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I would asume that a quad tzero would be faster than a dual G5. However for that kind of money you can buy an 80 processor Xserver G5 cluster with a 2Gb/s 3>terabyte RAID system. I can only imagine the kind of power a machine can put into Shake or Toxic if it comes around. About Discreet interface, lets face it. users might defend it because they are used to work in it. However it is not practical. Procedures can be shorten through an evolved interface. And you can hate Apple everything you want however you have to recognize that they ar far ahead than anybody when it comes to GUI.
About IRIX, it is old and dead. It has nothing to give. OS X might not be perfect but it is the best UNIX ever by far, mainly because it is the only one which has managed to unleash it’s power past the technicians. And about AQUA everyone should care, because it is an evolution (such as HD) and is not that you don’t need it, is that it is more than you are used to.
Amen.
A lot of professionnals are really scared about these new low-cost products that provides enourmous performances with a very powerful interface.
The world of compositing is really begining to change a lot, and the discreet systems looks odd compared to the new compositing packages such as shake or nuke; and the price difference is really huge. If discreet don’t want to disappear, it has to adapt itself by creating new tools and that what’s happening with toxik.
You don’t have a lot of solutions if you want to continue to work in the compositing world : adapt yourself or disappear.
If you are talented and open minded, you don’t have to care, the future is smiling to you.eltopo wrote:I would asume that a quad tzero would be faster than a dual G5. However for that kind of money you can buy an 80 processor Xserver G5 cluster with a 2Gb/s 3>terabyte RAID system. I can only imagine the kind of power a machine can put into Shake or Toxic if it comes around. About Discreet interface, lets face it. users might defend it because they are used to work in it. However it is not practical. Procedures can be shorten through an evolved interface. And you can hate Apple everything you want however you have to recognize that they ar far ahead than anybody when it comes to GUI.About IRIX, it is old and dead. It has nothing to give. OS X might not be perfect but it is the best UNIX ever by far, mainly because it is the only one which has managed to unleash it’s power past the technicians. And about AQUA everyone should care, because it is an evolution (such as HD) and is not that you don’t need it, is that it is more than you are used to.
It’s not just about speed, it’s about bandwidth. Flame can use Burn for rendering, so what’s really important on the Flame host box is throughput. The Tezro has this in spades over any other PC or Mac solution. To quote Maurice Patel, manager of discreet’s systems division:
“Really, if we look at the great thing about PC-based hardware, itÂ’s fast CPUs, but with low bandwidth, whereas on the SGI side, you have this really high bandwidth, even though the CPUs are slightly slower – the Tezro is now up to 4 processors. You can have Onyx-level performance on the desktop. So one of the things weÂ’re demonstrating, for example, why the Tezro is unique, and why itÂ’s proving to be a very popular product to our customers, is that it has four PCI-X busses in it. It has eight slots, and it has actually four separate busses – double what you have in a PC and quadruple what you have in a G5. Considering that today, people have so much digital data, the storage interface becomes crucial. They can interface large amounts of storage, because in modern postproduction itÂ’s very hard to keep everything on your local drive. So having huge I/O bandwidth is the advantage of the Tezro. That means, for example that the Tezro system is capable of delivering two streams of uncompressed RGB at HD resolution, as well as, of course, real time 2K as well as real time 3K performance. So we have huge performance differentiations on the Tezro side, of course. It allows us to have a highly differentiated high-end solution, capable of all its real time high resolution throughput, as well as the four CPUs, massive productivity gains that you get from the SGI architecture.”
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.dtvprofessional.com/2004/01_jan/features/cw_patel_sf6int.htm
SGI’s not out of the game yet. As long as there are high end clients with money and deadlines, there will be a demand for discreet’s SGI-based systems.
Regarding IRIX, I suggest that you educate yourself before spouting off about how OS X is the best UNIX and how IRIX is old and dead and has nothing to offer. It makes you sound like an amateur. OS X doesn’t have a realtime filesystem, guaranteed-rate I/O, or support for logical volume management. Relatively speaking, OS X is still in its infancy, whereas IRIX has been in existence for 21 years. SGI’s CXFS virtually defines the state of the art in realtime SAN systems, which are becoming increasingly important in the modern postproduction environment.
