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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 :)

The Production/Postproduction Software You Can't Live Without

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What software applications do you use on a regular basis and consider paramount to the success of your films, shorts, and documentaries? Do these include Final Cut or Avid? Storyboarding software? Adobe Photoshop? Please list the software programs, 4K or otherwise, which you can't live without.
 
The only three programs I wouldn't even consider living without are Adobe Photoshop, Internet Explorer and Notepad. Everything else is gravy.

I also like to use:
Avid Xpress Pro, 3Ds Max, XSI, Mudbox, Combustion, Nuke, Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat Reader and MSN Messenger.

Edit: Oh yeah and PFTrack or equivalent.

Oh yeah x2 Throw in a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 and I would be a happy camper (Gotta make those fancy dancy, production schedule excel sheets.).
 
Am hoping that Quicktime, Adobe Premiere CS3 (upgrade shipped yesterday from Amazon) and an upgrade to Adobe After Effects will get me a festival entry render, then, will let the real pros polish the REDCODE RAW footage to suit their oun tastes.

edit add: (if it sells)

also, Adobe Audition and an old copy of Acid Pro 4.0

edit: 7/22/07 Premiere CS3 arrived, and have only viewed part of the introductory video at present, it seems like a pretty good all 'round editing solution. Next month...After Effects.
 
ArcSoft Photostudio, Ulead Videostudio, Windows Moviemaker, AOL
Can't live with any of 'em. Oh wait... ummm nevermind
 
Avid Xpress Pro HD, After Effects, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Z-Brush and Adobe Photoshop, oh and I use Corel for vector graphics work.
 
FCP (studio II), Photoshop, Lightwave, Fetch, Safari - those will keep me busy...
 
Password Expired said:
What software applications do you use on a regular basis and consider paramount to the success of your films, shorts, and documentaries?
Click to expand...

Personally I think I'd get more filmmaking done if I DIDN'T have Firefox... I was at a talk where they interviewed the guy who wrote / directed The Lives Of Others and he said that the only way he got his script done was by moving to a monk's cell with a new computer with no installed software except for Final Draft...

Editing-wise, if it had to be one, it'd be Avid. I love the purple rollers for some reason. Although I've used FCP extensively since version 1.5, I don't like the trim tools as much. The old FCP versions also relied on way too much mousing around... lately the keyboard shortcut systems are better, of course. I also find the FCP workflow leads to things getting out of synch slightly easier (maybe it's just me...). Premiere Pro seems nice but I got burned with crashing issues on Premiere 6 or so so am wary...

Of course, the funny thing is that of all of the things I've done, one of my favorites was one I edited in 1996 on Ulead MediaStudio 2.5 - on a 120mhz Pentium - it could just handle 384x288 PAL resolution if you defragged the SCSI drive... I was just so blown away that the thing could capture video at all that I didn't care. It was a big upgrade from connecting to VHS decks to each other, although I do remember that the quality was even worse...

Anyway, content is king!

For sound editing, I like the responsiveness and ease of use of Pro Tools the best. It's nice to have a good 2-channel sound editor around too - for 10 years or so I used a super-cheap shareware program called Cool Edit (now it's Adobe Audition)... doing noise reduction on a 486 makes you appreciate the speed of everything now...

Now that I'm dating myself, did anyone else write music with MOD file sampler / sequencers? That is really going back - the preferred platform was an Amiga, but I got by with a 286 PC and a Sound Blaster 1... I could get 4 instruments playing at the same time. They could play one note each ;) Chords were possible but you had to render them as a sample first. Then I upgraded to 486 and Fasttracker 2 and, wow, 32 channels! Of course the thing was that 32 channels of stuff going at the same time often just produced mud. First lesson in sound design - the human ear can only process so many things going on in the same frequency ranges at the same time...

For previs, it depends on the job. What I use will range from a pen and paper to Maya, XSI, Cinema for 3D previews, etc. One day I'll break open my old copy of DeluxePaint Animation (another 1994-era program, but hey, it had great paint tools, anti-aliasing and you could rotate textured planes in space with ease in-out...) and really freak everyone out. I also wrote my own paint program back then, maybe I'll use that... But seriously, for animatics, I'm often fine with Photoshop and an editing package that can do some effects.

