Actually, discreetodesk gear composites at 8 or 12bit, not 16. Their next gen desktop software will go to 32bit, but the software was originally written with SGI's 12bit limit in mind, so even the linux versions are currently capped at 12bit.
as for 8 bit being enough for most work, this is quickly becoming untrue as well. After Effects allows users to work at 32bit, as do most 3d software packages, so it's possible (and extremely advantageous, if also very slow) to set up a full 32bit pipeline. Spiderman 2 was done this way, and most features now prefer to work at 12bit or higher. NTSC/PAL video remains the last holdout in the 8 bit space, and even then we tend to work at 10 or 12 bit whenever possible.
Well, Combustion and Lustre are the only Autodesk products currently available for OSX, and Combustion isn't (or wasn't until very recently) developed on Macs, just recompiled for and tested with Macs.
The Autodesk you know from Autocad probably won't be given the reigns for Maya, that will fall to the former Discreeters and the 3dsmax guys, many of whom are now cohabitating in Montreal. You'll hopefully see better integration between Max, Maya, and the effects products, inferno, flame, toxik, and smoke, which will be a good thing, and you'll most likely see maya get rolled into Toxik, the next gen pipeline compositor, whereupon Autodesk will try and kill Shake.
If Autodesk starts killing off versions of Maya, as some here have suggested, people will just switch to Softimage and it will all end in tears.
but what do I know? prolly nothing.
not that it matters in the slightest, but flame's been around since at least 1993, and inferno since probably 95 or 96. i'd be surprised if the trademark application didn't include most of their product names at the outset...
I use flame and inferno on octane and onyx respectively, and I can say that macintoshes (though I love them dearly) come nowhere near the realtime performance of SGI machines. It's not the CPU, or even the graphics processing, really, it's the bandwidth of the system. The fact that they can now play 2k 12bit images in real time. If you're sitting in a room with a director or an ad agency, you want to hit an image and see it, not wait for the thing to load into memory so you can play it. I can run an image through a maze of plugins and modules and have a viewable render in a few seconds. Macs and PCs have made great strides in playback and graphics power, but still don't move pictures through their architecture nearly as efficiently.
can be found here. Written by the former hardware guru for discreet, it pretty much spells out what these machines are up to and how they compare to their predecessors. I'm no hardware guy, but it made decent sense to me. have at it!
please, FCP is doing well because it's cheaper than avid and better than premiere.
professional editors are tired of being jerked around by avid, they're tired of continually having to shell out cash for expensive hardware upgrades, and they're tired of crappy customer support.
FCP, despite missing a few key features, just works, and works well on a variety of hardware configurations.
thus, their market dominance (or at least increased acceptance) is a result of healthy competition, not microsoft-style slash and burn warfare.
umm, not quite, shake *did* operate on windows until the apple purchase of nothing real, at which point they cancelled further windows development. new versions of shake will be mac only.
well, since you asked so nicely:
k+d lab do some really nice stuff, certainly more photoreal than the little german tv show.
or, as much as i hate to promote them, blur have managed a nice effect or two in their time, look for the "feature effects" section in their flash nightmare of a site...
Damn thing sat, plugged in, in a puddle, overnight, being dripped on though a hole in the ceiling.
We patted it down with a paper towel and let it dry in the sun for an hour or so, then backed it up. it worked for three more years before i scavanged it for parts.
apple won't license new quicktime code to SGI, or anybody other than microsoft, for that matter. and microsoft sure as hell isn't going to license windows media to a Unix vendor. so you're stuck with Quicktime implementation from 1996. sorry.
The DJ in the new apple commercials, Liza Richardson, is actually the music supervisor for the campaign, and was responsible for liscensing most of the tracks in the itunes sample pack.
she has a radio show on saturdays on KCRW in los angeles (7 to 9 pst). Best of all, KCRW runs several streams in realaudio, at http://www.kcrw.com or http://www.kcrwmusic.com. it's great music, as are all the music shows on that station, extremely cutting-edge, and it can be easily cross-referenced with the station's online playlists. very, very handy. armed with tracks or artists you like, go on over to amazon or cdnow and preview those mp3s!
also try http://www.juno.co.uk. great online record store in england.
my personal favorites? not that you asked...
underworld chemical brothers herbert marques wyatt fluke
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Actually, discreetodesk gear composites at 8 or 12bit, not 16. Their next gen desktop software will go to 32bit, but the software was originally written with SGI's 12bit limit in mind, so even the linux versions are currently capped at 12bit. as for 8 bit being enough for most work, this is quickly becoming untrue as well. After Effects allows users to work at 32bit, as do most 3d software packages, so it's possible (and extremely advantageous, if also very slow) to set up a full 32bit pipeline. Spiderman 2 was done this way, and most features now prefer to work at 12bit or higher. NTSC/PAL video remains the last holdout in the 8 bit space, and even then we tend to work at 10 or 12 bit whenever possible.
