Listen up

[mookid]

I feel I need to make this straight, as so much threadwaste on this and similar forums revolves around a couple of questions.

Q1: I just don't understand why discreet's Inferneo/Flame/Flint systems cost so much when Combustion and others do it for less than $1000?

A1: These systems are full turnkey systems. You cannot buy the software on its own. They all use Unix(SGI Irix) not because the CPU's are quick, but because the data transfers are incredible. The IFF systems are designed to playback HD/SD in realtime straight from the harddrives without having to cache stuff into memory. They use special harddrive arrays knownj as stone that have good bandwidth and are standard throughout all IFF suites (ie, you can take your drives to anyone using IFF and get straight to work.
If you were to go out and buy an IFF suite new, a guy would appear at your house with a truck load of gear, set it up, and stay until it is working. That is a rare form of support
If you are still not convinced, use Combustion (demo available). Amazing composition effects, etc? Now imagine a fat ugly guy sitting behind your left shoulder with bad breath, who has no idea what a compositor is in the first place, he's just the director.
He's decided the whole of the first scene needs to be CC'd so it looks more 'green' and not only that, he wants the shadow under the lead actors chin to have better contrast. If you were using Combustion it would take some time as you are gonna have to render to RAM no matter how fast your system is, I don't know about you, but for a decent scene waiting means at least a trip to the coffee machine and out for a cigarette. With IFF you don't have to wait, it is near instantaneous. There is no hanginig around because as soon as you made the changes the stone file system is already appending itself.
IFF does not have any more artistic power over Combustion. Combustion is really limited to short bursts of NTSC/PAL, fine for me. IFF can handle larger resolutions at 12bit per channel ideal for film. (Combustion can handle large wordslengths but I've never dared try)

Q2: I can get an Octane2 on ebay for $xxx with V12 video and fibrechannel. Will this be suitable for IFF? I'll just find IFF on SoulSeek.

A2:Hello? You just cannot get IFF on a CDROM or P2P. It is a turnkey solution. Also if you're contemplating it, don't bother lookig to find illegal copies. IFF is a system, not just software. It is not possible to run IFF unless you have the full Discreet setup.

Q3: How do I learn Discreet IFF? I stand no chance of trying it at home, and there are no colleges in my area that support Discreet.

A3:Get lucky kid! Only joking! IFF is one of those industries that if you are meant to do it you're already there. Don't worry too much if you can't get near an IFF system, Conbustion is so close you would not beleive it. Please remember. IFF is not magic. Look at any commercial in the last year, mimmick it. in your current compositor. If you are artistic, it would not take you long at all. If you think that IFF will save you,as it is impossible, find another career.

PS; It's worth taking a look at what is happening with the IFF market in the near furure. My predictions are a SGI Linux workstation running IFF . My predictions are Prism servers for highend with a new linux workstation to beat tezro. You heard it here first

[hyrlvlrec]

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

i dont know where u get this information about needing to buy your hardware (computer) from discreet

i have multiple irix discreet systems, didnt buy a single computer from discreet.... only software and licenses

[-k]

You can buy just the software. It's done quite often.
We had the gear before for other reasons, so then we just bought stones and software from discreet. Even videoboards, etc we got somewhere else...

Of course you can get FFI on a CR-Rom. That's at least what I saw the admin putting in our onyx... ;-)
I mean, there's no mystery about IFF. It's just some software which needs certain hardware, so what? With some knowledge you could set it up all by yourself... that's in parts what we did. Whether that's a good idea to do is a different question.

Considering the fxguide china report, there are apparently quite a few FFI "hacks" running out there...

As for the "instataneous" results...
Hmm... lets stick to: you get realtime playback. Which is great, but I seriously doubt that a scenario as you described would be solved "instantly", though probably faster than on desktop apps...


