[David Lawrence]

[Walter Soyka] “As I mentioned, Ae is in transition right now. The answer to this simple question is somewhat complex. Please pardon a little meandering below…”

Walter – many thanks for the detailed reply. Very helpful in understanding different considerations. Sounds like this is probably one of the worst times to invest in heavy iron for AE. 😉 Oh well, we deal with what’s on the table today. I’ll pass this info up to the mothership and keep you posted. Thanks again!

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

[Walter Soyka] “I really like CineForm, too. Decode should be lighter than H.264.

(Sidebar: I’m looking forward to trying Cinegy’s DANIEL2 [link].)”

Wow, DANIEL2 looks INSANE! I could use that yesterday.

[Walter Soyka] “Yes, the website is horrible. I know you mentioned $5-10k, but considered that might be low. How much can you really spend?”

I’ll know later this week. Google may have in-house resources we can use – either a loaner workstation or specific preferred vendors. Or they may tell us to buy what we need. Right now I want to make sure whatever we ask for is right for the job.

[Walter Soyka] “Given your requirements above, I’d probably prioritize clock speed over core count.”

Both you and Dany mention fast CPU as being one of the most important factors for good AE performance. Any thoughts on Intel’s Quad-core Devil’s Canyon 4GHz i7 (vs Xeon)? The Haswell-E CPUs seem to have the fastest clock speed on the market for a reasonable price.

Does AE take advantage of dual CPUs?

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

Thanks Walter, appreciate the advice. This is a bit of a new world for me but I look forward to diving in! 🙂

[Walter Soyka] “The GPU doesn’t matter for this use; if you’re interested in targeting a computer-based headset in addition to Cardboard, pick your GPU for that.”

Not targeting a HMD like Oculus right now, but I would like to send downsized top/bottom output via HDMI to my 1080p 3D monitor to check convergence. Does AE prefer NVIDIA or AMD GPUs?

[Walter Soyka] “For storage, I’d recommend going solid-state and PCIe-attached, if your requirements allow for the lower capacity versus a spinning-rust RAID. You might consider transcoding those MP4 files to uncompressed image sequences, trading away disk space for lower CPU load.”

PCIe-attached SSD would be great. I just don’t know if we can get enough capacity. I don’t yet have any sample files so it’s hard for me to benchmark how much storage we’ll plow through. My guess is we’ll want a lot but since these are short tests, we may be okay with SSD size drives.

Instead of uncompressed image sequences, would transcoding to CineForm make sense? I really like this codec.

[Walter Soyka] “I love my HP workstations (HP sent me one to test a few years back, and I’ve bought several since then),”

Would love to know what you’re using. We likely have different needs, but it would give me a good starting point. Everyone seems to love their HP workstations so I’m happy to go with them. Wish their website was easier to navigate though. Currently thinking a configure-to-order Z840 with a lot of RAM. That’s as far as I got.

[Walter Soyka] “As Dave hinted, if you install CC 2015, go ahead and install CC 2014, too. Ae CC 2015 is the first release with a revamped internal architecture, so it comes with a mix of advantages and disadvantages. You’ll definitely want to render from CC 2014 (multiprocessing!), but unless you run into a bug, working in CC 2015 is nice with has some big interactivity improvements.”

I’m planning to install both and follow your guidelines. It’s nice AE saves backwards compatible files.

What version of Windows are you using? 8.1 or 7? (I assume you’re not using 10). Any thoughts on what version of Windows is best for production?

[Walter Soyka] “I’d be remiss if I let it go without comment that NUKE is making a major push in VR compositing [link].”

I watched Jon Wadelton’s Siggraph demo and like what they’re doing. We don’t need the alignment and stitch tools since the JUMP assembler will take care of that for us, but the compositing tools are intriguing. Lat Long blur is something I already want. I also noted that he says compositing is an area where they’re still figuring out so it may be a while. Guess it’s a new world for everyone else too.

Thanks again!

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

[Dave LaRonde] “Walter Soyka would be a good person to comment on your needs. “

Thanks Dave, I agree and seeing that he’s a leader on this forum, hopefully he’ll chime in. 🙂

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

[Oliver Peters] “What if Randy left because there was no more for him to do?

What if the 3D text bolt-on was the same as the FCP 7 upgrade – something to appease the masses and to look like progress?

What if FCP X is essentially “done” and there’s not much more there than new window-dressing and keeping up with the OS changes?

After all, we (or at least many of us on this forum) aren’t the target user for FCP X (according to the Ubilos interview).”

Good questions. I’d add – What if Apple’s endgame for video looks like what they did with photography? What if the next step is a unification of iMovie and FCPX into a new app called “Movies” or “videos”?

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

[Oliver Peters] ” I understand the point about the audience, but the more I see 16:9 material converted to 2K DCI, the less I like it. I guess I’d rather frame for scope and end up that way.”

Me too. The difference between 2K flat and HD 16:9 doesn’t sound like much but makes enough of a difference to be annoying. Here’s where I wish 2K was the HD standard but that ship is long gone. Scope is definitely the way to go for a true cinematic aspect.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

Hi Oliver,

I recently made a DCI 2K flat DCP from 1080p/24 source and had to figure out the same things your asking. It’s quite a rabbit hole! In the end, I just let the DCP software handle the padding and noted the format so the projectionist could adjust the curtain to mask the pillars.

Are you making your own DCP or are you being asked to hand off a 2K flat formatted file? If you’re making your own, check and see if the software will do the pillar boxing for you.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “It does not import in Pr CC 2014 or Pr CC.

That same XML works flawlessly in FCP7 which “hasn’t been updated” in 5 years.

It works in Ae CC 2105, which has a version of what used to be Wes Plate’s Automatic Duck (Pro Import Ae).

This same XML works flawlessly in Resolve 11.”

Hopefully you’ve shared your XML with Greg Clarke at Intelligent Assistance. My experience is he’s very responsive and helpful with fixing any bugs in XtoCC.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

Anyone wondering why people use ad blockers should look at this article:

https://murphyapps.co/blog/2015/6/24/an-hour-with-safari-content-blocker-in-ios-9

And this one:

https://blog.lmorchard.com/2015/07/22/the-verge-web-sucks/

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums

[David Lawrence]

[Noah Kadner] “It made the rounds on Twitter when it came out. Not everything gets it own thread. Or maybe it’s just indisputable? :)”

Maybe it’s just August and everyone’s away enjoying the Summer! 😉

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums