Shawn Miller
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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[Mathieu Ghekiere] “A bit rough to read: “”additional equipment was used for final rendering of 3D content” if you are selling a 15.000 euro computer. But maybe that’s incorrect expectations from me, as someone who’s not home in the whole 3D world.”
That’s pretty normal even for smaller productions. No matter how fast your workstations is, final renders are almost always sent out to a render farm. Inexpensive online services have made this practice even more common.
Shawn
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[Martin Curtis] “I tok the mention of Adobe CC to mean that they used Photoshop etc for mock ups.”
I think most of the artists used After Effects though.
[Martin Curtis] ” Everything else listed for every film was high end stuff that took serious grunt to power. THAT was what I think Apple was getting at.”
Most of the 3D tasks shown in the behind the scenes videos don’t take a lot of horsespower. Rendering, shading, lighting and large, detailed simulations are what really eat up resources… ironically, these are the things that seem to be driving 3D artists off of the Mac platform. CPU bound renderers benefit from dual processor machines and pretty much all of the GPU bound renderers only run nVidia’s CUDA technology… same for many of the popular fluid simulators, you can run them without GPU acceleration, but they’re much slower in CPU mode.
Shawn
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[Andrew Kimery] “[greg janza] “I’m currently working on a 1min in-house promo spot utilizing a dozen employee interviews that has gone through three rounds of changing the overall message focus. And all of these changes have occurred after all shooting was completed.”
Well that sounds annoying.”
… not so unusual in the corporate video world! … I could tell you stories… ☺
Shawn
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[Paul Golden] ”
Nonsense. Have you looked at Motion? It can play back footage in real-time at speed without pre-caching. This is not inherent to NLE vs compositing software. Besides, what’s really the difference between a timeline based comp software and and a timeline based NLE? They just have different feature sets, but they’re all capable of compositing to a large extent. Yes, AE has a more robust tool set for comping, but the basic nature of playback should be similar for things that don’t have tons of layers.”
AFAIK, Motion also caches frames before and after the playhead, like other applications. Maybe someone smarter than me (Like Simon Ubsdell) can correct me if I’m wrong. High end compositors also get real time performance by caching, they just use beefy hardware and better background processing to get there.
[Paul Golden] ” Besides, what’s really the difference between a timeline based comp software and and a timeline based NLE? “
That’s a good question, Paul… there is a lot of overlap between the two different application types in terms of capability, but the differences are pretty important (real time playback vs access to deep color information being at the top of the list). It’s a bit like saying that vector drawing applications and bitmap editors are really the same thing because they can handle the same file types.
[Paul Golden] ” …but the basic nature of playback should be similar for things that don’t have tons of layers.”
Try compositing two 4k, half float, OpenEXR sequences in Motion and then try it in your NLE of choice… then tell me what the results are – I don’t think it’s as simple as anything that can play video can do it in real time. ☺ Come to think of it… even Nuke Studio’s preferred format is 16Bit DPX sequences, that’s if you want real time playback with their recommended hardware.
Shawn
Shawn
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[Paul Golden] ” Real-time playback in After Effects on basic uncomped video clips? Good luck!”
Well… to be fair. AE isn’t an NLE, and it was never designed for real time playback. It needs to cache frames like any other compositing application – maybe AE will cache frames on import like Nuke or Fusion one day… but I think it will be a while before you see a compositing application that runs on desktop hardware perform anything like an NLE.
Shawn
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[greg janza] “That may have been a localized problem. I’ve worked on multiple projects that have involved over 5 terabytes of media and there’s been no noticeable lag. I’m also working on a PC though so maybe it’s been a mac bug.”
Same here (on PCs) – but my projects and media are on local storage.
Shawn
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[Jeremy Garchow] “What is a bug if it’s not a bug? :)”
An undocumented feature. ☺
Shawn
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[Michael Gissing] “And thanks Simon for taking the time and effort to present this.”
+1 – I don’t have a horse in the race, but it’s still really interesting stuff.
Shawn
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[Bill Davis] “[Shawn Miller] “And that’s great for FCPX editors… but it doens’t have anything to do with my answer to Greg’s original question. If a computer has the hardware I need to get my work done more quickly… I don’t care what it looks like or who makes it.
”Then you answered your own question, even if you’re unwilling to acknowledge it.”
I didn’t actually ask any questions, I answered Greg’s question… what am I unwilling to acknowledge?
[Bill Davis] “but you have to accept that you’re hobbling your editorial tasks, just for access to the greater horsepower required for running less efficient non-editorial software.”
How do you know that my non-editorial software is less efficient? Don’t you routinely criticize non-FCPX editors for commenting on software they’ve never used?☺
Shawn
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[John Rofrano] ” [Shawn Miller] “Yeah… but if your applications require substantially more horsepower than Photoshop, the aesthetics of the computer you run them on would probably be a lot less important to you. ☺”
Well, if your applications are running sub optimally for the platform I would agree. But…”
Not sure what there is to argue about here – some application types are just (computationally) more expensive than others; NLEs need more compute power than still image editors, 3D renderers need more compute power than NLEs… for those of us that work with more than just still image editors and NLEs, performance has to come before brand loyalty or the aesthetics of a computer case.
[John Rofrano] “Speaking of saving rendering time… Here is the results of a 2 minute 4K Timeline export on a 2016 MacBook Pro which took 3.27 minutes for FCP X and a wapping 58.42 minutes for Premiere Pro! (FCP X is ~18x faster !!!) Even running Premiere Pro on a Dell XPS with the same specs it took 18.51 minutes which still makes FCP X 5.6x faster than Premiere! It’s not about the hardware speeds and feeds, it’s about how much work you can get done with the hardware and software combined.”
Right… a good chunk of my work is 3D “stuff” though. I sometimes have scenes that take an hour or more per frame to render, and that’s on a dual 10 core Xeon machine… I doubt a mackbook could even load some of my scenes. Again, I don’t care what my computer looks like, who makes it, or what OS it runs on. If I can get a render down from 75 minutes per frame to 45 minutes per frame, that translates into time and money saved over time.
[John Rofrano] ”
So you don’t need some big behemoth of a PC with fans screaming like a 747 on takeoff when you have software that is optimized for the hardware it’s running on like we have on the Mac.”I have a dual 10 core Xeon workstation that I can’t hear under full CPU load….. also, I’m guessing you’ve never used Redshift, Octane or MoI on the PC…
[John Rofrano] “The chart above speaks for itself. Premiere Pro runs better on Windows than on a Mac but it still doesn’t runs nearly as fast as Final Cut Pro X on a Mac so yea, if you are a Premiere user, Windows should be your platform of choice and you should buy the biggest beefiest PC you can afford.”
Right… but for those of us that do more than just edit, fast h.264 exports may not be that big of a deal. For me personally, being able to output .mp4 files in less than a minute is a lot less important than the ability to run my 3D renderer of choice.
[John Rofrano] ” FCP X editors don’t need that much power to get even more work done on a Mac.”
And that’s great for FCPX editors… but it doens’t have anything to do with my answer to Greg’s original question. If a computer has the hardware I need to get my work done more quickly… I don’t care what it looks like or who makes it.
Shawn