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Hi people! i need some advice here.
i apologize if there are any similar posts on this forum, but i haven’t found anything similar.
Been working in a mid-sized post house on Smoke and Flame for a year now.
Crazy but true, i was constantly switching from flame to smoke and backwards.
since i was really busy working i haven’t had time to check those systems out, meaning, hardware, stones, configuration, graphics,..and other kind of issues.
I should be treated like a guy who only deals with already “running” flames and smokes. anyway, i am going “solo” in this period, meaning i am doing compositing work around for other clients.
Giving some taught on hardware/software i came across the fact that i am most productive on flame/inferno so i should get myself a flame. Of course, this toys cost a lot …meaning really a lot (maybe too much right now for me)
Searching the net, i found out there are guys selling flames (only software) for just a couple of dollars (i guess cracked or whatever) so this is not an option..either for my moral point of view as for *i don’t want to get busted for doing high-end work on cracked flame* issue.after this intro, here are my questions:
1) do you guys think i could buy used hardware (ether octane/octane2 for flame or onyx for inferno) to cut down costs?
2) is it possible to have limited stone to , lets say 30 minutes or less of storage ?
i mean, how does this things work? you just specify how much storage you need?
3) as far as it goes for inferno, what kind of hardware do i need ?
(can inferno run on those older Onyx2 pieces?)just to get a general idea of what i am aiming to…is it true that flame/inferno cost a lot of *dinero*, do you guys think with points 1,2,3 i could significantly cut costs ? if not, there is no point for me getting a lifetime-debt in my bank 🙂
thanx for your time reading this.
se.
have you looked into buying one of the new linux-based systems? the smoke-flint linux combo was recently selling for around USD$110k turnkey from discreet (this includes a pretty fair sized stone array). the only major drawbacks to flint is that it is currently limited to 8bit and does not have the modular keyer. other than that they give stellar bang for your buck (especially for broadcast work). they are very zippy in terms of both interacting with the UI and for rendering.
i think that would be a much safer bet than buying used gear. all the SGI stuff can be pretty difficult to maintain (read: they break a lot) and the upcoming releases of FFI/FS will no longer be able to run on R10k processors (which is most of what you’ll find on the secondary market).
k
A few points.
1. If your doing NTSC or PAL work, I think an flint or flint HD is your best bet. It is a great machine.. I have one – it is cheap, fast – easy and its non-sgi hardware so its easy to imagine future hardware upgrades. With the Masterkeyer you can survive without the MK (- but this is the most STUPID decision AME have made in years.. it just makes moving work between FI and Flint painful – but I would doubt it makes one bit of difference to sales 🙂
2. Cracks are very dangerous. Think about this – if some people get super cheap flames- it will bring down the average hr rate and make legal systems less viable… please please avoid cracks.
3. Doing the build yourself flame with bit and pieces can result in several problem.. AME has a weird non-original owners fee if you start buying second hand licenses. Plus your bound to have some hard core Sys admin issues – in my opinion the lost revenue from dealing with this would make the Flint extremely viable.
4. Smoke on Linux is equally valid, IMHO
mike
flint is mainly missing these:
1. Modular keyer (you can live with masterkeyer)
2. 10bit workflow (must have for DI work)
3. 3D tracker (go for matchmover, boujou, or pftrack, an inferno is very slow for 3D track)
4. motion (but the new flint version 9.5 should have discreet optical flow timewarp)
5. HSDL (you won’t be doing DI work on your flint, so why? but still you can work with HDCAM-SR 4:4:4 way of DI)
6. paint was missing brush zooming, but discreet (oops AME) claims they did it for v9.5
7. SD version has 1280×1024 GUI, I always like to work in highest resolution, so this is uncomfortable for me
8. no parity disk! (you might loose your work, just because of one bad disk in your stones. AME claims that, PC platform is missing the bandwidth for software parity! Does it smell some marketing? Not sure…)Go for flint linux. I hope there is still an SD version available. Because I heard that, AME is selling HD flints only, and they cost nearly $180k!!! This is too much for a flint. Even if it does HD… I hope you can get an SD version of flint around $100k.
That box would even kill the newest onyx350 hardware for most of the SD jobs. You will love its interactivity. It is just like a PS2 game. No delay between GUI actions. Runs 50fps most of the time. It is fast, and this makes its excuse for missing features.
Maybe in the future, AME might port also flame to linux, maybe on a fx4400 board. And that box will be even faster.
I agree with some of your points, well most…
The flint I am on is the flint HD, and yes it flies – it is very responsive. As I said for SD work it is ideal.. SD work – since you can bring in HD material,.. but it is only 8 bit so yes film and Di are out… but to be honest, loads of ads on air are done off a normal standard Digital Betacam (8 bit).As for the 3D tracker – your right – but I guess most people I know don’t use flame/flint for 3D tracking… normally as exporting and importing 3D camera moves is not 100% reliable and not simple/easy.
i would love to hear from people that do use the 3D tracker a lot in flame. While I have done jobs with it.. normally we use specialist trackers that easily export to flame and 3D.
For Optical flow work… I use Furnace 2 almost 100% of the time these days… (mind you the optical flow shown at NAB user group tech demo was very cool).
Mike
I also used the flame 3D tracker only a few times. And the automatic 3D tracker, I just tried it, but haven’t used it for a job yet.
But one of my colleges told me, that discreet tracker made a track, which couldn’t be done with realviz matchmover. Not because of 3D solution, but because of the 2D tracker difference. For some of the shots, 3D track in flame might be useful.
to the original poster:
i can see why the idea of using a cracked version of flame is so appealing….$100k just for flame software can seem like a lot. however, the price tag of FFI/FS reflects not only discreet’s (excuse me, AME’s) opinion of it’s worth but also what the post/fx market will bear for very powerful software running on very powerful machines helmed by very talented artists.
if you are a skilled FFI artist known in the ad/fx community and you are setting up shop for yourself then you should have little problem charging competitive rates for your work and making enough to pay your lease on that gear. clients (particularly ad agencies) know the difference between sitting in a suite for 5 days to get their spot done for $50k and waiting for somebody on combustion/AE to do their spot in 3 weeks for $5k. they pay for the interactive nature, the speed, the iterations, the creative process.
i’m not saying that you are going to have an easy time of it at the outset and you are going to be cash-flush…that is up to you and your ability to market yourself and deliver jobs. doing top-dollar work on cracked software is about the most insane thing i can think of. what happens when you do a great job and your client puts out a press release touting their spot to the ad community and they mention they did it with you on FFI? think discreet’s client base is so huge they won’t notice a new name in the mix working on gear they didn’t sell him?
also, keep in mind that if you are setting up shop for yourself you will probably be doing a lot of the IT/tech support stuff solo until you can grow enough to need other suites and can afford a full-time sysadmin. that first year of paid support with your new discreet (AME!) box will become your very best friend. FFI/FS systems are nothing if not flaky (even the new linux systems)….i personally would not want to debug a used Octane2 and its oh-so-reliable VBOB by myself…you’ve got patches on top of patches on top of patches for every subsystem in the box and every dot-version of the software seems to need a very select OS/driver setup to run optimally.
i’m sure a lot of the posters here will agree and can provide helpful advice on fine-tuning your business model. we’re all in this together.
good luck & be smart.
k
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