[Kelley Muro]

Update:

Benchmarking has revealed little to no performance difference between the Mac and Windows versions of Combustion when running on the Intel-based Mac Pro.

Since there is now feature and performance parity between the Mac and Windows versions, the only real differences are the lack of Backburner in the Mac version and the existence of certain Windows-only third-party plugins.

In short, if you are already using a Mac (for Final Cut Pro, etc.), there’s no advantage to buying a PC to run Combustion. If you have a Mac Pro, there’s no advantage to running Combustion under Windows vs. OS X unless you need a particular plugin that is Windows-only.

[Kelley Muro]

Nomak wrote:

As I thought.
Thank’s Zolo

Just to be clear, I have run some benchmarks comparing the Mac and Windows versions of Combustion 4 on the Mac Pro, dual booting between OS X and Windows XP. The performance is almost identical between the two platforms. Render times have been consistently between 5-7% variation (varying both ways) between Windows and OS X.

In short, they’re evenly matched. Apart from Backburner and certain Windows-only third-party plugins, the Mac and Windows versions of Combustion have more or less achieved feature and performance parity.

[Kelley Muro]

Nomak wrote:

Hi there, I was wondering if anybody here has already tested combustion on a dual core intel mac.
I am wondering if there’s some enhancement due to the pc like configuration and the linux like OS.
Cheers

I’m using Combustion 4 on a Mac Pro (Intel). It seems more or less the same as it did on a G5, possibly a bit faster – but most likely due to faster CPUs rather than any code optimization.

[Kelley Muro]

dmaxnz wrote:

Hi,

I use DS and am learning COmbustion, but i really want to get into Flame. Until I get a job at a facility that has DS and Flame, are there any good resources on the net to pick up what I can in the interim. Any “training software” available?
Thanks,
Dec

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8260649&linkID=5573447

[Kelley Muro]

Boerkez wrote:

Hi,

I have an interview shot on HDV 1080/25 of a guy sitting in front of a window. During the interview the sun started to shine heavily and blows out part of his face/body and all of the window behind him. Does anyone have a tip on how to fix this problem? I have Combustion 4, AE 7 and a lot of plugs.

Thanx!!

Boerkez

The only way you might be able to do this is if the guy wasn’t moving or talking. In that case, you could use the reveal tool in paint to fill in the blown out areas with frames that contain detail. However, since this is an interview, and the subject is most likely talking, I think you’re out of luck.

Word to the wise: ALWAYS control lighting in an interview – don’t rely on natural light if it’s not a completely cloudless day or if you’re shooting over a long period of time and anticipate cutting between non-sequential segments of the interview.

[Kelley Muro]

sidewalksurfing wrote:

Discreet had nothing to do with 5D going out of buisness. 5D made some poor business descisions when they first were funding and setting up their company and it came back to bite them big time.

I stand corrected. Thanks for the info!

[Kelley Muro]

eltopo wrote:

I bet Shake’s replacement will be a great headache for AM&E. Apple makes its money from selling computers (and iPods I know) so they can create a realtime 2k compositor for 10K including hardware with 90% of the features Flame has plus some other things such as working with QT, final cut pro, photoshop on a single machine. Perhaps it will come as a whole package and you get an smoke+flame killer for 1/30 of the price…

I think Apple has made some great software, and they have clearly made huge inroads into the post market, but they’re still learning. In some ways, they don’t quite “get it” yet on the pro level. It usually takes them several revisions of an app before they really hit their stride and address all of the issues that should have been dealt with in rev.1. In Final Cut Pro, it’s media management. In Motion, it was floating point precision. In DVD Studio Pro, it’s video preview, etc. And in Quicktime, it’s ongoing gamma issues that owe more to Apple’s legacy in prepress applications than to the modern video postproduction environment.

While I would love to see a bona fide Flame killer come out of Apple, I don’t think it’s likely. If history is any indication, their first release of such a product would not yet be ready for primetime. By showing their hand too early, Apple would give the rest of the industry ample time to react before the next revision of their application emerged and became a real threat.

Apple tends to have a “we know best” attitude when it comes to development. I think that they should try to consult with post industry professionals to a much greater degree during the planning stages of developing new applications. Apple also is notorious for blindsiding developers by changing code in their OS and applications without advance notice. Quicktime is infamous for this. While ultimately it’s the end user’s responsibility to read the fine print and not upgrade anything in the middle of a big job, Apple could still communicate better with developers to allow them time to have patches ready BEFORE, not after, a new version of Quicktime comes out and breaks features in their applications. Apple’s notorious secrecy should not bite the hand that helps feed them.

[Kelley Muro]

deandec wrote:

Can’t believe no one has ripped that concept off in some pc software.

Someone has. Look up 5D Cyborg. Discreet bought out 5D and may or may not have rolled some of their IP into Toxic. At the very least, they removed a potential direct competitor. Smart move on Discreet’s part, from a survival standpoint.

[Kelley Muro]

deandec wrote:

It’s unfortunate that there always has to be such wild speculation with Discreet products.

Well to be blunt, there ARE no Discreet products anymore. The Autodesk assimilation is complete. Autodesk Flame. Autodesk Smoke. Autodesk Toxic. Autodesk Combustion. Get used to it.

Autodesk is similar to most other big software houses in that they do not publicly comment about future products.

It’s simple, really. Use Combustion 4 now if it fits your needs. If it ceases to do that, or if a potential future version does not meet your needs, find another tool that will. I know very few artists who limit themselves to dependence on one tool. Regardless, there’s very little you can do about whatever Autodesk chooses to do with Combustion, so don’t sit around worrying about it.

[Kelley Muro]

mdoane wrote:

Hi all.

Has anyone ever used a blackmagic or aja card for video out in C4? I’m working in 1080p on OSX, and would like to see the footage on a HD monitor. I have not been able to find much on the Autodesk site about it. But, blackmagic lists C4 as a compatible program. Thanks.

md

I’m using a Decklink SD with Combustion 4 on a G5 and it works perfectly. I choose the Decklink as the framebuffer and output via SDI to a Sony PVM-14L5 with an SDI input card. I assume that using a Decklink HD card with HDSDI out and either an HDSDI input card on the monitor or an HDSDI to component adapter (for monitors without HDSDI inputs) would work equally well.

Some of the Decklink HD cards also have analog component outputs, so if your HD monitor doesn’t have an HDSDI input, you can connect the Decklink to the component analog inputs instead.

I’ve read on various forums that there’s no discernable difference in image quality between using analog component or HDSDI outputs when viewing an HD CRT, since CRTs are inherently analog devices. Given the use of high-quality cables in each scenario, the only real difference is where the D/A conversion is occurring – on the Decklink card or on the monitor’s HDSDI input decoder card.

[Kelley Muro]

theStable wrote:

BTW sorry for starting this poor man flame thread, yes it is old but still great!!

What’s really amazing is that the O2 is still even usable after 10 years, although it’s quite slow by modern standards. I don’t think any PC or Mac based system has aged as well in that regard!

[Kelley Muro]

kuban wrote:

The O2 can actually blit YUV or RGBA encoded pixels to screen. But the problem is, flint stores frames as RGB24 bit images. But you have to convert RGB24 to RGBA32 on the fly, to blit it to screen. That is the bottleneck in O2 realtime playback. So it doesn’t matter, even if you put dual 4G FC arrays to O2. You can not get realtime playback, when using discreet software.

However I could play realtime from Media Illusion, either YUV or RGBA, on my O2. Probably 10 yrs ago something…

Kuban nailed it. The bottleneck in Flint is the O2’s lack of RGB to YUV color space conversion in hardware. That’s why Flint (effect option 3) can’t lay off material to tape directly from disk, it has to cache footge into RAM first. That limits the amount of playback time to the amount of RAM in your O2.

As Kuban mentioned, some apps can play back full-res uncompressed video on the O2 directly from disk. Alias|Wavefront’s Zap!iT was a utility that allowed realtime playback of RGB(A?) frame sequences so that animators could record full (video) resolution animated clips to tape or watch them on a broadcast monitor.

[Kelley Muro]

While it was touched on, I thought I should clarify a difference between FFI and desktop compositing applications.

A very significant difference between FFI and software-only products like Combustion, AE, Shake, Nuke, Fusion, etc. is that FFI plays back footage directly from disk, and does not need to cache clips into RAM first. Thus, the length of clip playback is not limited by system RAM, only by storage size and disk bandwidth. This makes a HUGE difference in interactivity between FFI and other compositors.

If Combustion were to have the ability to play back footage in realtime directly from disk, it would cut into the Flint (and possibly Flame) market in a big way. I think Discreet keeps Combustion RAM cache-dependent partly in order to prevent cannibalism in its product line.

What I don’t understand is why other companies haven’t focused on this issue in their compositing products. Adobe, Apple and others don’t have to worry about cutting into sales of their own higher end applications, so it would be a huge strategic advantage for them to support realtime disk-based framestores. If AE or Shake gained that functionality, Discreet would be forced to bring it to Combustion or risk obsolescence.

[Kelley Muro]

Light wrote:

Is it possible that one can install ffi on a normal pc with linux? Btw what are the specs of a ffi system with linux, like how much ram, etc.

Thanks man,
Light

While it may be physically possible to install the software on a “normal” PC, it won’t be very useful. FFI are only certified to run on very specific hardware combinations, i.e. nVidia Quadro 4000 series graphics cards (which have graphics to video and genlock, I believe). Also, FFI use a proprietary storage system called a “stone,” which is a hard disk array that uses discreet’s proprietary file system to store frames. The drives in a stone array have serial numbers coded onto them so that you can’t simply replace them with any old hard drive – you have to buy them from discreet. Stone storage is very expensive, and FFI only works with stone arrays.

Discreet spends a lot of time testing and certifying hardware configurations to ensure that they are fast and stable enough for them to use in their FFI systems. By controlling both the hardware and the software, discreet can guarantee a high level of performance from every system they sell. They can also charge a premium for their products, which they most certainly do. Just remember, the high price isn’t because of the hardware, it’s the whole package. People used to think discreet’s use of SGI hardware made FFI more expensive, but moving their systems products to Linux PCs hasn’t made a significant difference in pricing.

[Author]

Posts