-k

[paul_round]

Sorry, but no way can you compare FFI to combustion, nowhere close, I work only on movies (used to be commercials), and all the difficult stuff comes into the Inferno, run of the mill compositing goes to Shake. Try sitting with a major league Visual Effects supervisor/Director on a shake or combustion when asked show me a couple of versions, "errr, come back in an hour/XX hours" then do the same job on Fleme/Inferno "give me 10 minutes and I can show you something" There is a reason why these boxes cost a lot more (and I wish they were a lot cheaper), they give you the ability to respond to creative input quickly, bang out a quick lo-re render for confirmation. I have been working with Terry Gilliam over the last year and he is a very visual person to work with, if I didn't have the flexibility and speed of my Inferno I doubt that I would have met my deadlines and given Terry the ability to respond quickly to shots if I was working on Combustion/Shake

[-k]

I would not deny that there is a difference. And yet you do have to wait for stuff to render, and as soon as you have lots of CPU intensive stuff in your setUp (couple of sparks, blurs, keys, ccs, etc.) the difference starts to become smaller.
Granted we have a 8 burn servers which help alot.
But over the past few years the performace advantage of FFI systems has decreased quite a bit depending on what you do, plus the toolset of the desktop apps have become rather sophisticated and "built in". Seriously the whole sparks thing on FFI is a bad joke... burn licenses for sapphire anyone...?

-k

[paul_round]

"k"
You have just touched on a raw nerve there, burn licenses for sparks, one reason we actually now use very few is just that. I did work out that for the cost of licenseing our burn boxes with Sapphire, for example, I could buy a whole new set for another Inferno and have plenty of beer money left over.

Paul
Peerless

[imported_johnmont]

"k"
You have just touched on a raw nerve there, burn licenses for sparks, one reason we actually now use very few is just that. I did work out that for the cost of licenseing our burn boxes with Sapphire, for example, I could buy a whole new set for another Inferno and have plenty of beer money left over.

Paul
Peerless

While there are some issues, burn is a really nice addition to the workflow - even in client sessions you can burn away and keep working. I've made a couple of deadlines with better results because I could keep working while rendering big HD batch setups. But without sparks, its not really useful, imho. Especially considering that they fly on the burn processors.

It bothers me that there is such a difference in cost of ownership for sparks on the discreet platform vs. sparks on other platforms. I certainly believe that development costs vs. number of licenses sold is a *real* issue, because the market isn't that large. And they have to recoup their development costs. But an $8,000 dollar difference between inferno and flint doesn't really reflect that -- its the same spark.

[johnfxjhon]

I'm a french compositor working on flint on octane 2, and have a powerbook with combustion on it.

YOU CAN NOT SERIOUSLY COMPARE THOSE TWO SOFT

Have you ever track with combustion, it's just impossible with a complex shot or yes it is but how many preview in poor resolution will it take to have a result, how much time does it take. You can not work with client with this tool, it's not serious.

Combustion is a great tool, i don't deny, but you can not obtain what you should obtain with FFI. The interface is so easier to handle, combustion is so complicated.

And whatever you could say, in production time is the nerve of the war, you can not wait 2 hours for a render and realize it does not work then modify your composite then re render it ...... FFI is so fast, you want to replace 10 frames, you can do it so quickly.

Come on guys, stop saying FFI cost a lot and tell that deskotp APP will replace them. Yes FFI is expensive, but it worth it.

Hope i make myself clear cause i speak english like a spanish caw as we say in france.

[graph]

irsshh...

dont think you have try combustion if you runnning it on a powerbook. And over all, dont say thing like that...

I a have work on both i'm not going in your way at all. Take a look at this bench to have a idea. Combustion beat flame in processing time http://www.fxguide.com/postp1829.html#1829

And in a various case combustion is superior to flint. If you dont think money it more easy to compare combustion whit essentiels plugin to flame.

I work in the same market as you and i can certify is better to have both flame and combustion than only ffi station. Dont put your egg in the same bag...

luke

[-k]

'm a french compositor working on flint on octane 2, and have a powerbook with combustion on it.

