800 DPI resolution. But it is also the first in the Bravo line to use the smaller 3 picoliter droplet size. The result is a much more appealing final print, one that tends to get far less muddy in dark areas and areas with subtle gradients than its predecessors.
