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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Smoke on MAC is here!!

M Most said:
Which severely limits both the I/O and monitoring capabilities of the product.

Personally, I don't really get it. The Mac is a platform that is relatively closed and whose user base generally won't buy any software product that's priced higher than about $5K. The only exception I can think of off hand is the Pixel Farm products (PF Track, PF Clean) that appeal to a very select audience. I suppose Smoke fits into that category as well, but frankly, a fully equipped Mac based Smoke isn't going to cost a lot less than a turnkey Linux based Smoke. A bit less, but not a lot less if it's done right. While OS X may be a very stable and very nice development platform, Apple does not currently make a model that can sensibly be described as open enough for high end professional use, especially in terms of expandability (witness the hole cutting kludges people have had to go through here just to accommodate a RED Rocket™™ card, and the near impossibility of having a Rocket card, a video I/O card, a fibre channel HBA, and, well, anything else in one box). When you compare that with "standard" PC boxes used for both Linux and Windows systems, it's clear to me that the primary reason to go with Smoke on a Mac rather than on Linux is because you like the Mac for reasons that have nothing to do with running Autodesk software (which is distinctly non-Mac-like anyway). So basically, I guess I'm asking: who is this really aimed at? And is anyone here going to put $20,000 software on a Mac?

Now, after considering that question, the intended audience, I would guess, is Mac based post boutiques that are relying on the Final Cut suite and finding it limited, particularly in terms of visual effects capabilities and the ability to work with clients in an environment that they would be used to, especially for short form work. And in many of those situations, the hardware needed to support Smoke is already in place, and the ability to use Mac only QT codecs is a nice plus. So in that case, they would likely look to bring in an experienced Smoke artist with a client following that they could not attract without such a tool. So while there's likely a market for Autodesk in those type of situations, it's certainly not going to be mass market, not that it has to be. I see this really as an attempt to attract the Linux-phobic facilities that might have existing Apple based infrastructures, not individual owners. And in that scenario, it does make sense.
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The truth is anyone who spends 20k on software wants it to run 24/7. They need high reliability. I've never seen a Pro succeed by skimping on the hardware. Macs are built with the highest quality components. When something goes wrong, you get support from the Apple store.

This is why the Mac is growing faster than the industry average.
 
Simon Blackledge said:
From someone who has seen it, can you , or can you not.. in SD and HD be working on the smoke and see it RT a full screen image on a second monitor via sdi ? plasma or grade 1 etc ?
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Yes, it is pumped through the Kona card (I believe they will specify a Kona 3 card for qualified systems). However, you can only see it in the current working resolution. If you want to see a live downconversion, you'll have to use an external downconverter. I did ask about stereoscopic capabilities, and that is not in this release. It is planned, however.
 
M Most said:
Yes, it is pumped through the Kona card (I believe they will specify a Kona 3 card for qualified systems). However, you can only see it in the current working resolution. If you want to see a live downconversion, you'll have to use an external downconverter. I did ask about stereoscopic capabilities, and that is not in this release. It is planned, however.
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So, is processing on a nVidea Quadro with playout through Kona?

G
 
Gunleik Groven said:
So, is processing on a nVidea Quadro with playout through Kona?
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Yes.

Yes. Which, BTW, means that with the changes in Snow Leopard (Smoke is a 64 bit app and runs only on Snow Leopard) it is possible to send an image to the GPU card, bring it back over the bus to a video I/O card, and output this in real time, or at least at 24fps. This leads me to believe that real time playback on Apple Color should ultimately be possible with the right storage and updated software.
 
1253681501_mac_fire_4.jpg


I already have smoke on my mac....... sorry. couldn't resist.
 
M Most said:
Yes.

Yes. Which, BTW, means that with the changes in Snow Leopard (Smoke is a 64 bit app and runs only on Snow Leopard) it is possible to send an image to the GPU card, bring it back over the bus to a video I/O card, and output this in real time, or at least at 24fps. This leads me to believe that real time playback on Apple Color should ultimately be possible with the right storage and updated software.
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It's been possible well before SL and in 32bit. The main limiting factor is the readback performance on the gfx card although it's still alot of data moving back and forth. It would nice if apple added direct support for the quadro hdsdi also.
 
Deanan said:
It's been possible well before SL and in 32bit. The main limiting factor is the readback performance on the gfx card although it's still alot of data moving back and forth. It would nice if apple added direct support for the quadro hdsdi also.
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Yup... this is what I thought.
Just been curious why others haven't opted for this solution.

Anyhow, Deanan... Earluy on it was mentioned that one could use the RR for general playback/playout (instead of f. ex. an AJA). Is that still on? (yup, I know there's a couple of follow up questions to the answer...)
 
Deanan said:
It's been possible well before SL and in 32bit. The main limiting factor is the readback performance on the gfx card although it's still alot of data moving back and forth. It would nice if apple added direct support for the quadro hdsdi also.
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I've always assumed that the reason for the bad readback performance was due to the media layer in the Mac OS (and the inability to bypass it) - in other words, a software problem that has now been at least somewhat addressed with the new OS and new Quicktime architecture. Is that not the case?
 
Gunleik Groven said:
Yup... this is what I thought.
Just been curious why others haven't opted for this solution.

Anyhow, Deanan... Earluy on it was mentioned that one could use the RR for general playback/playout (instead of f. ex. an AJA). Is that still on? (yup, I know there's a couple of follow up questions to the answer...)
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Still on but not implemented yet.