YOU CAN NOT SERIOUSLY COMPARE THOSE TWO SOFT


Of course you can compare. Rather easy to do so...
And seriously, lets not talk about combustion on powerbooks, not even G5s (the mac ports are a joke).
As I said, as long as you don't have a burn farm in the background, for a few short sequences with lots of CPU intensive stuff there is good chance you are faster on a decent workstation with Combustion than on a flint@octane2...
Plus the paint module is much better in combustion (ok, its different anyway but I like it better).
Granted I'd still prefer our flame or inferno for most of my work and yet there are quite a few occasions, where I decide I'm better and faster in combustion or shake. And as the others pointed out, having to pay some xx.xxx€ for inferno sparks to get some functionality which most other apps offer for a fraction of the cost or are directly integrated and network render for free...
That's probably my biggest problem with FFI at the moment cause burn solves the performance issues on CPU heavy stuff really well...


wondering what toxic will be like in the end...

-k

[johnfxjhon]

Of course i 'm not comparing the performance of a flint and combustion on a powerbook. I m not that fool.

I'm talking about the way you work.

Even if you work on a system faster than an inferno or a flame or a flint, combustion is not the better tool (then any other desktop app) for working with a client or on a complex shot when you don't have so much time.

And about sparks, all right there are expensive, but you know you can work with out it.

Have you ever went to a post company where there's no sparks on the flame, then what would you do. Big question. How great graphic artist were sworking before sparks. Come on FFI station allow you a lot of creative possibility. I assume i can work without glow and edge rays.

And don't misanderstand me, i like combustion it's a great tool. I think there's the place for both ffi and combustion in every post company.

See you guys

[-k]

Even if you work on a system faster than an inferno or a flame or a flint, combustion is not the better tool (then any other desktop app) for working with a client or on a complex shot when you don't have so much time.


In most cases you are right. But I can only repeat myself. There are quite a few exceptions to this rule. I'm working on project in HD 12 bit on a Flame@octane2. Quite some heavy comp stuff. Some setUps render ~45 min with proxy mode still ~25 min.
What's left of the FFI advantage now...? If it wasn't for burn...

As for the sparks... yes you can live without almost all of them (50% are nonsense actually). I prefer to build my glow by hand for example. But it's a joke FFI still don't have a real "defocus" or blurmask (greyscale determines the blur radius), cause it is really tricky to fake something like this...
Other people might have different needs though...

-k

[majik]

I don't want to seem like i'm jumping into this soup of a discussion at this late stage, but here's my two cents.

Firstly like a number of ye have said you can't compare two pieces of software that run on two differnet machines and are deployed in two totally different ways. No comparisions! :o

Secondly with the advent of DI (digital intermediate) more and more directors are expecting instant results on screen. They're used to grading in realtime in telecine and are now expecting it in 2k land, be it in realtime on a pogle or da vinci or near realtime on a lustre. With that they are demanding the same instant results with visual effects, particulary with story driven effects, e.g. transition and edit effects. So to my mind the demand for realtime 12bit 2k and eventually 3k playback will be come bigger and bigger. The drive is on to make effects for film more interactive for the director, very much in the way that their used to doing in commercials. Currently the only machines that fill that role are flame/inferno/fire. It's all about bandwidth man! :D

[TurboWidget]

Majik has a good point, directors are expecting the kind of realtime interactivity that only "boxes" in the IFF league can deliver at film res. Not only that, but when HD really takes off for tv work, they are going to expect (even demand) the same kind of HD performance they are currently used to for NTSC/PAL work using "desktop" applications. Waiting for a simple 25frame dissolve to render is going to be unthinkable to them. It won't help trying to explain file & frame sizes to them, if they want a realtime page turn then you better be able to deliver.
It's all about constantly raising the bar. The hardware gets faster, the software more powerful but then the expectations rise as well. If this cycle ever stops then these "debates" will as well.

Just MY 2 cents worth.
TW.

[graph]

Hi

If you work the same way as flame, you can be faster on combustion than flame. Mostly because for the same spark combustion is faster. You just have to find why the flame do it faster. Most of the time is because you dont do it as the same way.

