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Universal Shake Shipping in May
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I would not go on dissing SCSI. Ultra320 SCSI RAID arrays are still the fastest hard drive systems you can get today; and FibreChannel is much faster than SATA or SATA II. The eSATA options for the MBP are exciting and cool, but 140 MB/s is really not that impressive. Ultra160 SCSI systems were doing that 3 years ago.
Oh and the comment about Shake not being able to run on a PowerPC iMac is pure ******** in my opinion. It seems to run fine on G5 Towers. Not only that, but nobody is going to run that app on a iMac anyway. Although it is impressive that it runs "good" on the new iMac.
-mark
Oh and the comment about Shake not being able to run on a PowerPC iMac is pure ******** in my opinion. It seems to run fine on G5 Towers. Not only that, but nobody is going to run that app on a iMac anyway. Although it is impressive that it runs "good" on the new iMac.
-mark
bluebomberman said:Hate to be a grammar snob, but this sentence is confusing. It sounds like you're saying that processors are now hard drives, not bottlenecks.
Edit to: ...with these high end applications, processors are no longer the bottleneck; instead, hard drives are the bottleneck.
Or something like that.
i agree.
ifjake said:
Yes, and the only interface that uses locking connectors -- sometimes that's everything you need (though speed does not hurt either).
bluebomberman said:
They currently have; install a card if you want to. SCSI vs. SATA does not mean much internally, but external SCSI is way better than external SATA.
ifjake said:
SATA I (150) compares to Ultra160 and SATA II (300) compares to Ultra320, but it's not about speed. It's about scalability, and offloading hard drive data processing from CPU to host card. You just still cannot beat SCSI, but I have to admit SATA is very impressive when you only need few internal devices.
When they film a modern movie, they film it in parts. You have the live actors that were filmed on a set, you have computer generated elements (think Golum), you may have other things you want to add it (like the feather in Forrest Gump) or titles or whatever. Each element is created separately and then Shake combines them into a single video stream.Lollypop said:
On top of that there are a lot of filters, effects and simulated lighting changes you can make to the final stream.
Think of it as Photoshop for motion video.
The problems with SATA or eSATA are that it is a storage only interface, where Firewire is multipurpose, and it is point to point where Firewire is point to multipoint. That makes eSATA much less flexible and, if I were to have a dedicated connector on my laptop, for example, I'd want the more flexible option. Not going to hook up an iSight to an SATA port, for example...firestarter said:
The Barefeats benchmarks are a little misleading-- they're comparing FW400 rather than FW800 (at best a doubling of performance) because this is the hardware in the MBP. They mention that the Apple FW400 implementation has bugs in writing, which partially explain the poor performance on 2 of the 3 benchmarks. Other benchmarks on the site seem to indicate that the PowerMac FW400 implementation has a 50% improvement in write speed. On the read only benchmark, the difference is less than a factor of two making FW800 a reasonable competitor.
The long red bar that looks so impressive and grabs your attention is comparing a dual drive RAID with single drive accesses for the other bars-- so you have another doubling of performance just due to differences in the hardware setup. Two drives means twice the throughput and twice the cache. He doesn't give the cache size, but if it's 8MB or 16MB then doubling that has a pretty big impact on transferring files that are 50-100MB.
In the end, both eSATA and FW800 are limited by hard drive throughput. When there is a need for faster data rates, I think we can expect a FW1600, and then a FW3200. By the same token, SATA speeds will increase when they need to, but I don't think they'll need to any time soon.
Take a look at this:
http://www.barefeats.com/hard70.html
For storage only needs, eSATA may have a slight advantage, but FW is the better general interface. It's obviously better than USB2 (because FW has a smarter, more efficient protocol). These are the reasons I hope FW doesn't disappear any time soon...
What shake is
Shake is a highend Visual effects compositing application. If HD's are the bottle neck well then some is smoking crack. Shakes node trees can grow to anywhere from a few dozen to 1000's of effects all built together in a completly non destructive node tree. Think of it as photoshop on steriods but for moving pictures. CPU IS STILL THE BOTTLENECK. I don't care what that dude says. I use shake EVERY DAY and with I have 200 nodes in a tree it not the HDD's that are the issue.
amateurmacfreak said:Cool... although I don't know too much about the software, nice to have another one going universal.
The possibilities of Intel.
And it looks like a cool software.
Shake is a highend Visual effects compositing application. If HD's are the bottle neck well then some is smoking crack. Shakes node trees can grow to anywhere from a few dozen to 1000's of effects all built together in a completly non destructive node tree. Think of it as photoshop on steriods but for moving pictures. CPU IS STILL THE BOTTLENECK. I don't care what that dude says. I use shake EVERY DAY and with I have 200 nodes in a tree it not the HDD's that are the issue.
Analog Kid said:
So if Shake is the PS of motion video, what is FCP analogous to. I thought you could do all of that compositing in FCP. Or is Shake just like FCP with far more controll?
Photoshop is like a stove, no matter what you cook whether it be fry an egg, bake a cake, warm-up soup, cook a turkey, you need the stove for all those things.
