Software Comparisons?

[beaker]

AE and Combustion are pretty much your only choices if Shake is out of the question. With alot of roto, keying and tracking, I would lean toward Combustion.

Actually for alot of that kind of work I would probably consider Combustion over Shake too on a small budget because your only dealing with DV rez material and your only one person starting out with compositing.

[dmeyer]

I second beaker's recommendation of Combustion in your situation. The only choices are C2 and AE, and if you need motion tracking than you would have to go with either C2 or AE Pro. Keying anything, much less miniDV, in AE 5.5 is nearly impossible without a 3rd party keyer...although Keylight is now included with AE Pro 6.

C2's got top notch roto tools and a wonderful keyer...it's a steal at $1K. If you are a student i think you can get it for less than $300 EDU.

[aydinu]

Check here for a good comparison between Combustion, Shake and DF
http://www.cmistudios.com/lessons/compTut/index.htm

Aydin

[beaker]

Originally posted by aydinu
Check here for a good comparison between Combustion, Shake and DF
http://www.cmistudios.com/lessons/compTut/index.htm

Aydin
That comparison is ok, but there some wrong information in there. Also it's over a year and a half old so many things have changed since then.

[Alanbell]

I use both AE and Combustion along side final cut pro all the time. If I had to choose one over the other then I would suggest Combustion over AE.

The rotosope and tracking tools in combustion are very good. Also the color corrector is extremely easy to use and very powerful.

Getting sucessfull keys from DV footage is difficult with either app but you can do it.

Ofcourse AE 6 pro is now cheaper than C2 and you might also want to wait and see if Discreet is going to release C3 on the mac. It's a concern. I'd be pretty angry if I paid 1K for 2.1 and then 6 months later the new version came out and didn't support my platform.

Regards
Alan Bell

[Jamo3D]

Hi there,

I'd suggest trying out the demo of AE6 first before going for Combustion. I've heard lots of good things about it in comparison to 5.5. But I have yet to read about it's comparisons to Combustion. Plus, if you have a G5 in your purchase plans (and what Mac guy doesn't) Adobe will probably have G5 optimisers out before discreet.

I don't think Combustion will be upgraded until at least next year. I am betting that by that time, a special Mac only version of Shake that can use AE plugs (as well as it's own) will be out. Priced at AE and Combustion levels and bundled with FCP, as well.

Jamo
+BIL

[Alanbell]

I hope you are right about a more reasonable priced version of shake coming down the pike.

I'm using version 6.0 of AE and find that many of it's new features are nice. Though I still can't seem to figure out how to attach mask control points to tracking data. Something that is fairly trivial with C2.

The liquify and warp tools in AE are really nice and fun to work with.

Regards
Alan Bell

[dg]

The built in paint, tracking and keying systems from C2 are better then the AE ones, AE 6 comes with Keylight which is great, it has a new paint system, very good one but not better as combustion one (at least in my opinion). Tracking system of AE6 is way better then the old one but still have his limitations as Alanbell has mentioned.
I think AE is great for motion design but he is not that good for conventional comping, specially when dealing with color correction, tracking and painting (roto etc..), well botton line Combustion 2 is the best option for you in my opinion.

But keep in mind that keying DV footage with conventional keyers is hell on earth, I know just one keyer that handles DV keying well, which is DV Matte PRO from www.dvgarage.com, check the trial version at their site.

For the roto work, check out the personal learning edition of Mokey at www.imagineersystems.com

I hope that helps,
See ya! 8)

[Tocy]

I work with C2 for a year now, and I found it very very unstable and very very slow, on win. Are you guys talking about c2 for mac? Does it run well on that OS? Better than on wintel? Unfortunately I had not too much keying or rotoing work, so maybe I could miss the good features of c2 on these. But when I touched AE and Digital Fusion (especially df) found them lightyears faster and much stable than c. I dont think df exist for mac, but I think it is definitely could be the right choice for high-end comp for wintel.
As for painting in combi, it really misses the write-on effect for the paint module, for paint strokes for example, dont you think?

cheers

[Bischofftep]

Hello, all!

Thanks for the valuable feedback! This is exactly what I was looking for. If there really is a reasonable-cost version of Shake for OS X in the works I'd be ecstatic... and if Combustion 3 is going to drop OS X support I'll be furious.

In other words, this is a lousy time to buy. :rolleyes:

I'll check out some of the other options folks have suggested... especially interested in mokey! Thanks for the tip!

[Jamo3D]

Hi there,

Just wanted to add one more option. Dunno why nobody's mentioned it - you might wanna check around because there might be a good reason for this. Try Boris FX.

I think a great option for you is to get the upgrade to FC Pro and then Boris FX so you can do all of that from within FCP. Nothing works better than FCP with DV and Boris FX can do all that you require - as long as the motion tracking's just there to help with camera jiggle.

I don't know about the quality of it, tho'. I've seen some of the FX it can come up with and they in particular the fire effects, leave a bit to be desired. But unless you plan on bringing this to film, you ought to be fine.

The interface is more AE than Combustion, however. So you won't be gettign the vaunted workflow experience. It's also not very cheap. But if you look around, I am sure there's a bundle somewhere than can help you save.

Jamo
+BIL

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