If you stay only in batch for comping in flame you got a lots of problem of processing time. Same as combustion.

Pre processing effect before comp it. Combustion can do that to, but not the majority of the compositor on combustion work like a flame user.

you have to try both before onderstanding what is the fastest way to work. Pre prossessing effect whit switch can be very usefull. Same think as create element on the desktop before comp in action.

Try to work in combustion like working in flame. Separate your alpha, use compound, pre-pocessing whit switch, use secondary connexion in shematic etc...


Discreet dont port flint and flame on pc because it tcheap. It because it faster...

So i'm waiting about toxic. I hope for NAB...


luke

[-k]

Once again of course you can compare... what's the problem with that? I did'nt say they are the same, cause a comparison would be rather boring in that case.
They are really different that's why you have to compare!

I totally agree with demand on realtime playback but you can do the same with combustion. After rendering to memory you put the contents of the cache to disc and that's it... you know stones are not the only highspeed disc arrays in the world... we just got ab Xraid on a g5 which does 2k playback. I don't like them particulary but they work.. granted I would not want to work on lots of footage with this in a supervised session. But for short sequences it does the job...

What does bandwith help if your CPUs are too slow to deliver... The only discreet product which does alot in realtime is lustre which runs on a windows PC and apparently not even with StoneFS on the raid (anybody knows this? from what I understood it's actually NTFS???)... so much for the bandwith...

And now with the increasing power of GPUs already or soon to be used for real realtime image processing...

I think discreet has to look at these trends and better make toxic a real good thing...

-k

[eltopo]

I think for the prices of a FFI you should get more. The speed issue seems to be the selling point here, but it is very limiting into what it can do. For example about colour grading, the FFI doesn't work with 16-bit or 32-bit images, just 12-bit. Also there is the question that you need those plug-ins to do a lot of things and the rendering of those takes some time and with the price of burn...

Another point has to do with the fact that if discreet wanted they could develop their systems to work with different computers that would give you a cheaper solution. An SGi machine is not faster than a Xeon, Opteron, Itanium or Power based computer system. The fact is that when you look at the numbers it shows how old the MIPS-SGI technology really is and how sticking with old technology is hurting FFI and the reason is very simple. Each day the gap closes. First nothing could do what the FFi did, nowadays the difference is only about speed. But will that be an issue tomorrow?

I wouldn't count on that :?

[zolo]

Another point has to do with the fact that if discreet wanted they could develop their systems to work with different computers that would give you a cheaper solution.

As has been pointed out in these forums countelss times, the real cost of FFI is the software and support, not the hardware. Do you seriously think that when/if discreet changes the underlying platform for FFI, that they will/would pass any savings in hardware costs on to the customer? Think again. It wouldn't give customers a cheaper soluton, but discreet's profit margin might increase. Also keep in mind that discreet probably doesn't pay what you or I would pay for new SGI hardware.

Since SGI workstations are such a niche market, SGI is more likely to offer special discounts to partners like discreet than some PC vendor who sells millions of boxes a year. Discreet is a big feather in SGI's cap, and I'm sure they price their hardware attractively to discreet in order to keep such a highly visible marketing opportunity. Also, any PC configuration that discreet would consider as a host for FFI would be a top-notch workstation configuration (dual Xeons/Opterons, Quadro FX 4400, etc.). The cost of disk arrays and audio/video I/O hardware would remain more or less the same, so in the end the difference to discreet in hardware costs between the SGI boxes or high end PCs is negligible.

I would be very surprised if two years from now discreet is selling flame on PCs for under $150K. If people are willing to pay $200K or more, why would discreet lower their prices, regardless what box is lurking under the hood?