Most people opt to use the nvidia sdi board directly because you don't lose the addition transfer time going back out the gpu.
 
M Most said:
I've always assumed that the reason for the bad readback performance was due to the media layer in the Mac OS (and the inability to bypass it) - in other words, a software problem that has now been at least somewhat addressed with the new OS and new Quicktime architecture. Is that not the case?
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Transfers would be done directly via opengl(or cuda/cl) directly to memory and then to kona and you wouldn't want to hit QT at all. Ideally, you'd bypass memory and go straight DMA from GPU to Kona (but would require collaboration between the two companies).
 
what do we need really is LUSTRE, to do a good work on a MAC platform.
Right now I'm using FCP to edit, finish on Apple COLOR, with a full color managed platform with CINESPACE involved (This is our low budget films way of post) and had 2, 3 days at our film out partners to correct the film for the KODA 2383, or FUJI.. etc, then we print which means more money for the film producers.
but if we had LUSTRE on MAC, we could upgrade our (low budget) post films to the (high budget) post film level by convincing our clients to work in the right way from the first step in the stair of FILM POST(using appropriate 3DLUTS, supervised coloring sessions, and easy delivery to our ARRI LASER partners without paying extra money at the printing stage to correct the images according to the DI, they are going to use) and I think most of them would approve that and pay the extra 20,000$ and do it in the same post house, In this way LUSTRE would spread out over all other color corrections software available, not to say it might even put them out of the competition in the market.

so might AUTODESK consider this in the near future, especially that we started to feel the economic crisis in the film industry everywhere.
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
One year from now you will have a more powerful tool with more features for a FRACTION of the price of Smoke on a MAC. I PROMISE. That's all I can say without getting sued. But that being said, I think there's lots of folks who can make some good ROI right now with the new SMOKE.
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I'll believe it when I see it. You said that about CS4. And while it was worth the upgrade cost... I can't say it's been a mind blowing experience.

Adobe still is doing things so fundamentally wrong I just can't picture them making the architectural changes necessary to really deliver in CS5. There are whole areas of Adobe's offerings which need to be completely junked from a conceptual standpoint and while Adobe seems keen on offering new features I see and hear no awareness on Adobe's part on just how backwards they are.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
And finally... WTF? Autodesk should've ported MAX to OSX first. I suppose they already have that market covered with Maya, but still... Why Smoke first? Or is it just a sign of more OSX support to come? Could Flame, Inferno and Flare be close behind?
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I won't say never but--ahh screw it-- it'll never happen.

But they do officially support Virtualization now. So if you want to run it in Parallels or Bootcamp you're good to go.
 
Deanan said:
Ideally, you'd bypass memory and go straight DMA from GPU to Kona (but would require collaboration between the two companies).
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Good luck with that ;0(

I said it earlier in this thread and you said it more recently - Apple really needs to support Nvidia SDI if they want to play seriously in the high end game.
 
Is the main advantage of Scratch Cine realtime conversion to DPX/conform? What I'm getting at is... if you have Smoke and A RED Rocket™ Card... why would you need Scratch Cine? I'm really interested in the answer to these questions not just asking rhetorical questions. I had a Demo of Smoke today and was still interested to see where Scratch Cine plays a part in the workflow.
 
M Most said:
Yes.

Yes. Which, BTW, means that with the changes in Snow Leopard (Smoke is a 64 bit app and runs only on Snow Leopard) it is possible to send an image to the GPU card, bring it back over the bus to a video I/O card, and output this in real time, or at least at 24fps. This leads me to believe that real time playback on Apple Color should ultimately be possible with the right storage and updated software.
Click to expand...

Deanan said:
It's been possible well before SL and in 32bit. The main limiting factor is the readback performance on the gfx card although it's still alot of data moving back and forth. It would nice if apple added direct support for the quadro hdsdi also.
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Sheila Santos (visual technologies team lead at Autodesk) in the FXGuide interview, spoke of using OpenGL FBO (Frame Buffer Object) to emulate graphics overlay planes. She stated that this new emulation technology will allow for more Autodesk products to work with cheaper video cards that do not have a hardware overlay plane. This will be true for the Linux and Mac platforms. So the work on translating Smoke to Mac will actually pay off in allowing cheaper video cards to work with these high end applications. I'm happy to hear this news.


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Since the Mac Quadro FX 4800 graphics card is listed as supporting Hardware Overlay Planes... why is there a need to emulate this function? Is it due to the Apple driver not supporting the Overlay Planes? Also was this the main issue limiting SDI play out? I'm assuming without graphics overlay, the SDI output would have the mouse and menus in the output. So if I interpreted what Sheila said correctly and stretch a little further... it seems the main issue was not speed but finding a solution to have the pure video out layer without the GUI being burned in the image.
 
Lucas Wilson said:
I think so too... if Apple supported NVidia SDI drivers, or you have Smoke Windows for 15K, then Rocket Fuel + Smoke would make a hell of a system.

Lucas
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There are two more ways to get this worktogether.
Playout through Kona (like Smoke does)
RR taking the Kona/SDI function eventually (I know this isn't getting deck controll, but decks aren't the only reason one wants SDI)

Are you implying that the SDI drivers are the only reason Assimilate products aren't running on OSX?


Andrea: There's currently no conform tools in rocketcine-x. That's where the rocket-fuel fits in (at least. I''m sure it has more functions, but that's the obvious one)
 
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