-
Apple and Thunderbolt 3
-
If the functional cutoff is that if you’re doing a movie up to the level of WTF (just 1200 basic VFX shots and a desire to keep as much as possible of the work in house and on-set) VERSES our movie has 1500 VFX shots that require uber-complex wire-frame photo-realistic characters and the creation of whole worlds so we’re just doing the simple pre-vis and farming most of it out to the big effects shops – AND if the argument is that I can now do the former with something I can buy from the Apple store – and the latter requires a post production tech department that can swap out GPUs as they self-combust…
You know, if I was working in the film world, I think I could live with that.
I had the pleasure of a nice long one-o-one chat with Glenn Ficarra at NAB – and he was pretty clear that one of the primary things he really enjoys about working with his new FCP X workflow is that he’s excited by the possibilities of doing more of the overall work directly, without having to send nearly as much “outside” in order to be able to see the results after some third party gets their work done.
I “think” this is what Michael Cioni was referencing in his pre-nab conference comments about working “directly with the O-Neg” Clearly what today’s digital file systems consider as the “original negative” is NOT the same thing as it was when the term applied to film and I understood that to indicate the cloned files they were using were exactly identical to what would show up on screen in the theaters – (suitable processing and grading and sound mastering expected down the line). But to never have to “dumb down” a shot for screening purposes – and to be able to comp temp effects that look more like what you’re trying to achieve, earlier, must be a nice thing compared to the way movies have been made for most of history.
Of course I’d expect for an effects-heavy movie like Deadpool, that more “in house” approach is not possible with every scene or shot regardless of what software it’s cut on. (And for all I know, they’re doing exactly the same “working on essentially originals” out of Premiere Pro)
But that a more internal and “on-set” workflow IS possible for a movie like WTF that can share the same multiplex where any other Hollywood film is showing sure seemed to be something Mr. Ficarra found VERY useful and appealing.
And it seems pretty awesome to me as well.
My barely educated about the film world 2 cents, anyway.
New signature under construction and coming soon. Please stand by…
-
My system is built around the 8 core haswell-e (Overclocked) and two Nvidia Titans with 64Gb or ram. Using Ppro I get 1/2 resolution in realtime with 6K Dragon material. I don’t use proxies, it works well, it’s a 10K machine without monitors, it has TB2 but I am using an internal raid. I output Prores using the Miraizon codec with no problem.
I don’t know what performance could I get in FCPX but this is pretty decent to me. Assimilate Scratch gives me full resolution realtime in 6K. Colorfront’s Transkoder converts 6K to Prores 4X realtime!!!! It is a beast for encoding jobs.
Santiago Martí
http://www.robotrojo.com.ar
Red Epic Dragon, Sony FS7, Sony a7S, Red Pro Primes, Adobe CC, Assimilate Scratch -
[Bill Davis] “If the functional cutoff is that if you’re doing a movie up to the level of WTF (just 1200 basic VFX shots and a desire to keep as much as possible of the work in house and on-set) VERSES our movie has 1500 VFX shots that require uber-complex….”
I think the key issue is not the complexity of the shots, but that they were trying to temp in a lot with After Effects. This was done using live AE comps in the Premiere Pro timeline. It’s one of Adobe’s great marketing points, but one that can be very problematic in actual practice. Especially when the majority of shots are live AE comps. It’s a great way to drag your system to a crawl. Add higher resolution media and sequences into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster. This is an area where the nMPs simply don’t and can’t cut it. Nor should they be expected to.
[Bill Davis] “and he was pretty clear that one of the primary things he really enjoys about working with his new FCP X workflow is that he’s excited by the possibilities of doing more of the overall work directly, without having to send nearly as much “outside””
I managed a post house in the 90s that did a number of sci-fi syndicated TV series. We did EVERYTHING in-house. Film transfer, offline, online, VFX, audio post, mix and grading. Plus the related promos. Yes, it’s a very efficient way of working. The irony is that most of the rest of the world tends to work this way, just not major studios. So it’s great when someone is willing to buck the system and succeeds.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
The downside of this whole discussion about hardware is that AMD showed some really nice GPU cards at NAB that are only PC-compatible for now. If you have an old tower, Sapphire 7950 is about as good as you can go with a “blessed” AMD card. You get a high-end Nvidia (that’s what they edited with on “Gone Girl”) or a flashed Nvidia gaming card. Expansion chassis don’t really help you much for editing if you have a nMP. So a lot of us are stuck.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “The downside of this whole discussion about hardware is that AMD showed some really nice GPU cards at NAB that are only PC-compatible for now. “
I spoke with one of the AMD engineers at NAB who told me they make the GPUs, they then give them to Apple, who then “Do what they want with them” referring to coding the drivers.
AMD doesn’t write the OS X drivers at all which is interesting.
-
[Darren Roark] “I spoke with one of the AMD engineers at NAB who told me they make the GPUs, they then give them to Apple, who then “Do what they want with them” referring to coding the drivers.”
Me, too. Not just coding the drivers. They give them just the GPU chips. Apple designs the card/housing onto which the chips are mounted. And handles the construction. Hence the heat issue.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Hence the heat issue.
“Take this with a grain of salt, but, regarding Deadpool MP meltdowns, some of the team believe it’s a computer issue, but some are just as convinced that it was caused by issues with the Beta versions of PP they were running at the time. FWIW
————————————————————-
~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “some of the team believe it’s a computer issue, but some are just as convinced that it was caused by issues with the Beta versions of PP they were running at the time”
It may be a combination of both. What AMD told me was that on the 12-cores with dual D-700s, when you are running at full blast, the combined CPU and GPU heat load is too great under the normal ambient temperatures that you’d find in a typical air-conditioned edit suite. Clearly it’s not just one production that has had this issue, as it’s a known problem at least to AMD. It tends to affect the top-end versions of these machines. If you noticed the various custom enclosures on the floor, which house a nMP inside, some of the designers put a big fan in front of the lower intake side of the nMP, just to push more air through it.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “It may be a combination of both. What AMD told me was that on the 12-cores with dual D-700s, when you are running at full blast, the combined CPU and GPU heat load is too great under the normal ambient temperatures that you’d find in a typical air-conditioned edit suite. Clearly it’s not just one production that has had this issue, as it’s a known problem at least to AMD. “
Makes sense… Yeah, some pretty cool (pun intended) mp enclosures/racks etc at the show… 🙂
————————————————————-
~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~ -
I ran tests with my D700 machine laying it on it’s side running full bore. It does run hotter that way. My guess is heat rising at a 90 degree angle makes a difference. It also changed depending on which part of the cylinder it was resting on.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up