-zolo

[patdawg]

This thread is getting ridiculous. So what if combustion can render a spark a little faster than flame on an Octane? It can't render faster on my dual-Xeon machine than it does in flame on my 4P Tezro. I've got both, and I've compared, and the SGI is, in fact, faster. Not just on effect rendering speed, but on disk throughput, and interactivity as well. How many of you have a PC, or Mac with a disk array that can push sustained 1.6Gbit worth of data straight to four processors, on two of four independant PCI-X busses? If I added a second disk array and controller I'd be able to push 3.2Gbit...without a hiccup. At that rate you can do uncompressed 3K clips...without proxies. The answer is no one...there isn't a PC, or Mac in existence that can pull that off. Nor do any of the graphics accelerators out there come even close in realtime OpenGL performance when compared to the SGI systems. I can load 100 layers of uncompressd NTSC clips into the DVE in smoke 6.5.3 and interact with ANY of them in realtime. You can't do that with ANY desktop app...with ANY graphics accelerator. I've got an Nvidia Quadro FX4000 in my combustion workstation, and I've tried it.

[majik]

You hit it on the head Patdawg, as I said earlier its all about bandwidth not CPU speed (which is where sparks get their power from). Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth, they don't call them supercomputers for nothing.

[graph]

Humm...

i have seen running 4k+ at 5 place at IBC on pc system and most of the time over xp 32bits: Assimilate scratch, nucoda, lustre, flint linux, iridas.

Why di you said a pc can do that ? I know you can get a better score on bandwidth over sgi but do you need them... For my part a prefere a good mix over bandwidth and cpu power.

Discreet are not moving is solution over pc box ? License and diskarray. that what you paid for your system. The sgi box cost nothing.


luke
Waiting for toxic

[patdawg]

Graph, you did NOT see any of those PC based systems running realtime uncompressed 4K. All of them were playing proxies.



Humm...

i have seen running 4k+ at 5 place at IBC on pc system and most of the time over xp 32bits: Assimilate scratch, nucoda, lustre, flint linux, iridas.

Why di you said a pc can do that ? I know you can get a better score on bandwidth over sgi but do you need them... For my part a prefere a good mix over bandwidth and cpu power.

Discreet are not moving is solution over pc box ? License and diskarray. that what you paid for your system. The sgi box cost nothing.


luke
Waiting for toxic

[chrise]

>Graph, you did NOT see any of those PC based systems running realtime uncompressed 4K. All of them were playing proxies.

I'm pretty sure that the Baselight system does playback realtime
4K - but it does use 8 pcs to do this:
A quote from the filmlight website:

In contrast to other parallel processing platforms, the multi-node Baselight architecture provides true parallel operation of all hardware components. Each node processes a strip of the input frame and a proprietary video engine then combines the processed strips to form a single frame. This method of parallel processing removes the latency inherent with other approaches and allows the full power of each node, including its graphics processor, to be used all of the time.

Chris

[graph]

Hi

i agree witht you, what i have seen is realtime rezise or crop via fx4000 pixels shading engine + 3Dlut visualization.

That look ok for me and that fit my budget too.



luke
------------------
fx3000 flint
fx4000 flame ?

[patdawg]

>Graph, you did NOT see any of those PC based systems running realtime uncompressed 4K. All of them were playing proxies.

I'm pretty sure that the Baselight system does playback realtime
4K - but it does use 8 pcs to do this:
A quote from the filmlight website:

In contrast to other parallel processing platforms, the multi-node Baselight architecture provides true parallel operation of all hardware components. Each node processes a strip of the input frame and a proprietary video engine then combines the processed strips to form a single frame. This method of parallel processing removes the latency inherent with other approaches and allows the full power of each node, including its graphics processor, to be used all of the time.

Chris

Wow, and it's cheaper than flame too! NOT!!! The thing starts at around $80,000 for plain old Baselight on one CPU...to get realtime 4K you have to get Baselight Eight...which is about eight times the cost...just for the system, not including storage. At that price flame is a hell of alot cheaper, and does a hell of alot more. If you just wanted grading you would save assloads of money if you got Lustre.

[zolo]

>Graph, you did NOT see any of those PC based systems running realtime uncompressed 4K. All of them were playing proxies.

