Listen up

[Anonymous]

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

[John Montgomery]

paul_round wrote:

“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.

[luc]

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]

Quote:

‘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 [email protected]…
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]

Quote:

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 [email protected] 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! 😮

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! 😀

[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.

[luc]

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

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