Photoshop is use for nearly everything relating to still rasterised graphics. but has no timeline,
Shake I suppose would be the Stove of Video. FCP is the oven. Perfect tool for cookies but not good at cooking spaghetti. After Effects would then have to be the frying pan or microwave. (you can pull nearly anything off with it). Maya must then be the...i dont know...giant pot that you pull out for those really big meals.
Ok Ill stop now. Im getting a bit carried away
Naturally that would make iMovie the toaster
Photoshop is use for nearly everything relating to still rasterised graphics. but has no timeline,
Shake I suppose would be the Stove of Video. FCP is the oven. Perfect tool for cookies but not good at cooking spaghetti. After Effects would then have to be the frying pan or microwave. (you can pull nearly anything off with it). Maya must then be the...i dont know...giant pot that you pull out for those really big meals.
Ok Ill stop now. Im getting a bit carried away
Naturally that would make iMovie the toaster
sintaxi said:Photoshop is like a stove, no matter what you cook whether it be fry an egg, bake a cake, warm-up soup, cook a turkey, you need the stove for all those things.
Photoshop is use for nearly everything relating to still rasterised graphics. but has no timeline,
Shake I suppose would be the Stove of Video. FCP is the oven. Perfect tool for cookies but not good at cooking spaghetti. After Effects would then have to be the frying pan or microwave. (you can pull nearly anything off with it). Maya must then be the...i dont know...giant pot that you pull out for those really big meals.
Ok Ill stop now. Im getting a bit carried away
Naturally that would make iMovie the toaster
I have a headache...
Very Exciting
The idea that HDs are the new bottleneck is very exciting. That new 150 GB Raptor from WD is looking all the more attractive.
The idea that HDs are the new bottleneck is very exciting. That new 150 GB Raptor from WD is looking all the more attractive.
sintaxi said:Photoshop is like a stove, no matter what you cook whether it be fry an egg, bake a cake, warm-up soup, cook a turkey, you need the stove for all those things.
...,
Shake I suppose would be the Stove of Video. FCP is the oven. Perfect tool for cookies but not good at cooking spaghetti. After Effects would then have to be the frying pan or microwave. (you can pull nearly anything off with it). Maya must then be the...i dont know...giant pot that you pull out for those really big meals.
Ok Ill stop now. Im getting a bit carried away
Naturally that would make iMovie the toaster
or the toaster oven rather???
Shake is compositing software - simply put, it is used to combine different frames (be it footage or 3D computer generated stuff) into one (composite) frame (e.g. how special effects are done in movies). The result is the CG Jar Jar looking like he's really on the set with the actors (or somethingkskill said:
).
Chundles said:
I agree, I never would have thought I would see Shake running on any home computer.
vmardian said:
I think they just took it away with the first 15" MBP release because they knew they could without stopping them from flying off the shelves.
Now they have an easy little goodie to add back in on a later revision to provide an added benefit on one of those future releases...
SCSI, muzzy, fuzzy, yada, yada, yada...bluebomberman said:
Although I'm not advocating bringing back SCSI controllers as standard in Apple computers, you have to consider that SCSI has evolved since the days of SCSI Zip drives. Particularly Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). SATA is (probably not literally, but definitely in practice) a "subset" of SAS. This means that you can have a SAS controller connected to SAS or SATA drives, or even to both. So, at least in theory, if there were a SAS controller in the next gen Intel Powermac (or whatever) you would still be able to buy ultra cheap, ginomous in capacity SATA drive and when you have the need or the money you could upgrade (or add) a lightning fast 15k RPM SAS disk. All upside, no downside (well, almost no - SAS controllers may be a bit pricey at the beginning, but it's up for debate how much really). I think doing something like that would be a better way for Apple to spend the money they save from using ultra cheap Intel CPUs and chipsets. Why so? Wouldn't there be third party PCIe SAS RAID controllers? Yeah, sure as hell. But if it is a standard feature of Apple computers, it most likely will work flawlessly and seamlessly in Mac OS X, which may not always be the case with third party hardware.
Having said that, do I think it will happen? No, not really. Not even in Xserve and Xserve RAID. But this doesn't mean it is not the better thing.
Um, just guessing so correct me if I'm wrong:
Logic
Logic Express
Final Cut Express
Xsan?
Filemaker?
Things that need to go UB pronto:
Creative Suite
Office:mac (although it runs very well)
Flip4mac
Real Player (or whatever else can play my downloaded Family Guy eps)
Logic
Logic Express
Final Cut Express
Xsan?
Filemaker?
Things that need to go UB pronto:
Creative Suite
Office:mac (although it runs very well)
Flip4mac
Real Player (or whatever else can play my downloaded Family Guy eps)
Filming in parts and compositing....
Personally, all of the CGI and compositing done in today's movies usually just irritates me. I don't know if I'm just overly sensitive to it or what -- but most of the time, it just looks "not quite right" to me. The most recent example I can think of was watching "Chronicles of Narnia". Many, many times throughout the movie, it looked to me like the characters in the foreground were just superimposed on the scenery behind them, rather than it being really believable that they were there.
It's interesting you mention Forrest Gump, because that may be one of the few films that sticks out in my mind as having done all of the CGI "properly". Everything appeared seamless.
Even in the high-dollar Star Wars prequels, I thought the quality of the compositing and CGI was really a "mixed bag". For every amazingly well-done scene (like the CGI Yoda), there were painful-to-watch scenes that looked horribly artificial (like R2D2 and C3PO jumping/running across that moving conveyor belt in Episode 2).
Personally, all of the CGI and compositing done in today's movies usually just irritates me. I don't know if I'm just overly sensitive to it or what -- but most of the time, it just looks "not quite right" to me. The most recent example I can think of was watching "Chronicles of Narnia". Many, many times throughout the movie, it looked to me like the characters in the foreground were just superimposed on the scenery behind them, rather than it being really believable that they were there.
It's interesting you mention Forrest Gump, because that may be one of the few films that sticks out in my mind as having done all of the CGI "properly". Everything appeared seamless.
Even in the high-dollar Star Wars prequels, I thought the quality of the compositing and CGI was really a "mixed bag". For every amazingly well-done scene (like the CGI Yoda), there were painful-to-watch scenes that looked horribly artificial (like R2D2 and C3PO jumping/running across that moving conveyor belt in Episode 2).
Analog Kid said:
scsi is way too elite for apple to bother integrating it. working professionally with video and shifting around 2 terabytes of data every day across firewire, 1000 base T, and eventually an xServe RAID with fibre, I can say that I really don't miss scsi too much. yes, it is faster that sata. yes, the drives are faster. yes, a properly built scsi system will sometimes run for a lot longer. do 99.999% of users need it? no.
apple did a lot of market research and scrapped firewire 800 from the 15" MacBook Pro because not too many folks really need the speed boost and, gasp, you will soon be able to add it on through the express card slot. i would be surprised to see comprable scsi and sata systems showing a nearly 2x speed boost like firewire 800 gives over firewire 400 (aka if a 7200rpm sata 150 drive is half the speed of a 7200rpm scsi 160 drive in normal daily use). users just don't need to pay more for stuff they won't use.
the very small number of users who need LVD-320 drives are just gonna shell out the bucks and buy pci express controllers and expensive drive bay modules. they need it and are willing to pay for it. the rest of us will keep living in ignorant bliss with sata and be happy that we can pick up 300 gig drives for $80. if it's good enough for the xServe RAID to run as fast as it does, it's good enough for me to use for the forseeable future.
and yay shake for running on intel imacs! can't wait to get me a new 'telbook of some sort, i'm gonna retire my G5 desktop like it's my job. is there anyone who wants a dual 2.3 with 2.5 gigs of ram and an internal soft raid out there?
apple did a lot of market research and scrapped firewire 800 from the 15" MacBook Pro because not too many folks really need the speed boost and, gasp, you will soon be able to add it on through the express card slot. i would be surprised to see comprable scsi and sata systems showing a nearly 2x speed boost like firewire 800 gives over firewire 400 (aka if a 7200rpm sata 150 drive is half the speed of a 7200rpm scsi 160 drive in normal daily use). users just don't need to pay more for stuff they won't use.
the very small number of users who need LVD-320 drives are just gonna shell out the bucks and buy pci express controllers and expensive drive bay modules. they need it and are willing to pay for it. the rest of us will keep living in ignorant bliss with sata and be happy that we can pick up 300 gig drives for $80. if it's good enough for the xServe RAID to run as fast as it does, it's good enough for me to use for the forseeable future.
and yay shake for running on intel imacs! can't wait to get me a new 'telbook of some sort, i'm gonna retire my G5 desktop like it's my job. is there anyone who wants a dual 2.3 with 2.5 gigs of ram and an internal soft raid out there?
kingtj said:
yeah, it's hit and miss. i thought that narnia was pretty solid, though there were parts that stood out. star wars is tricky because it's almost fully cgi, with some live action over it... that said, if ILM can't do it right, then there's not much hope someone else could (maybe WETA?)... it's very hard to do, and it's certainly getting better. the problem is, as it gets better, people use it a lot more in the films and it may not be getting better fast enough to keep up with the increased usage. practical effects still go a very long way.
kingtj said:
technically these scenes weren't really composited in there in the traditional sense, only the actors actually existed. george lucas never built that set (or most of what you saw), the scene you mention was entirely digital. i find it amazing that sky captain managed smoother integration most of the time since it was done on macs with a minimal budget by someone with much less experience.
Chundles said:
I've been talking up those iMacs since january. I don't know why they aren't being recognized as the pwerful machines they are. Everyone wants to talk about and benchmark the MBP. Well the iMac 2.0Ghz Core Duo has the same the same specs as the MBP 2.0Ghz Core Duo except the iMac has better HDDs and a better video card.
I guess the sheep would be touting it praise if Steve-O had named it the iMac Pro.
Also, I agree with the cat who was talking about Shake node trees getting really large and processor intensive. I can't believe that a really complex composite would only be limited by the HDD. I suspect that in the Apple demo they had a basic roto-mask, Chroma-Keyed, CC, with a little camera data imported from Boujou or Maya. That kind of comp's render speed might be limited by HDD speed and/or throughput.