Smoke vs Avid DS Nitris

[rezonate]

I'm sure I read in a review of Linux Smoke, that it had fewer resolutions, and slower rendering compared to the Tezro.

In terms of price, aren't the SGI and Linux versions similar? If going for Smoke, maybe look to the SGI due to the tight integration, and years of tweaking Discreet soft. for it. It's sweet.

Avid DS. I've nly used it a few times and I was impressed, very nice workflow, and powerful feature set.
The workflow: I loved it, same with Discreet apps. They aren't really geared for those who find the comfort in a familiar operating system GUI, and expect that in such an application. that's a good thing I think.

If money is no object, and you need the hardware/software of Discreet/Avid, forget the Mac and go with those.

[reason]

8O

I must say that the $150k price tag for Avid Nitris or Smoke is not worth what you get. I have been doing a lot of research in comparing these systems to final cut. If one built an Apple system with a $150k budget 8 streams of realtime HD can be achieved!! Do the research and you will see! Using Mellanox interconnects (the new infiniband) there is plenty of bandwidth. For $150k one can also include Shake, Maya, FCP, with the Foundry's Furnace! This Suite of Applications outmatches any other turnkey app. Hands down. I encourage you, if you are upgrading your system, to research Apple vs any other system. Apple comes out on top every time.

[rareelement]

:twisted:
I have been looking at all the new NLE systems (smoke 6, FCP, DS Nitris, Pirhana 4, Premiere Pro) and have either had indepth demos or used them myself. I can say that I am impressed with FCP. I went to NAB and was even more impressed with FCP HD. Apple is definitely going in the right direction and some of the new capture cards (Decklink HD pro is awesome) and graphics cards for the G5 are great at a really low price.

All that being said I still believe that smoke 6 on a Tezro is the best NLE system despite the price for the following reasons:

1) it works in 4:4:4 HD which is a much higher quality than 4:2:2 of FCP and seeing is believing, the new DVCPRO HD features of FCP are 4:2:2.

2) FCP allows you to view many HD streams in real time and work on them in an offline resolution but any major changes such as pan/scan, changing output format (DV in, HD out), or final color correction must be rendered and on long-form projects you can't beat the speed of the 4P Tezro

3) the Color Warper / color correctoris unbelievable and the closest thing to a Pandora or Da Vinci system that you can get without owning one ( and saving $250,000)

4) the plug-ins (genarts, foundry, speedsix, mokey) all run faster on a smoke than the FCP or Avid products

5) the master keyer will save you hours not minutes on hard to key film or HD compared to FCP

6) personally i like the pen and tablet gestural interface but you can use the keyboard as well on smoke but you only have one option on FCP or Avid

7)Flame's 3D/paint/particle toolset makes smoke 6 one of the best compositiors in the world and not just NLE trying to do a little compositing

I know that the cost is high (i think that the 2P Tezro system is around $100,000), but you have to keep in mind that smoke is a complete finishing system and can do everything and therefore you get paid for doing everything.
When producers see you have FCP they immediately lower what they will pay because they know how much the system costs. smoke 6 will pay for itself in under 2 years in most major media ciites and maybe sooner in NYC or LA. For FCP HD you also have to buy an XRAID which is $11,000 for the HD level storage, $7,000, for the G5, another $10,000 for 4 or 5 Xservers to render at a decent speed, Cinema displays, HD Monitor, VTR, etc which will cost you around $50,000. The time you save in rendering projects will allow you to use the smoke 2 times for every 1 project FCP can do (unless you buy more Xservers which will raise the price to a Tezro).

If you can get it I would get a Tezro. If you can't afford it, Smoke 6 works on Octane MXE's and Octane 2 V12's so talk to discreet, get it on a much cheaper system, make some money and buy a Tezro.

That is until FCP5 comes out which should benefit from faster G5's, and hopefully full integration with Shake.

[netviper]

give piranha another look. I have used both extensively.

You can paint on 3d models in piranha... its deeper than it appears and easier to use.


-c

[rareelement]

Actually I am, i met the people over at IFX in LA and at NAB and i like them alot, I think that it is down to Piranha 4 or smoke 6 on a tezro or Octane 2.

For those of you that don't know about Piranha go to www.ifx.com

I just wish they hard more plugins but i heard that they are in the new plugin format community the the foundry is starting so hopefully they will have more plugins soon.

[netviper]

yes, the openFX standard is under development... BUT note... a good app allows you to make these looks without the help of plugins... so be weary of what you get into.

As far as ease of use, my vote is for piranha.... but i will never discount flame as a good vfx engine.

[foetz]

hello,

i would also not choose avid cause of x86.
a highend editor with wintel is a joke. and for $150,000 it's a HUGE joke ;-)
fcp or even shake are not the same level and osx or even linux still have their way to go. not sure if they'll exceed a certain level ever.

like the others said i would also go for piranha or discreet. the sgi versions, of course.

[Xavier]

>>If one built an Apple system with a $150k budget 8 streams of realtime HD can be achieved!!


Huh... no.

At 1920x1080@8bits 24 fps * 8 layers, that's 1.1 GigaBytes per second. That's faster than RAM throughput, and *definitely* faster than xServe RAID speeds.

As for DS HD, one thing that struck me as a problem when I saw a demo of DS HD is that it couldn't playback HD material on the graphics monitor properly. You *had* to use the HD SDI output to see your clips in HD at full rez. Is that always the case for DS HD?

On the other hand, Smoke HD can show you your clips at full rez on the graphics monitor. Smoke (like all discreet stuff) even genlocks the graphics to avoid mismatches between playback rate and monitor refresh rate.

Can DS (or FCP) manage uncompressed 4:4:4 RGB media in real-time? I thought DS used some "light" compression scheme on it's real-time HD footage. I might be wrong, though... Can a DS HD user enlighten me, please?

-- Xavier

[rareelement]

FCP in 4:4:2 10 bit color space for HD, i don't know about Nitris but the DS system before Nitris worked in 8 bit HD in realtime which was the big drawback compared to Quantel or discreet. I suspect that DS Nitris is 10bit HD.

FCP should be 12bit with version 5 because all the capture cards coming out for the G5 are 12bit

[rareelement]

Avid DS Nitris is 10bit HD see below

Avid DS Nitris
Supercharge your creativity with the industry’s hottest SD and HD solution for high-performance finishing and mastering. The Avid® DS Nitris™ system is designed for editors and artists who want the ultimate in quality, real-time performance, automatic conform, creative versatility, and interoperability. It combines deep creative editing and finishing software with the revolutionary Avid Nitris Digital Nonlinear Accelerator™ for guaranteed real-time editing and effects. Scale from DV25 to multiple streams of 10-bit uncompressed and compressed HD – even 2K/4K media. Unleash the power of Avid DNX™ highefficiency HD and take full advantage of Avid Unity shared storage networks and productivity tools for real-time, collaborative HD production. Create, edit, and master TV programs, films, and commercials – even theatrical releases – with the ultimate Avid finishing system: Avid DS Nitris.

Don't really see why you would pay so much for Nitris when you can get higher quality cheaper with Smoke 6. Far from the ultimate finiishing system. Fire 6 is the ultimate finishing system!!!!!!!!!!