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May 2012

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Duplicator Review: Primera BravoPro Xi2 Disc Publisher

Designed to burn CD and DVD media, print full-color label, with robotic mechanism to automate process

by Jim Kumorek

I've had occasion in the past to review Primera disc publishing equipment, and was pleased to have a chance to work with the company's newest unit, the BravoPro Xi2 DVD/CD disc publisher. As a media producer myself, there's something special about being able to see fruits of your labor produced on a disc with a beautiful, full-color label printed directly on the disc.

The BravoPro Xi2 is designed to burn CD and DVD media, and print a full-color label, all with a robotic mechanism to automate the process. The unit can handle up to 50 discs at a time in its default configuration, or 100 discs at a time if you use the included "Kiosk Mode" output bin extension.

The Xi2 unit includes two disc burners that can be operated simultaneously, greatly increasing per-disc turn-around time. For most DVD projects, the printer operates faster than the discs are burned, so having two burners to keep the printer busy makes fast work of most publishing jobs. A 50-disc data CD project finished in about two hours in my test run.

Setup was straight-forward, and not much different than setting up a basic inkjet printer. All packing materials were removed, input and output bins put into place, and the two inkjet cartridges (one black, one CMY) were installed.

Software installation also went smoothly. I used my Sony Vaio laptop running 64-bit Windows 7 to do the review. I half-expected to run into an issue with so new an OS--and 64-bit on top of that--but Primera fully supports 64-bit versions of Windows.

The software includes the device drivers as well as two software applications - PTPublisher, and SureThing disc label creation software. PTPublisher is what you use to create publishing jobs and it runs the hardware; SureThing is a designed purely for label design. SureThing does let you create decent labels, and it's the quickest and easiest way to do a label really fast. However, if you want to get really creative, you'll probably want to stick with your higher-end graphic design software. While I tested SureThing, I did do most of my labels in Adobe Illustrator to get the more advanced graphics design features such a program offers.

Primera included a significant amount of blank DVDs and CDs for the purpose of the review, and so, instead of wasting them, I looked for opportunities to support some friends in their ministry work with the testing part of the review. My first project was for a Campus Crusade for Christ missionary who has an MP3 CD he uses for evangelical purposes. We ran off about 110 copies of his CD project, using a straight JPEG image as the label. I used 50 of the discs that Primera sent, as well as two 30-packs of Memorex discs my friend provided. The Primera discs duplicated perfectly; with the Memorex discs I ended up with four coasters (bad disc burns), and one problem that resulted from user error.

Many disc manufacturers put a clear plastic pseudo-disc on the top of the stack when they package their product, which I know to look for and discard. Memorex, however, also puts a black pseudo-disc on the bottom of their stack, which I've never run into before, and unknowingly loaded into the middle of the input bin. The robot arm picked up this black disc. Since it's a different thickness and also may have a slightly different hole diameter than a real disc, the disc fell off the robot arm while it was moving to load it into the burner, dropped on its side between the burner and the input bin, and promptly created an obstacle to the robot arm. When the arm tried to traverse back to the input bin, it smashed against the disc, knocking the input bin askew (now I know why the input bins aren't securely fastened to the publisher!), made a horrendous noise, and stopped.

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Jim Kumorek is the owner of Spreading Flames Media, providing video/media production and writing services to the A/V/L, technology, architectural and hospitality industries. He has led audio, video and lighting teams in churches as both staff and a volunteer for over 10 years. He can be contacted at james@spreadingflamesmedia.com.