Discreet Smoke HD DI 6.7 $285000 versus what FCP setup?

N

Nik Manning

Well-known member
Saw this on Studio Daily for sale. What is the price of a comparable Mac setup?
Programs and hardware needed. I just was amazed someone would actually buy this.

Discreet Smoke HD DI 6.7:
configured on Tezro V12: 4*800mhz, 24' monitor, DM3, cabling. stone IR73 storage system, expansion chassis, Fibre channel technology, 1 Terabyte storage, True random access, 3U rack enclosure, expandable, dual stream, includes one cold spare drive. Discreet stonefs v2 high performance file system. First Year Advance parts exchange on new Discreet h/w plus 12/5 hotline
 
I think you're kind of comparing Apples and Cars there. Smoke is a rival to Symphony not FCP. But I guess if you get Final Touch HD to expand upon FCP, and then build an equivalent system, I don't know that you'd be way different in price. The fibre setup and having FT would add a pretty penny into the mix. Even then, I'd think you'd have a stronger system with a Smoke. But depending on your needs, that stronger system may be a waste. Its all relative to what you do, at least to me anyways.

cheers.
 
Hi guys,
You're definitely not even close to comparing the right systems. I'm a senior smoke artist who owns a HVX and now looking at buying a FCP system for my own use simply because I can't afford a smoke system.

smoke is more like an Avid DS Nitris .. it can edit and do amazing visual effects along with very good color correction. Just last night I looked at an FCP system demo and it can't even do a decent roto job (8 points max!). I'm not atatcking FCP, hell, it does a great job for what it was designed for and I'm ready to put my dollars down for one.

Obviously, there is a huge price difference. Is smoke worth 15 times more than a comparable FCP setup (FC storage/io etc.)...? In most cases no. But when you need a quick turnaround and need EVERY tool at your disposal then definitely yes. Go to a leading post house anywhere in the world and see if they use FCP or smoke for doing high end finsihing work... I know the answer..
Regards,
Steve
 
steve997 said:
Hi guys,
You're definitely not even close to comparing the right systems. I'm a senior smoke artist who owns a HVX and now looking at buying a FCP system for my own use simply because I can't afford a smoke system.

smoke is more like an Avid DS Nitris .. it can edit and do amazing visual effects along with very good color correction. Just last night I looked at an FCP system demo and it can't even do a decent roto job (8 points max!). I'm not atatcking FCP, hell, it does a great job for what it was designed for and I'm ready to put my dollars down for one.

Obviously, there is a huge price difference. Is smoke worth 15 times more than a comparable FCP setup (FC storage/io etc.)...? In most cases no. But when you need a quick turnaround and need EVERY tool at your disposal then definitely yes. Go to a leading post house anywhere in the world and see if they use FCP or smoke for doing high end finsihing work... I know the answer..
Regards,
Steve
Click to expand...
I think you'd probably want to add Shake to your proposed FCP setup. At its new price ($499) it's quite a bargain and will add to the things you couldn't do with FCP alone. It's also nice that it integrates with Final Cut Studio fairly well.
 
I don't think I explained it clearly enough. What software and hardware would be needed on the mac platform to make it comparable to a smoke system. This includes final touch,shake,after effects,final cut studio,etc. Plus what ever hardware is needed. So no rotoscoping in final cut pro.

All the needed hardware and software would be what price?
Thanks for your replies!
 
Smoke does not compare to FCP, it compares to Shake.

Whatever Mac you can affor, bigger the better, Final Cut Suite, Shake, poof, there you have it. As for fiber channel, well, do you plan on networking a bunch of computers together?

And getting After Effects when you already have Motion and Shake is overkill. Go with AE, or go with Motion and/or Shake, but to get all of them would very much be overkill.

Prices are easily found on Apple's web site.
 
Not true.

If you do both vanilla compositing and 'creative compositing' (read: motion graphics) you can use both Shake and AE. AE for more design focused jobs, Shake for compositing speed.
 
I don't know much about Smoke or anything, but I know that the most high end Mac Pro system you can get (3GHz Xeon DC, 16GB RAM, 2TB storage, 2 superdrives) including fibre channel card and 2 30" displays and Final Cut Studio, Shake, After Effects and Adobe creative suite for the hell of it. It comes to roughly $25 000. less than 10% of the price of that smoke setup. But soon enough Apple will probably have the dual 4 core Xeons that are coming out at the end of the year, and the long rumoured Final Cut Extreme that is supposed to be able to edit uncompressed 4K natively.
 
Adobe does not have any software that is Intel Mac native yet. I'm holding off until they do. Won't be until sometime in 2007. You can run it in Rosetta, but even on the top end Mac Pro, it's sluggish. And if you have Shake and Motion, AE is overkill.
 
