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Apple Finally Discontinues Shake?

Kilamite said:
After Effects is miles ahead anyway.
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You have obviously never done any visual effects compositing.

I've been using After Effects nearly every single day since version 3.1, but even today it continues to be very klunky and kludgy for VFX work. Not to say that it can't be done in AE, but Shake was designed from the ground up as a dedicated compositing app, so it's much faster, logical and manageable than AE when setting up complex composites.

There is a reason why Shake is still the de facto standard desktop compositing app in most visual effects houses, even today (although Nuke is quickly replacing it, due to Apple's inactivity towards the alleged "Shake replacement")
 
enygma said:
To say that Final Cut Studio has all of the features of Shake is idiotic to say the least. There may be aspects of shake now available in part within various applications in FCS, but the bottom line is that Shake was not only a package with all compositing features necessary within it, it was unbelievably flexible, supported a plethora of third party plugins, and had a very intuitive workflow for compositing.

I was one of those people that bought Shake when the price dropped. While I haven't used it a lot, for the times I needed to use it when working with background plates, CG elements, masks and various other layers, it became an indispensable tool, and very easy to work with. To discontinue Shake is one thing, because we can always still use it, and there was a faint hope that it would be replaced with something *BETTER*. Not assimilated into various sub-par workflows that weren't designed for compositing. And no, I don't view Motion as a compositor. It is a motion graphics app.
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http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/motion/intuitive-compositing.html

It's funny how colourists working at ad agencies, the production team for TNT's Leverage Walter Murch (working with Francis Ford Copola) seem to think that FCP Studio is a great tool but some random guy on macrumors who nobody seems to know thinks Shake is irreplaceable. :rolleyes: You allegedly bought Shake when it was on sale and they announced that they were discontinuing it when it went on sale. Why are you so surprised all of a sudden?

Big names are apparently using it for what you claim only Shake can do. I make no claim of knowing anything about the output capabilities of either Shake or FCP Studio since I'm not in the biz but what work have you done lately that we would recognize?
 
doctoree said:
ILM uses Nuke too, so it must be ok.
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Nuke was originally developed by Digital Domain, and it also won an Academy Award®, so yes, it's pretty ok ;) Nuke is about the closest you can get as a Shake successor. Motion has some Shake algorithms in it, but as already mentioned, it's more a graphics animator. Motion ist good for a lot of things thou. AE is an overloaded pain in the ass :p

sigamy said:
I'm sure it's no match for Shake but has anyone tried FXhome's CompositeLab Pro? Might be a good alternative for lower end needs...
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For low lower-end needs maybe... Limitation to HD and 8-bit is pretty low. No RED Raw and DPX support puts it into the consumer market, and Shake was definitely not there.

High-end -> go for Nuke, it's not that far away from Shake :D
 
aristotle said:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/motion/intuitive-compositing.html

It's funny how colourists working at ad agencies, the production team for TNT's Leverage Walter Murch (working with Francis Ford Copola) seem to think that FCP Studio is a great tool but some random guy on macrumors who nobody seems to know thinks Shake is irreplaceable. :rolleyes: You allegedly bought Shake when it was on sale and they announced that they were discontinuing it when it went on sale. Why are you so surprised all of a sudden?

Big names are apparently using it for what you claim only Shake can do. I make no claim of knowing anything about the output capabilities of either Shake or FCP Studio since I'm not in the biz but what work have you done lately that we would recognize?
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It's funny how someone who, in the same post, admits he knows nothing about "the business", also claims to know the difference between color-grading, editing and visual-effects compositing, based on marketing hype on Apple's website.

Of what relevancy are positive testimonials by "colorists" and Walter Murch in regards to visual effects applications? The answer is: ZERO relevancy. Colorists have little to nothing to do with compositing, other than grading the final composited shots. And Walter Murch is a video and sound editor. These people are not VFX compositors.

Shake is not irreplaceable by a long shot. But what is clearly obvious by anyone who is a user of Final Cut Studio is that there is *nothing* in FCS that can replace the capabilities of Shake.
 
tracedlight said:
The very basis of what it does, After Effects does & Shake does, is compositing.

They are all compositors; no more confusion.
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Not to be pedantic, but it is more accurate to say that "Motion and After Effects are motion graphics and animation tools which are also capable of professional quality compositing."

But to call them "compositors" is like calling After Effects a "non-linear video editor". Yes, from a purely semantic standpoint, it is possible to edit video non-linearly with After Effects. But no reasonable person who needs to edit video on a regular basis would use it for such a task, because its tools and architecture were not designed with the needs of dedicated editors in mind.

So while AE and Motion can do compositing, they aren't "compositors"
 
jersey said:
True, it is. But nothing can do a more pristine conversion from 29.97fps to 24fps than Shake. .
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You people must be joking.

Shake was THE De Facto high end compositing software until Apple dropped the ball on it. This was a high-end film production software (i.e. something none of you will ever need).

Nuke has now taken it's place. Even if Apple comes out with another software it's too late. It takes a great deal to make the industry switch from one system to another, they,re not about to do it again.
 
jakovasaur said:
There's a huge difference between layer-based and node-based compositing. They're both compositing packages in the same way that ducks and eagles are both birds.
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true, shake is vastly superior, i was just explaining to a commenter that motion is also described as a compositor, after they told me i had no idea what one was.
 
melorama said:
Not to be pedantic, but it is more accurate to say that "Motion and After Effects are motion graphics and animation tools which are also capable of professional quality compositing."