I'm pretty sure that the Baselight system does playback realtime
4K - but it does use 8 pcs to do this:
A quote from the filmlight website:

In contrast to other parallel processing platforms, the multi-node Baselight architecture provides true parallel operation of all hardware components. Each node processes a strip of the input frame and a proprietary video engine then combines the processed strips to form a single frame. This method of parallel processing removes the latency inherent with other approaches and allows the full power of each node, including its graphics processor, to be used all of the time.

Chris

Wow, and it's cheaper than flame too! NOT!!! The thing starts at around $80,000 for plain old Baselight on one CPU...to get realtime 4K you have to get Baselight Eight...which is about eight times the cost...just for the system, not including storage. At that price flame is a hell of alot cheaper, and does a hell of alot more. If you just wanted grading you would save assloads of money if you got Lustre.

No, you're missing the point! PCs are cheaper! That means that big bad discreet is fleecing its customers by making them buy expensive proprietary old slow SGI systems! The (not so) hidden subtext here:

SGI=bad
PC=good

Discreet's engineers can't possibly know better than discreet's customers what hardware will work best for their systems. Plus, using SGI hardware makes it too hard for all of the kewl d00ds to share it along with their other warez on BitTorrent.

<sarcasm mode off>

Seriously, some people will never be happy until flame costs $500, runs on a $200 Celeron PC and does realtime 4K with a single SATA drive. You can't argue with these people, and you can't please them. Just look at the combustion forum--everyone wants flame-level performance from a $1000 software application.

Is FFI perfect? Of course not. Could discreet improve the price/performance ratio of its systems? Probably. Are people who think that FFI is expensive because of the SGI hardware severely deluded? Certainly. Until a competitor comes along that can offer FFI performance for half the price of discreet's systems, discreet has no incentive to lower its prices. Porting FFI to PCs won't change that. Smoke and flint are available on Linux PC hosts now, but they are limited in resolution comared to the SGI versions, and they're still not at a price point that most single users could afford. Trust me, even if discreet ports everything to PCs, there will still be people bitching about how expensive they are.

-zolo

[andyj]

Full disclosure - I work at Filmlight

A data point (since some of the quoted figures aren't quite right)

A Baselight Eight with 12 Terabytes disk delivers 2.5Gbytes per second from its disks. This is equivalent to approx 2 x 4K streams uncompressed, no proxies. Cost of this system including disks and software is $460K. Of course this isn't the whole story, it also matters what can be done interactivly with this massive amount of data, what the client attend expectation is and whether the application (in our case grading) needs such high sustained data rates.

[wolf]

I love the fxguide forums because of the democratic aspects and a general
respect for artists both very experienced and starting out as junior compositors.

I've seen and participated in quite a few arguments of epic proportions (always the "my hardware is doper then yours !" kind of.)

don t misunderstand me i love the subject but there moments when some
of the valued posters forget or disregard the economic environment most high end unix-powered workstations plus the beloved apps are positioned in.
when clients pay upward to $1200.- an hour and it s not all ending up
in our (FFI artists) pockets you cannot afford to rely on anything but a
box that will take allot of beating and still run when all other mammals have
dissapeared from the surface of this earth.
I never read postings with complaints about the price of a spirit datacine,
and why is it more expensive then let s say a Bosch or Rank.

this is going to sound very repetetive but i feel the urge to say it:
so you not really pay for software, you pay for the history of R+D, bug fixes and blood and sweat that lead to flame 9.2.
i would not compare combustion to flame and ask why is flame so much
more expensive until i start my own studio and have to get jobs out the
door that barely cover my overhead.
so it really depends from what position you argue from.

small independend outfits will of course tend to defend combustion and
after effects and bash IFFS.
i hope in the near future to see a smoother blend and more options
between the Inferno/Flame world and the true native desktop apps like
shake and combustion.

i think autodesk/apple are already paying attention to the demand for a more flexible choice of tools and therefore listening to ALL of you.
i think very soon everybody will get the solution he/she seeks for the
price they wish to pay.

Wolfgang Maschin

flame* | shake | softimage



"It seems you have been living two lives, Agent P. In one life, you are Peter Smith, assistant cook at a Jack in the Box in Barstow....in the other...you go by the chat alias "Randerson"...spreading propaganda, lying, and being a generally immature pest...

