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Hi all guys… i would like to know you opinions about which is better…Smoke or Avid DS NItris…. iwould like to hear opinions from people who has work with both systems…as i considering to buy one of systems.
TIA
FlameFx 😯I honestly don’t think you should invest in any of them, but if you must know as far as performance there is not much difference. Avid is more popular, and it should recieve a huge impulse from the new Powermac G5 leaving the reason for an SGI machine without arguments. As for features, the Avid system is more versatile which is good news. Smoke can be annoying in it’s limitations and ancient technology which clearly ties it down when it faces non traditional edition.
But going to the first point, the reason of why not to invest in any of them comes to 3 words: Final Cut Pro. Not only is cheaper but actually better than either Avid’s or discreet’s software, and about the hardware, the latest version is now running at 64bits on a G5, translating: is capable of streaming real time better than smoke or adrenaline despite what they claim. FCP if very flexible so it means you can make clips from 3G phones to film (SD,HD also) and is cheaper that either AVID or discreet. For 10K you can have a real time HD machine. I’ve work with both Avid and Smoke and they don’t impress me much, they are dull, ugly and ols. FCP is amazing, specially when you wacht it of a G5, it will roxk your world
I have worked on all 3.
For the price, final cut cant be beat, especially if you have shake next to it.
BUT, smoke is a 3d environment. As is nitris. You can do alot of stuff in the nitris and its procedural flow is more like shake / fusion.
BUT, its tools are hidden and not placed very well at all. As a matter of fact its worse the discreets interface which we all no is hard to find stuff as well.
The fact that nitris is on windows sucks. 80% of folks i know have problems with the platform, regardless of NITRIS application. (which does crash) The OS shell is large source of the problem believe it or not. You can always install Blackbox for winodws as your shell so that you dont get memory leaks and other nasty stuff which will make you lose your data.
IRIX, is great because it is unix. Same for OSX. networking is great, and its tough to really crash OSX and IRIX the way windows lets you down.
Smoke on linux is not the answer though.. its a step in the right direction, but its the mismatching of pc hardware that causes problems.
Also, dont forget piranha. its an amazing application that in my opinion gets the job done faster than the others. Its on irix with betas of linux floating around.
Here is how i see it though, if you cant afford a smoke… or a nitris, you are definately good to got with fcp AND shake. youy need shake to do the good stuff still. (Disagree if you want but its TRUE)
I hear there is a bridge being built to connect th e two apps, but rumors are all around us.
The best chart:
flame for important VFX with top end clients breathing down your neck
FCP for editing, and music matching
fusion or shake for design elements on the low end.
NITROUS if you dont care that the hardware will be unupgradable in the future.
(Hardware dependant shit IS a problem)
Tezro’s g5’s stuff isnt hardware dependant.that was the main problem we had with the ds systems.
They screw you for the long run.
You all are right.
I have to say just one thing:
If your target is long comforming with lot of layer to recapture from HDtape and SD as well… I must tell you the only software is Nitris, the clip management is the most solid I’ve ever seen!
We worked closely to an editor and a director who was changing the edit at least twice a week.
Without the DSHD “fast” recapture system we couldn’t be able to complete the film in a couple of month!If you don’t care about that I said till now…. Nitris is not your system!
To much expensive, win based, and so on!HTH
Just to understand.
What kind of work will you complete?
Short commercial, long movies, that’s really important!Help me to help you!
Buying a smoke station if you already have a flame station could be a good idea…. and if you will use the Linux version it will be cheaper even if you can’t capture HD directly till now.
Nitris HD is more expensive than a Smoke/linux workstation but for me is the most usefull doing lot of long feature films.
Their color correction is obviously better than that one in FCP, but equally it works.
Summing Up, if you have shake operator able to do all the effects you need, you can use just final cut pro to conform your editing.
That means you should build an entire pipeline OSX based from the workstation till the render node!But if anyone of your artists is not used in those software and your pipeline has already built in other way that’s not the best idea!
Would you show me more about your company so I could say you more?!
I have been haearing the rumor of Apple buying Discreet (they seem to be specially interested in their desktop division. No matter it sees that Autidesk wants to get rid of them so there is no telling what they would do.