But to call them "compositors" is like calling After Effects a "non-linear video editor". Yes, from a purely semantic standpoint, it is possible to edit video non-linearly with After Effects. But no reasonable person who needs to edit video on a regular basis would use it for such a task, because its tools and architecture were not designed with the needs of dedicated editors in mind.

So while AE and Motion can do compositing, they aren't "compositors"
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this is trite; if they can do compositing, they are, per language, compositors.
 
afrowq said:
Shake can't run on an Iphone, so Apple doesn't need it anymore.
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How true that statement is. :mad: If it doesn't fall into the newest thing category, they placate until the new thing is the one that everyone uses. They "upgrade" less and less until there is no support at all.
 
If this is true it's a horrible move on Apple's part. Certainly they've moved a lot of technologies from Shake into Motion, but not all and the graphic interface made compositing much more intuitive, it would be a shame if the app that started the interface revolution in building compositors just died for no good reason. Many times these "rumors" turn out to not be true and hopefully that's the case with Shake. I still think that Apple should acquire AutoDesk so that they substantially increase their value within production environments. I do know that with AD owning so many apps and closing down so many formats that Shake's interopbility with 3D apps is suffering and that's a pretty big thing in a VFX dominated entertainment world. It seems that many of the improvements in Snow Leopard were really designed for powerful apps like
 
You're getting your softwares confused.

After Effects is half animation / half compositing software.

The layers give it a timeline advantage that node based compositors will probably never have. But obviously node-based is desirable most of the time. Look up Mark Christiansen's AE Studio Techniques book and you'll see how he uses AE for feature films, and why that makes him valuable as an addition to a team of regular node-based compositors.

But After Effects is the best (and only) 2D motion-graphics software, ever. Combustion is out of the game. Motion is barely scratching the surface in terms of real animation functionality. I'm not saying that I love AE. I really wish someone would really compete with Adobe. In fact, let me beg for a second. PLEASE, WILL SOMEONE ACTUALLY COMPETE WITH ADOBE HERE????

Finally, this is my solution to Apple... SELL ALL YOUR FREAKIN' PRO APPS TO A DEVELOPER WHO CARES ABOUT THEM!!! I'm tired of companies like Microsoft and Apple venturing into other markets, making great products, and then seemingly abandoning them. Someone else would care about FCP and Motion and Color and DVDSP and Blu-ray integration to keep innovating in this market, but Apple is on to other things. The end.
 
DVD Studio Pro in coming next. There have been no real updates for a half decade and the product is vastly inadequate for DVD production. This is a problem because Apple remains with no real product for DVD authoring.
 
tracedlight said:
AE is slow slow slow.
It's a huge pile of antiquated code, and it's transfer maths is appalling.
Motion is After Effects' replacement, not a shake replacement.

The sooner AE dies, the sooner the quality of commercials and budget films will increase.
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:rolleyes: Step away from the bong.
 
aristotle said:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/motion/intuitive-compositing.html

It's funny how colourists working at ad agencies, the production team for TNT's Leverage Walter Murch (working with Francis Ford Copola) seem to think that FCP Studio is a great tool but some random guy on macrumors who nobody seems to know thinks Shake is irreplaceable. :rolleyes: You allegedly bought Shake when it was on sale and they announced that they were discontinuing it when it went on sale. Why are you so surprised all of a sudden?
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Colorists are not compositors. Shake has excellent color grading tools, primarily because it has to in order to match CG and background layers in the process of compositing. I don't expect a colorist to use Shake for what it is designed for, likewise, I won't use Shake for doing motion graphics. I've done plenty of shots for freelance work where I've used Motion to create some particle elements in a scene, and exported it with matte into Shake using its tools.

Big names are apparently using it for what you claim only Shake can do. I make no claim of knowing anything about the output capabilities of either Shake or FCP Studio since I'm not in the biz but what work have you done lately that we would recognize?
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Have you played with Shake or Motion extensively? I'm not a famous director or editor. I'm simply a freelancer turned HPC entrepreneur. You will never recognize much of my work because I only have done private jobs. I have worked with CG, I work with CG artists. There was not one moment where I thought Motion was a true compositing app. The workflow in Shake is an excellent and intuitive workflow for compositing, but even then, Shake was not a replacement for Motion. The workflow in Motion for doing motion graphics was simply unparalleled. They are complimentary tools, but by no way is FCS as a whole a replacement for Shake. What tools can replace Shake? As others have mentioned, Nuke is one of the big ones (ILM has even purchased them last month).
 
DISCLAIMER: I never do any video production, professional or amateur.

I can understand Apple's decision on this. Apple has SO many different video production and editing software applications that it seems like it was time for some culling. Apple's video production and editing products include Quicktime Player, iDVD, iMovie, Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro, all the individual video applications within Final Cut Studio, including Motion, Cinema Tools, DVD Studio Pro, etc. And those are just some of the video production applications that Apple themselves make, but also competing in this software category are all the applications made by other companies, like Adobe After Effects, Avid Media composer, and many others.

So I totally believe the people here who are saying that Shake offers some benefits that aren't available in any other software package, but I can totally understand Apple's decision to eliminate one of its many products that are already overfilling this niche market.
 
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