Important Workflow Questions.

[Mike Most]

Well, I would also point out that what the original post is describing is a real time compositing system that can composite more than 20 layers of HD footage in real time, as well as storage and a processing bus that can support approximately 8 GB per second, or the equivalent of about 7 real time streams of uncompressed 4K images. I don’t know of any current technology that can do that, and you certainly aren’t going to get it on a desktop with one GPU card.

Today’s technology is very advanced and capable, but we’re not the Jetsons quite yet.

[Nick Anderson]

Higgins, as u mentioned, u r a top end nuke artist. And from my point of view, you still are. Maybe u push balls around, but the way u doing your job, is not the colorist way.
My advice is, change the strategy of your workflow, not your system or technical details in your workflow. Colorists just dont do job like that.
Calibrate the monitor in your compositing system, dont have to be precise if you dont got the topgrade one, just as close as you can. Then communicate with your client, ask them adjust color/brightness relationships within different elements/layers on the compositing system. After finished there, export mattes for essential elements like sky/main actors etc. Fine tune in your resolve.
Thats the way it should be.
Otherwise, next time if its not an animation but a feature. You have big combat shots, then it wont be 20 mattes, but 200 just if u r lucky enough.

[Alexander Higgins]

Hey Mike and Juan, I agree 100%. I have used both Baselight and Quantel. Yes they are amazing systems in their own way, but the reason I am on Resolve is the reason I am on Resolve. Quantel costs as much as an amazing nice house with a Depreciation greater than investing in “mortgage exchange swaps??” Not sure, I know Quantel in its current proprietary form, with QCare to keep it running, is only an option for maybe a Spielberg or a Cameron.

Baselight, I love it, my favorite Grading System, but again, the Baselight HD I tested for the price, was only a little better than Resolve.

I have pushed my current bosses to Baselight and Mistika and Nudcoda, whatever I could, once the price comes up they loose it and leave the room and slam the door and call me bad names. So price being an issue is not a joke. Now that Resolve is the price it is, those high end systems aren’t even in the conversation anymore.

Once Baselight and Mistika reduce their price, then maybe I can revisit it.

[Alexander Higgins]

Hey Nick, I totally Agree, only thing is workflows can be pushed that way, but it will always change, their are about 20 compositors currently and not every job produced can be done that way, but a lot can, It just depends, but once the Project is in Resolve, and the client wants to fix something after primary grade, we can only being using Resolve to correct that color. If it goes back to comp then any color grading will be destroyed by resolve.

Aside from that, not all the compositing stations can be upgraded to be color correctable, their is an issue with upgrading 20+ workstations to have color calibratable monitors and keeping track of calibration and profiling is a big issue, and a small nightmare. We have a hard enough time keeping our grading room calibrated, and keeping the lighting and environment consistant, then tossing 20+ compers doing their own thing with their monitors, its just too much to keep track of.

I have done two features in Resolve, and yes, I did not bring in One Matte, I did it all with color keys and windows, it went fine, had workflow issues, but the grading was a breeze…

Its the microscopic CG animated commercials that break the system.

[Juan Salvo]

Well then tell your bosses this is the performance they get at that price point. You have my other recommendations above. But you’ll end up spending 30k+ to get mildly better performance.

You came on the forum complaining about the performance with resolve, saying you have very demanding clients that accept no compromise. If that’s the case then you should be able to bill your clients the kind of rates that support a 300k+ system as that is the performance they seem to be expecting.

Good luck to you. I think in 5 years well all be seeing the type of performance you dream of but by then your clients will be asking for the same performance in 8k images and well all be right back at square one.

BTW, Baselight HD won’t cover it for what your asking for. You’d need a maxed out baselight system, with 8 cluster nodes, to get the kind of throughput your clients expect.

[Alexander Higgins]

Hey Juan, I agree, but i am the middle man in this situation and in a lot of ways the sacrificial goat, I have to figure out why things are not fast and efficient, but make everyone happy with the price point. Right now my only option is to use less mattes.

Thanks Everyone for all your imput.

[Kevin Cannon]

Also, are your mattes coming in 1 or 3 per DPX sequence? Starting with 8.0 Resolve supports using the R, G, B channels for three separate mattes… I honestly have never had a reason to figure out how that works, but sounds like you could ask your compositors to provide them that way… It’s very common to do that in Nuke, right? Best case scenario you could have one third of the mattes…

KC

Prehistoric Digital
PhD Grading Suite

[Juan Salvo]

Hi Kevin,

I haven’t tried it, but I know openexr supports multiple channels as well. Would those work in resolve? I couldn’t find any mention of support for multicnnel mattes from exr.

[Kevin Cannon]

The 8.0 release notes only specify using 3 mattes in RGB… I think they would mention it specifically if you could use more channels with open EXR. But again, I just remember that feature, I’ve never actually used it.

KC

[Eric Johnson]

[Alexander Higgins] “The System is a 5,1 MacPro with 24gb Ram and QuadroFX 4800 and a Geforce GUI Card, blackmagic broadcast card and fibre storage..”

It sounds to me like you need to change your GPU situation… not that that cure everything but… I was under the impression the Quadro FX 4800 was weak sauce compared to the newer Quadro 4000… So maybe a 4000 as a GUI, a Cubix and 3x GFX 480’s or 580’s would help. That won’t fix everything but it could help. And since there’s the new nvidia drivers, buy PC cards… or get’m from macvidcards… All told though, that and some super fast local storage will get you closer. Though, depending on how much storage you need, that’s still @ $20k (Storage + HBA + Cubix + new GUI + new GPUs)