It is important to consider that Discreet’s future might be on the line, so investing in them is a HUGE risk. En mi opinion FlameFx, es botar la plata a la basura y yo no lo haria ni a bala.
About Shake, if you run it in a G5 cluster you could build a huge computer capable well of almost everything with half of an Smoke system cost. Plus Shake colour correction and rendering engine is way better than anything Discreet has. About Avid machines, it seems that soon there will be Nitris running on 64bit (on G5) which will solve the Windows problems, but there has been no word on their arrival
As the other forum members pointed out, there is a problem of platforms of Sgi overexpensive (y con un pie en la tumba), Windows (no extra word are needed) and Linux which doesnt seem right. The aswer in my opinion is mac o x. Unix with lots of software and now with the right hardware (the g5, which is showing that it might be more powerful than what we thought-see Virginia Tech’s supercomputer 10+Teraflops). Plus Apple seems to be buying everything else out there. In conclusion I would agree on turning your entire pipeline to mac os x with the added benefit of what the macs do than no other computer has been able to match: they just work.
About X/844, they put some impressive numbers on their website and their system is quite cheap. I am not familiar with it so I don’t feel prepared to give an opinion about it. What it seems is that it is neither an editor nor a compositor it tries to be both. This makes me think twice about it. Maybe if you can only afford one machine it might be an alternative, but you have t remember that being a propietaru machine it might be apin to put it on a network and make it work, while a mac has automatic configuration for example.
My views on Avid DS
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its my second week on Avid DS 6.0 and i am bowled over by the features it has! its infact a bundle of softwares!
imagine a software in which you can edit,composite,title and produce graphics as well! that too super fast!
i have been working on FCP for three years now and that has been my first love. i have an expert level command over it.
i have joined india’s premier news tv channel and they have flame,smoke,inferno and avid ds.
i am in the Promos departmentt.
i have been taken as a trainee as i dont know any of these high end machines although i have 3 years plus experience of Final Cut Pro.
i am very happy.i feel like a student again.sitting on Avid ds day&night with the manual.
i guess i will be slowly and steadily learning all but would ultimately will have to make a choice.question?
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so i was just curious to find out who is the heavyweight?(anyways, i can never imagine to leave FCP)ISSUE
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but the issue is that here in india FCP is not in great demand.the market is still occupied by avids and discreet’s suites.
we FCP editors are not considered that high level editors though i feel i can edit anything from a docu to a feture on FCP.
So flamefx, if you are really convinced and serious about buying FCP then consider me!
i fit the bill.i am also learning shake and have a passion for 3d and also fiddling with my new love SOFTIMAGE XSI!!About me
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I am an FCP(Final Cut Pro 4.0) editor with two and a half years of
experience.I have been working on Final Cut Pro since its first release. I have worked for IndiaÂ’s first and premier DV film making company, Digital Talkies, which was headed by internationally renowned film-maker Shekhar Kapur, of the Elizabeth and The four feathers fame. At Digital Talkies I edited DV shorts; experimental films/promos.
Although the company started out very well, and organised AsiaÂ’s first Digital Film festival in delhi(INDIA), from 26th March – 31st March 2001, but unfortunately it had to branchout in other areas, since DV films do not find a commercial market here.
By and large FCP is not in great demand here, so I am looking to relocate myself abroad
where it is picking up steadily.
Besides editing, I am interested in areas of Design, Packaging, Motion
Graphics,compositing and Animation. I use After Effects, Combustion and
Digital Fusion for Compositing. At present I am learning Softimage XSI
3.0 and Shake 3.0 on my own. I am passionate about 3D and see myself as a complete post person within next two years, who can handle full
projects from scratch to finish. I am a self-taught person and a quick
learner. I also work on DPS Velocity and Avid Express DV.
I am also very passionate about promos and can generate concepts for ADs,promos and packaging design. Recently, i edited a documentary, LOKADRUSHTI for UNDP made by an award winning production house, Miditech(http://www.miditech.org).It has been selected for the premier environmental films festival, VATAVARAN 2003.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.
😯
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.
😈
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.
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
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 http://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.
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