Hello everybody interesting in compositing, Digital Fusion, budget and much more!
I am an editor and compositor with 15 years of experience in the field and saw the complete development of the industry, starting with SONY dominated U-matic and Betacam post-production, later Digital Betacam. In early days of computerized, non-linear editing most of the work was done on Avid, although companies like D-vision and NightSuite have tried to bring it to PC platform. Unfortunately, the at the time strongest Pentium 90 was just not enough and so the market for high end visual effects was dominated by large boxes from sgi and Quantel, having the multiple RISC CPUs capability and dedicated software totally wired with the hardware. The rendering times on these machines were fast and their size directly proportional to their price that has put them out of reach for the mortal human digital artist. As the years went by and processors got faster on all fronts, Intel has also recognized the importance of what has now been named Digital Content Creation, a single term used for editing, compositing and 3D art. With the advent of Windows 2000 and Xeon 2Ghz processors just some time ago, the situation has changed completely. Windows 2000 is capable of handling up to 8 Xeon 2GHz CPUs and 16GB RAM, although already a workstation with dual Xeon configuration and 4GB RAM is capable of handling considerable amount of film and TV work. Digital Fusion which I have been watching very closely from beginning is the most open software for support of different digital video cards for preview of files and supports proxy preview too. It also supports as many processors as you can feed it and uses their power efficiently. Combined with 5D Monster plug ins and Ultimatte, it is not only one of the top and easiest to use compositing packages, but can do the job of top notch products from DL or Quantel almost at 90% and the rendering times will not send you on the journey around the world either! Even Hollywood has been discovering this and is steering more and more towards Intel based post-production which gives an opportunity to individual digital content creators.
Why am I writing all this? Lately, I have been getting together with a group of colleagues with the idea of configuring and putting together the best possible desktop digital film and TV compositing solution at the most affordable price. We have taken contact with Eyeonline as well as leading workstation manufacturers, but the feedback from the users will play the most crucial role in this task.
Since we already live in the year 2001 (and cannot even beam yet ), and have a wonderful way of connecting the whole world through fast lines, we decided to go even a step futher.
We are creating a true online collaboration network that will include many web based services just for the film and TV production people, like for example secure booking organizer, local area configured message board, voice chat, software and hardware trading, online banking, tax services, etc. One of the most important elements will be the possibility of working online as well, by remote access of footage through proxy viewing, thus putting the film and TV professionals and studios on one virtual street where distances play no major role anymore! This will help the creative digital artists to gain more work and the studios a large base of people to work with.
If you are interested in any of the above or have questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to write to the email address cineffect@swipnet.se. We are expanding our team constantly.
Your Cineffect Team (Sweden, Germany, Canada, Holland, USA, New Zealand)