[cnoellert]

>Graph, you did NOT see any of those PC based systems running realtime uncompressed 4K. All of them were playing proxies.

I'm pretty sure that the Baselight system does playback realtime
4K - but it does use 8 pcs to do this:
A quote from the filmlight website:

In contrast to other parallel processing platforms, the multi-node Baselight architecture provides true parallel operation of all hardware components. Each node processes a strip of the input frame and a proprietary video engine then combines the processed strips to form a single frame. This method of parallel processing removes the latency inherent with other approaches and allows the full power of each node, including its graphics processor, to be used all of the time.

Chris

Wow, and it's cheaper than flame too! NOT!!! The thing starts at around $80,000 for plain old Baselight on one CPU...to get realtime 4K you have to get Baselight Eight...which is about eight times the cost...just for the system, not including storage. At that price flame is a hell of alot cheaper, and does a hell of alot more. If you just wanted grading you would save assloads of money if you got Lustre.


I think Andy quoted some number for the Baselight8 later in this thread so I will not waste time talking cash rather than to say the numbers you're quoting are wrong.

As far as buying a Lustre and saving lots of money, that's actually quite inaccurate. To begin with Lustre isn't even in the remote area of Baselight in terms of performance. For example most of the grading is being done in 1k proxy mode as opposed to full 2k for small canvas shows. Forget 4k in real time. The ( is greading mulitple streams of 4k in real time (no proxies needed). The 8 nodes of the Baselight8 are (now) dual dual-core AMD and capapable not only of a tremedously higher throughput playback wise but also of preocessing compared to the Lustre. To combat this edge Autodesk is moving forward with thier incinerator rendering engine which is essentially a pre-emptinve burn rendering farm attached via inifiband. While this will help keep the rendering times down on the end it is a very different animal to the online/active processing scheme you find in a baselight8 or 4. The full number-crunching capability of all 8 nodes is always at your finger tips to perform whatever task is at hand.

So they are very differnet solutions. A fully configured Lustre with Incinerator is more or less the same price as a Baselight8 so the price discussion goes out the window.

If you want to save assloads of money you buy the right tool not the hype. For exmaple buying a Flame to grade a feature film is a joke. Try this little test. Go in to the Colorwarper with 4k 10log footage. Push play and try to adjust the gamma. Likewise you wouldn't want to do sfx on a baselight. For that matter try doing that in Lustre.

I find it ironic how much mis-information there is out there.

As far as the discussion at hand, given that Disrcreet has just announced that Inferno is shipping in japan using PC hardware and a similar Incinirator architecture and the end of life of Tezro it would appear that the cluster concept is winning ground and that commodity hardware will replace the old big iron.

Best,
Chris

[Vympel]

The Burn is capable to act as the Incinerator in the Inferno for Linux, not only a render software, but like a cluster?

[kalthans]

The Burn is capable to act as the Incinerator in the Inferno for Linux, not only a render software, but like a cluster?

the way it was explained to me the Incinerator nodes act like buffers for the master Lustre system. i got all excited about the possiblity of an inferno-incinerator combo, but Martin said incinerator wasn't set up like that

i'm curious though to see if the way they have packaged burn/flame-linux as the "japanese inferno" contains any special burn software that acts more as a cluster

just curious

k

[genetics]

sometimes we just come on fxguide just to hear some of those stuff: 'the life of discreet' could be our favorite movie this winter :)
all right.

Why IFF? because it works. i/o, bandwitch, fast archive and retrieve, all formats, fast render, real time playback, bug fixed, stability...discreet lets us concentrated on our own work. We just give the bild to the client which is persuade to get 'the best of the best' quality he can hever had. This is quite true but also quite expensive.

[cmon]

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

i dont know where u get this information about needing to buy your hardware (computer) from discreet

i have multiple irix discreet systems, didnt buy a single computer from discreet.... only software and licenses

same to me.:)