Compositing on the ipad2

[alsec]

My day job is a compositor working with such programs as, Nuke, After Effects, Final Cut, Maya, and yes very rarely but sometimes shake...very rarely. I freelance and work from home most of the time, have a nice desktop setup at home. I'm traveling a lot more as of late, making it increasingly harder to get some work done. I've been lucky thus far to be loned a laptop to get work done, however I wont always be lucky. Now I understand this question is a shot in the dark, but I was wondering if anyone has experimented with compositing on the ipad. I've tried the remote desktop app "jumpdesktop", and as it is a great app to access my comp from home, it's not intuitive enough and tends to be extremely slow, and yes I know the ideal situation would be to get a laptop, but I need to generate more money first. If anything I hope this thread generates a discussion of ideas, thank you.

Tl;dr - Has anyone experimented with compositing on the ipad?

 

[poloponies]

If you're relying on this for your livelihood then sell the iPad and get a notebook, regardless of the cost. Even if such a thing were possible I can't imagine trying to composite solely on an iPad. Do the sensible thing.

 

[sphoenix]

I'm in the VFX area too. Compositing on Nuke is complicated enough in terms of using multiple tools and constantly changing inputs to get your result, but doing that on a touch-screen is just gonna be painful - and much slower.

Even if The Foundry did come out with an app, I can't imagine doing roto, tracking, projections fluently on an iPad. Devs probably know it won't have a market on the iOS platform too, so no use in putting the effort in.

 

[alsec]

I'm in the VFX area too. Compositing on Nuke is complicated enough in terms of using multiple tools and constantly changing inputs to get your result, but doing that on a touch-screen is just gonna be painful - and much slower.

Even if The Foundry did come out with an app, I can't imagine doing roto, tracking, projections fluently on an iPad. Devs probably know it won't have a market on the iOS platform too, so no use in putting the effort in.

Experimenting with Nuke using a remote desktop app was painful mainly due to the lag time. However, I did enjoy the touchscreen interactivity with roto. I use a wacom tablet at home, not a fan of the mouse in general, and granted the precission on the ipad isn't quite there, it's that being able to somewhat interact more with your project I enjoy. I do hope tablet compositing will happen someday, but I agree Devs dont see a market there right now.

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If you're relying on this for your livelihood then sell the iPad and get a notebook, regardless of the cost. Even if such a thing were possible I can't imagine trying to composite solely on an iPad. Do the sensible thing.

I agree, your recomendation is the sensible thing, and most likely I'll end up doing just that. For the time being I'm hoping to get some experiemental suggestions.

 

[psonice]

I've been writing some stuff along these lines (not compositing specifically, but VFX). I think you'll have a major problem, because of the hardware.

Basically, the iPad 2 is fast enough for some fairly complex video work (forget the iPad 1!) . You could certainly layer a bunch of effects, add overlays/titles/etc., and work at up to 720p (1080 might be possible, not sure). It would be fast enough, if the app is well written (my own work handles 720p30 with a large number of effects in realtime, so it's definitely possible).

The catch: this all relies on the hardware video decoder. That takes a huge load off the CPU, making this kind of thing possible. But there's only 1 decoder, so you can only handle one video stream at a time - meaning even a simple cross-fade becomes very slow. Unless you're working with only one video stream, it's not going to be a good editing tool.