Compositing in Linux/Macintosh environment

[Ian Jones]

Just get a little bit of experience with all the platforms. It really isn't a huge problem to switch between them frequently. I go between PC and Mac everyday several times. After all they are not really that different, if you can use one you can use the other pretty much.

[beaker]

>>I'm a student at gsCEPT and I'm specializing in the field of compositing. I was just wondering... how much knowledge of Linux and/or MacOS is expected of me when I graduate?

Mac/Linux experience is no big deal. The gui's are not different enough where you couldn't figure out either one after an hour of playing with them.

One thing that would be usefull would be to learn to use a unix shell(same in both linux and mac). Even better would be to learn basic shell scripting(csh(c shell) or bash(bourne again shell)). That way you can just write quick scripts if you need to do alot of file renaming and moving around alot of files or other stuff that is repetative that could be quickly done with a script. When your dealing with thousands of sequential files(Most places dont use mov or quicktime files) it is much faster to write a script to copy/rename/move them rather than doing it through the gui. Gui on all 3 operating systems often choke on anything over 2-3000+ files in one folder.

Vi/Vim is a very usefull script editor to learn since it is consistently installed on all unixes(osx, linux, sgi, etc...). It's a little cryptic at first, but pretty fast to use once you get used to it.

Perl and Python is nice to know too, but not required.

If your running windows at home, get cygwin for your pc. It is a full unix emulation app that runs on windows. Provides all shells and script editors found in most unixes.
www.cygwin.com

Bonus question; Are Shake users actually planning on moving over to MacOS X (rather than switching tools)?
It really depends the company and it's a mixed bag. Previously the G4 was slow so many didn't consider it, but now with the G5 some might switch, but not all. Many of the OSX sales seem to be new customers(in the video market). Many are(or allready did) switch to linux, where others are still using their 2.5 license on windows. It's a mixed bag.

[dfusion]

The guys I know that were/are using Shake for Windows are planning to move to Shake for Linux. Even though the OS X version is 50% cheaper and has free render nodes, you pay the difference when you buy Apple hardware. X-Serve's aren't cheap and neither are G5 desktops or Cinema Displays. It's amazing how much Apple charge for their hardware.

Most guys I know are also using Digital Fusion which is Windows only or Combustion which runs better on Windows, so again you're actually saving money so you don't have to by two seperate computers just to drive your compositing app of choice, or even if you did buy a linux box just to drive shake (instead of dual boot) it would be much cheaper to get an intel machine, a kvm, and red hat linux, than an apple and cinema display.

bottom line shake will have a market for OS X but i think it's the lower end FCP guys trying to get cool with shake. The higher end shops won't blink an eye at going on Linux even if the up front cost of shake is a bit more.

this is my .02

[Hugh]

At the same time, I've been told that Shake 3 for Linux doesn't have all of the features that Shake 3 for Mac has....

We're running 3 shake 2.5 boxes here at the moment - 2 PC and 1 Mac, and they are planning to move the whole thing across to Mac soon....

I suppose it does depend on the size of the company, though...

[beaker]

Originally posted by Hugh
At the same time, I've been told that Shake 3 for Linux doesn't have all of the features that Shake 3 for Mac has....
Most of those features are more broadcast based which is what the shake mac market is going after(FCP people). Also they are poorly supported features in linux in the first place(sound and video out support) which come by default in osx.

[deepinspace]

Well........you don't exactly have to get the Apple cinema display, you know :lightbulb

I mean, you can just use any old monitor you like ;)

[Hugh]

Beaker: ah - okay - I didn't know that...

We mainly work in broadcast, so find these useful (well, one of our boxes at the moment is actually Tremor and has an external monitor)

[dfusion]

Originally posted by deepinspace
Well........you don't exactly have to get the Apple cinema display, you know :lightbulb

I mean, you can just use any old monitor you like ;)


Yeah true! I was thinking that becuase my PC has a 20" LCD. I still think Apple charges way too much for what ya get. At least with the G4 anyway. Not sure about the G5, but once Intel/AMD become more mainstream with 64 bit Apple will always have the higher margins.

I'm bitter towards Apple because of Shake. It really pisses me off!! I am running Digital Fusion, Combustion, and Shake (2.5) on my PC and everything runs beautifully. I'm using a dps Reality as my framebuffer for DF and Combustion. I actually like Shake better than Digital Fusion (marginally tho! lol) but I'm not sure if I am ready to invest ooogles of money into a Mac platform. The Digital Voodoo card is now dead and the AJA is around $3,500. This puts the total cost at $5k for Shake, $4k for a good G5 system, $3500 for AJA, then other misc. apps like Photoshop and of course if I have a Mac I must get an iPod. lol..j/k :p

Seriously though, DF and Shake are my two main apps.. Combustion was a promo I won on another web site but I'm starting to do more with it. I have been ramping up with NUKE but I'm not ready to go prime time with at all. It reminds me of a mix beetween Houdini + Digital Fusion. When ya boot up it's so minimal and that's a good thing. Under the hood it is burried with so much power Andretti would even take a while to get the hang of it. But once it clicks you're like "Ok! I got it!" and you learn to appreciate the weirdness and not-so-polished look of NUKE.

Well anyway maybe more shops will go Apple/Shake than I thought. I still think some will just expand their Combustion/Digital Fusion seats and look at NUKE as a serious option, especially the guys who used to work at Digital Domain and have gone elsewhere. They will be the first to buy NUKE.


-d

[Saturn]

what my concern is that actually a dual G5 ( 2ghz with 4 GB ram ) with shake 3 is still ( a bit but still ) slower than a PC P4 2.6 with 1 gb ram under windows with the old 2.51.

Specially with 2K and 4K footage, in pal the diff isnt noticeable. But what i like is that i can load more frames in ram with the g5 than with the pc. it s the advantage of the 64 bits

I m still waiting for the optimised version of shake that would come soon.

But I recommend you to learn Shell/terminal specially when you manage files because the Finder of mac Os is very slow and can t handle quickly a large amount of files.

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