Check out this link for a good overview of the current state of media management:
http://homepage.mac.com/cutiep007/mikes_blog/C597575370/E198357497/
Relevant quote: “SGI has become very sexy once again to serious feature film post-production facilities, doing 2K and higher, feature film work. “
I don’t hate Apple at all, as you assert. But it’s true that I’m not a Mac zealot. I own a dual 2GHz G5, and it’s a great machine for the money. I also really like OS X, but I can’t say that it’s “the best UNIX by far.” Regarding OS X’s GUI, I disagree that it’s far ahead of everyone else. It looks pretty, but so do some of the latest versions of Linux GUIs like GNOME and KDE. There are as many Dock detractors as there are supporters. OS X’s Aqua isn’t fundamentally all that different from any other GUI, it just gives greater attention to aesthetic details. If you think that is a huge leap forward, then you’re entitled to your opinion. I think that most people, however, see it as evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Cheers, and enjoy your G5. I know I am!
-zolo
The discreet guys really seems to be against apple.
The G5 is really a great machine and is also able to do real time color grading on 2k footage :
http://www.siliconcolor.com
I don’t have a lot informations about that (I’m not using this system), but the DeckLink HD card can do real-time color corrections on HD footage in FinalCut pro.
It’s also able to easily handle 8 10bits SD streams in real time and the sustained 400MB/sec bandwidth that come with.Bandwith HA!, SGI proudly announces the 6GB/s bandwith of the Tzero (i believed it’s shared between processors), the G5 has a 9GB/s Bandwith independent for every processor plus a 1GHz Bus. It uses faster memory. It is so fast the third fastest computer on the planet is a 1100 G5 cluster. Discreet users should stop trying to block the sun with their finger.
Discreet did not invent the industry. I agree, discreet are going sideways not forwards, maybe the guy(s) who had the initial concept ideas has left.
As I sit here on a 7.7 box, I can tell you that I personally could really use the Edit feature, as well as all the improvements to Batch (integrated keyframe timeline specifically).
I also like the ability to import 3d geometry. Obviously Flame isn’t a 3d tool, but it is nice to have the option to integrate 3d into your work. I don’t use it all the time, but I have and would miss it were it gone.
We all have different needs out of the software. Some of us may never use an expression, the warper or modular keyer in our lives, others can’t live w/o them.
I hear Maya 6 will have a built in web browser, I kid you not. Mind you, the one in XSI is no bad, I can pretend to work, but really browse till my wee old heart is content.
eltopo wrote:ANON I think you are right, but I think you have fallen short. Come on, DIscreet interface and workings are 10 years old without any sognificant changes. They are pretty lousy. And their improvements have been the commonplace for some years in other programmes. I just hope Apple buys the whole thing so you can learn what a real interface looks like in AQUA starting with that awful gray and that stupid interface which is by far the worst I have ever seen in a pro application (and despite what you say is quite dumb)Yeah, bubble soap icons in a white interface would look much better, ohh… they could also add those cool tiny meanless colored icons 😆
Come on!
Is always better to work in a neutral color enviroment, specially when you are color correcting, big text buttons are perfect with a tablet, at least for me. I can’t complain about the interface of the compositing line of products of discreet. Of corse it has it’s issues, but they aren’t as big as most of the apps avaliable today, but I agree that somethings could be done, just not a total make over.
You really think Apple is that good?
Sure Mac OS X is eye candy, but it has it’s issues like everything else.
Quote:Obvioulsy OS X is much further ahead in terms of supporting modern video codecs, but it’s no IRIX killer. That it kills Windows is obvious, but then again, what doesn’t?Well, it will depend on which aspects you meant that, because Macs still sux with 3D stuff, and there are somethings that Win based do better then the others.
This OS vs. discution tend to end up concluding nothing, they are different operational systems for different propouses, each one has it’s own use in a pipeline, if you have them properly configured and properly tweaked you have a great OS, no matter which one.
One thing you can be certain, discutions like this will repeat them selfes forever, simply because technology doesn’t have breaks anymore.
Let’s wait to see what will happen, the new line of Intel processors is about to be released soon, maybe Toxic will come along with them in Linux taste 😉
Even tho I doubt that.Well botton line for me is that they are tools, not a religion or way of life, so I use the one which can get the job done in the way I want, no matter which or if it’s made by X, Y or Z company.
Quote:I hear Maya 6 will have a built in web browser, I kid you not. Mind you, the one in XSI is no bad, I can pretend to work, but really browse till my wee old heart is content.Yeah, thats is another use for that, but you can also create pages with links to all of your resouces library (textures, shaders, objects, scripts, etc..) among others pretty useful things.
As for the “Having to learn new things” thingie, I though that was life was about, specially in this field.
But you can always opt for being outdated insted of updated, is up to you.
Companies make software to sell to the broadest share as they can, so give up on the idea of trying to hold new stuff from being implemented. If that new feature doesn’t mean nothing to 99% of the current/old users and it doesn’t ruin their work or it’s not that relevant in terms of workflow, but it means everything or at least something to the remaining users, then they already have reached something.
Cheers,
dg
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