Judge said:
I don't know much about Smoke or anything, but I know that the most high end Mac Pro system you can get (3GHz Xeon DC, 16GB RAM, 2TB storage, 2 superdrives) including fibre channel card and 2 30" displays and Final Cut Studio, Shake, After Effects and Adobe creative suite for the hell of it. It comes to roughly $25 000. less than 10% of the price of that smoke setup. But soon enough Apple will probably have the dual 4 core Xeons that are coming out at the end of the year, and the long rumoured Final Cut Extreme that is supposed to be able to edit uncompressed 4K natively.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I believe that is what I was looking for. I was under the impression that I had to be missing something because of the major price difference!

So basically 30k would buy a Smoke alternative Mac system that doesn't comprimise quality or speed. Right?
Thanks
 
"... /So basically 30k would buy a Smoke alternative Mac system that doesn't comprimise quality or speed. Right?"


No, I still don't agree.... I'm not trying to defend smoke's pricing but whilst it's possible to have the same quality on both (RGB4:4:4), there is a difference in workflow speed (not processing speed as a FCP/Shake/Final Touch combination can probably do more things real time).. but it's about being able to do what you want very quickly and efficiently in one package.

Smoke includes capture, conform, edit, colour correct (secondaries as well), 100 layer DVE FX, text, roto, high end keying, fx plugins, resize etc. and works up to 8K x 8K resolution. It's also a proven package of tools that all work in a similar fashion unlike FCP and Shake (Shake is node based - made by Nothing Real previous to Apple purchasing it so the naming/workflow convention is very different and again so it is with Final Touch). Hourly rates on smoke are most likely 3-4 times that of FCP... so the ROI is only slightly higher when you look at paying off 30K vs 150K (which is the correct price of a new linux 2K smoke now - there is a cheaper smoke for $70K I think but without HD i/o).

I'm not saying one is better than the other... they're not. Both have flaws and strengths and have their place in the market. They actually work well with one another (smoke now will accept FCP XML files and even media via third party software). If I had the dollars I'd get both :-) .

Regards,
Steve
 
There is a gammashift problem (rather f***-up)
when you export material to-fro Shake/FCP that is a big dealbreaker. If this had worked flawlessly the combo would be a killer solution. Now you'll have to choose between them (Yes I do know they do different stuff, but still) FCP studio and Shake were really built for different needs, so much so that the integration between them is far from smooth.

There are workarounds (going uncompressed and shift gamma back), but then you have lost some of the advantage of the combo IMHO.

The fantastic thing about shake that is full of easy tools to brush up images + roto + (of course) all the compositing tools that FCP lack.

The color correction tools are also far superiour to FCP's.

So this is a real bummer.

This is not part of smoke vs FCP but a comment to this thread.

Gunleik
(Who loves FCP and Shake, but not their integration and QT's gamma-approximation in FCP)
 
So other than the price difference the Mac combo might provide more realtime performance at the cost of the integration that smoke provides?

Does Smoke operate in 3d space? I think it is safe to compare it to FCP/Motion/Shake.
 
Yes, smoke operates in true 3D space in the DVE compositing module (100 layers available, each with colour corrector, keyer, bicubic layer manipulation, unlimited axis etc.). The timeline which can also do compositing only works in 2D, however anything rendered in the DVE module has 'history' so even though it is a rendered final pice it has all the elements 'inside itself'.

Oh, and no gamma shifts :-)

Steve
 
Hi Gunleik,
Is the gamma problem on the FCP side or Shake side? Are you saying if you work uncompressed in FCP then you don't have the gamma issue between the two app's?
Regards,
Steve
 
BenB said:
What I was saying it that Shake and AE and Motion all on the same system is overkill.
Click to expand...

And what i'm saying is that it aint true. You can't do proper motion graphics in Shake, and fast compositing in AE is sometimes a problem. Therefor, Shake, AE and Motion on 1 system is far from overkill.

And don't even start comparing Motion with AE.
 
Hi Steve.

The problem is on the FCP/QT side.

The combo maces "assumptions" of what's the right gamma, to give a better preview on a computer monitor, but this messes things up when you start to punch files between the two.

The idea of going via an uncompressed file, is that it handles the gamma-correction better and you get less generation loss.

Dunno yet. Haven't tried.
But I've seen people using the animation or uncompressed codecs as a workaround for theses reasons.

Gunleik
 
love shake - love fcp - motion too.
however you just cannot compare it to those high end systems with all the bells and whistles. sorry but it really is worth the quarter of a mil.
the guys that are working on them are not dumb - it really is that good!
wish i could wish i could.
(My iMac is slowly retreating to the other side of the bed like an angry lover)
 
So, like, Lord of the Rings, King Kong, all the award winning movies that used Shake, yep, Shake is not high end...

And the quarter mil systems are NOT being updated as they once were, they're being dropped for farms of desktop systems running things like Shake, one studio at a time...
 
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