Well, Combustion and Lustre are the only Autodesk products currently available for OSX, and Combustion isn't (or wasn't until very recently) developed on Macs, just recompiled for and tested with Macs. The Autodesk you know from Autocad probably won't be given the reigns for Maya, that will fall to the former Discreeters and the 3dsmax guys, many of whom are now cohabitating in Montreal. You'll hopefully see better integration between Max, Maya, and the effects products, inferno, flame, toxik, and smoke, which will be a good thing, and you'll most likely see maya get rolled into Toxik, the next gen pipeline compositor, whereupon Autodesk will try and kill Shake. If Autodesk starts killing off versions of Maya, as some here have suggested, people will just switch to Softimage and it will all end in tears. but what do I know? prolly nothing.
not that it matters in the slightest, but flame's been around since at least 1993, and inferno since probably 95 or 96. i'd be surprised if the trademark application didn't include most of their product names at the outset...
did i mention that fxguide was running on a powerbook G4 and might not be up to the stress of a slashdot posting? hmm. clearly not. oops.
I use flame and inferno on octane and onyx respectively, and I can say that macintoshes (though I love them dearly) come nowhere near the realtime performance of SGI machines. It's not the CPU, or even the graphics processing, really, it's the bandwidth of the system. The fact that they can now play 2k 12bit images in real time. If you're sitting in a room with a director or an ad agency, you want to hit an image and see it, not wait for the thing to load into memory so you can play it. I can run an image through a maze of plugins and modules and have a viewable render in a few seconds. Macs and PCs have made great strides in playback and graphics power, but still don't move pictures through their architecture nearly as efficiently.
can be found here. Written by the former hardware guru for discreet, it pretty much spells out what these machines are up to and how they compare to their predecessors. I'm no hardware guy, but it made decent sense to me. have at it!
please, FCP is doing well because it's cheaper than avid and better than premiere. professional editors are tired of being jerked around by avid, they're tired of continually having to shell out cash for expensive hardware upgrades, and they're tired of crappy customer support. FCP, despite missing a few key features, just works, and works well on a variety of hardware configurations. thus, their market dominance (or at least increased acceptance) is a result of healthy competition, not microsoft-style slash and burn warfare.
umm, not quite, shake *did* operate on windows until the apple purchase of nothing real, at which point they cancelled further windows development. new versions of shake will be mac only.
well, since you asked so nicely: k+d lab do some really nice stuff, certainly more photoreal than the little german tv show. or, as much as i hate to promote them, blur have managed a nice effect or two in their time, look for the "feature effects" section in their flash nightmare of a site...
Damn thing sat, plugged in, in a puddle, overnight, being dripped on though a hole in the ceiling. We patted it down with a paper towel and let it dry in the sun for an hour or so, then backed it up. it worked for three more years before i scavanged it for parts.
apple won't license new quicktime code to SGI, or anybody other than microsoft, for that matter. and microsoft sure as hell isn't going to license windows media to a Unix vendor. so you're stuck with Quicktime implementation from 1996. sorry.
The DJ in the new apple commercials, Liza Richardson, is actually the music supervisor for the campaign, and was responsible for liscensing most of the tracks in the itunes sample pack.
she has a radio show on saturdays on KCRW in los angeles (7 to 9 pst). Best of all, KCRW runs several streams in realaudio, at http://www.kcrw.com or http://www.kcrwmusic.com. it's great music, as are all the music shows on that station, extremely cutting-edge, and it can be easily cross-referenced with the station's online playlists. very, very handy. armed with tracks or artists you like, go on over to amazon or cdnow and preview those mp3s!
also try http://www.juno.co.uk. great online record store in england.
my personal favorites? not that you asked...
underworld
chemical brothers
herbert
marques wyatt
fluke
enjoy