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Film Gimp Chalks Up Another Studio
Robin Rowe of the Film Gimp project has a piece running on NewsForge (also part of OSDN) that says "Film Gimp has recently been adopted by ComputerCafe, the fourth motion picture studio to use it in making feature films." Check out this recent post about Film Gimp to see some great screenshots of behind-the-scenes use. (And Rowe is also hoping you can get to the Linux Movies Track at Creative Cow West 2003, starting Tuesday in Los Angeles.) Update: 02/17 04:04 GMT by T : Brain rebooted, so I added the missing link.
Was it windows ?
:-D
That's a good one
No, really, most film studios used to be SGI/IRIX houses. Very expensive, but back in the day, it was pretty much the only thing studly enough to do what they needed. This is part of the reason why they now prefer Linux over Win32---easier to port stuff over.
No doubt a few places run Film Gimp on IRIX, but these days, it doesn't really get you much over doing the same on Linux. (And a Linux workstation is loads cheaper.)
I really thought that we would be mostly AIX on larger p Series IBM machines. But as we're going, it looks like we'll be clustering and/or looking to divide processing among a large number of the new blade servers (Dell or Sun).
Linux is certianly not as capable as an AIX, but it's cheaper (even with purchased support), easier to admin, and will handle almost all tasks we need it to do admirably. The solution doesn't need to be perfect and Linux means we're not painting ourselves into a corner with a commercial product that will be hard to migrate from.
AIX is probably "better" from a purely technical standpoint, but overall, flexability wins out
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Note to Slashdot Editors: please stop refering to Film Gimp as a tool used by movie studios. It isn't.
Rather, it is a tool used by VFX studios. While the VFX studios may work for the movie studios, they have nothing to do with the MPAA, Jack Valenti, etc.
For that matter, neither do most of the people in the movie industry (movie industry != MPAA && movie industry != studio execs), at least not directly, but that is another matter for another discussion.
Are you high???!?!! Competitive or better? Have you USED film Gimp? Have you used Photoshop? There is absolutely no comparing the two from a user interface standpoint. Photoshop an evolving easy to use paint package. Gimp is RSI looking for a place to happen. I work in one of the aforementioned studios that uses film Gimp. I would say the primary reason that Gimp is used is beacuse there is nothing else available for Linux, NOT because it is better. In fact, I had one artist physically move from his 1Ghz dual AMD machine to a 5 year old 175Mhz Octane to use Photoshop version 3 because it was less painful. Think about that, someone conciously chose a slow outdated boat anchor running 7 year old software to avoid using Gimp. It just kills me to see the "it's Open Source so it Must be better" attitude.
Note to Slashdot Editors: please stop refering to Film Gimp as a tool used by movie studios. It isn't.
;)
Last time I checked Slashdot editors rarely posted stories written by themselves... also this particular story was quoting another source.
I'm sure you're right, but aren't we splitting hairs here?
.: Max Romantschuk
You won't care, probably, but ten years ago when I didn't yet decide on what to study, I just called R&H while I was in LA as a German tourist, because I tried to find out about the folks behind the Star Trek special effects.
They gave me, a foreign High School kid, the grand tour of their facilities, showed and explained almost everything I asked for and were really really nice people - considering the fact that I just called them hours in advance and had no prior appointment with them.
Same with the model shop, btw, who allowed me to see the actual DS9 model. I still can't quite believe that they just took the time for that weird German fanboy that I was...
While I didn't end up in computer graphics software development, it's nice to know that since I made minor contributions to Linux, some of my code now runs on R&H's computers...
So anyway, good luck to them. I hope they are still as cool as they used to be.
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You may like my a cappella music
The answer to the dilemma is to set clear limits on the copyright monopoly, particularly *time limits*.
Some have suggested that it's reasonable for the copyright owner to make 90% of the profit. So if the typical book generates 90% of its total profits within the first twenty years of publication, copyright on books should last for twenty years. The 10% reduction in profit for the publisher (compared to perpetual copyright) is more than outweighed by the increased gain to the public from having the book in the public domain after 20 years.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com