I'm sorely tempted to go through and dig out another 20 even weirder examples of software I've - believe it or not - actually enjoyed using over the years (POVray raytracer on a 286 with 2mb RAM, Fractint - where I learned about fractals and 3D glasses rendering, Smurf Paint 'n Play on a Colecovision ADAM, PC-Paint which I ran on CGA and, could display only 4 colors and which you had to use the keyboard to draw with...) but I'll stop there. You know what? They actually all taught me things that I use now as a filmmaker (even if in the case of PC-Paint it's how to use simultaneous contrast of 4 colors

Basically, I can live without all software. But believe it or not, each piece of graphics / sound software taught me at least one thing which I use now as a filmmaker. If I ever have any success, they'll have contributed to it ;)

Hey, by the way, (and maybe more on topic) has anyone here tried Celtx? How does it stack up to the Movie Magic apps?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce Allen said:
Basically, I can live without all software. But believe it or not, each piece of graphics / sound software taught me at least one thing which I use now as a filmmaker. If I ever have any success, they'll have contributed to it ;)
Click to expand...

The first computer I had was a IBM 8088 (XT), anyone remember those? Pretty much the first ever beige box, I think it had a 8MHz processor and 1MB RAM, (640KB Primary, 384KB Extended). Now I feel old. This was before CGA, so this was still blinking green cursor and DOS.

I remember spending a whole night trying to get Windows 3.11 installed on the thing, a pointless excersise, but I read the minimum system specs for Windows and it was an XT, so I figured it was worth a shot. If I remember correctly, I had to sort something out with the memory, but after that it was fine. Loaded it up from 5 1/4" floppy disks. Oh, and I was pretty advanced, I had a 20MB Hard Drive! It weighed as much as my car and sounded like a coffee grinder.

My first memory with any kind of graphics package was Corel Photo Paint and Corel Draw (the first ever releases) but that was with a 386 and I could at least have 256 colors. I've been a Corel fan ever since, I use X3 now and have pretty much had every version in between. I only picked up Photoshop later, not sure what version it was, I think version 3.0.

I taught myself to edit with Adobe Premier, I liked it at the time, but I have to say I am in Bruce's camp. I love Avid to bits, I wouldn't trade it for anything, not even FCP. Avid is rock solid, it's reliable and it's pretty much the universal NLE. I learned Avid on a old Mac based Media Composer (not even a G3, this was a PowerMac 8600 with a PowerPC 604e processor running at 300MHz). Since then I bought myself a Xpress Pro HD system... much better.

It's amazing to think back at how much technology has changed things.

Now everything is software based and off the shelf computer hardware can handle what was previously only possible on big dedicated SGI systems.

I recently saw a 16 core AMD Opteron system with 32GB RAM running Combustion and After Effects that would give a Flame a run for its money, for probably a quarter of the price or less.

Rich
 
I remember a friend had windows 3.1 when it came out. I thought it was pretty amazing. He loaded up MS Paint one day and created a grid (still don't know how) and started filling in boxes with different colors. I begged him to let me do it. I just couldn't get enough of filling in little boxes with different colors. I thought maybe it was some new Wiz game he had gotten (Wiz.exe!).

Oh I forgot a few critical pieces of software for my list:
Winamp and VLC
 
I used to do much of my work on flame* but I sold my Octane2 when SGI went downhill.
So now it's Digital Fusion and Shake.

For more high-end effects and 3D modeling/animation I use Maya Unlimited, Houdini: Master, Lightwave, Modo and pmg: Messiah.

For something quick I use either Final Cut or SpeedEdit.
 
4K Hub said:
The first computer I had was a IBM 8088 (XT),

Rich
Click to expand...

Me too... finally gave it away, then learned that NASA was buying up the old 8088s because they were no longer being made and they needed them to fly the Shuttles.:gun: Haven't thrown away a computer since.:tongue:
 
1. Final Cut Studio (especially Final Cut Pro 6.0 with SmoothCam integration and Soundtrack 2)

2. Adobe Photoshop CS3

3. Apple Mail (keep in touch with clients and vendors)

and

4. Safari web browser to read Reduser.net :)
 
im.thatoneguy said:
I remember a friend had windows 3.1 when it came out. I thought it was pretty amazing. He loaded up MS Paint one day and created a grid (still don't know how) and started filling in boxes with different colors. I begged him to let me do it. I just couldn't get enough of filling in little boxes with different colors.
Click to expand...

Windows 3.1 came out in 1992 and you were impressed?
FIVE years earlier, in 1987, the Apple Macintosh II came out with a color graphics user interface much more advanced than Windows 3.1.
TWO years earlier, in 1990, Photoshop 1.0 came out on the Macintosh. THAT was amazing.
:bleh:
 
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