Need Answer Fast Re: Shake And Apple 10 Bit Uncompressed Issues

[user_deleted]

I've seen a couple of other posts on this topic here and other forums, but I've never seen an answer from Apple on what is causing this, whether or not it will ever be fixed or a possible work around. So I'm appealing to anyone from Apple or the Shake team to please let us know what is going on so we can make a decision as to how or how not to proceed with Shake.

We're compositing all the EFX (over 1000 EXF shots) for a massive video game project that needs to be delivered to the client be the end of May. Let me preface the following comments by saying that overall, we're very pleased with Shake and the end results we're getting, but one problem in particular has us very worried about making our deadline:

The project is entirely bluescreen with CGI plates, shot on anamorphic Digibeta and captured into FCP as uncompressed 10 bit. 4:2:2 through a Blackmagic HD Extreme card (via SDI).

All the 4:2:2 material displays (for lack of a better desciption) digital "noise" that runs along the right-hand edge of the video, with frequent drop-out looking sparkles that can appear anywhere in the video image. These artifacts ONLY appear when the video clips are imported into Shake, and rendered out of Shake. They play perfectly fine in FCP and QT player.

If we force the FILE-IN node to 8 bit, the problem goes away, but keying suffers - so this is not an option.

The problem ONLY occurs on our Intel Mac's, not on our older G5's. The reason we invested in the Mac Pro's for this project was to reap the performance boost we desired in order to get the project out the door by our deadline.

We're already well down the road, and while we realize that at Shake's current price-point it seems silly to complain at all, we gladly would have paid more for a compositing tool if we knew we were going to run into a situation like this. Unforunately, our initial evaluation for Shake was done on our G5's which don't suffer from this issue.

If anyone from has any recommendation for an efficient way to solve or work around this issue, we'd love to hear from you.

Best regards,

Michael Buday

[user_deleted]

recently read somewhere that this issue might be fixed with the newest software updates (pro applications thing i think), so you might want to check if you have all the latest updates.
[edit: i think it was this one: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303729]

alternatively you could use your G5 machines to batch convert to 16bit image sequences and the intel macs to do the comps.

i would be interested in a suggestion of a better informed person as well though.
++ chris

[user_deleted]

QUOTE(zem @ 02/25/07, 09:33 AM) [snapback]260942[/snapback]
recently read somewhere that this issue might be fixed with the newest software updates (pro applications thing i think), so you might want to check if you have all the latest updates.
[edit: i think it was this one: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303729]

alternatively you could use your G5 machines to batch convert to 16bit image sequences and the intel macs to do the comps.

i would be interested in a suggestion of a better informed person as well though.
++ chris

Thanks Chris, but we're current on all the updates. The gamma issues (mentioned in the Pro update) we're dealing with, but this problem does not seem to have been addressed.

Your suggestion re: batch converting has been considered, but because of the FCP (send to) -->Shake-->FCP workflow, we're trying to find the most efficient methodology that won't put a big kink into the process. One of the options we're testing now is to recapture the bluescreen material using the Decklink RGB codec (which doesn't seem to suffer from this or the gamma problems), but it would be a ton of work.

What we'd like to hear is a definitive answer from someone at Apple or Shake who can tell us if the problem will be addressed or of a patch, system setting change, video-card change, etc. that might fix it quickly so we can keep working and meet our deadline. If the answer is "no, you're out of luck", at least we can stop banging our heads against the wall trying to make the current (and most efficient) workflow "work" and make the big decision to stop and rethink how to do this.

Michael Buday

[user_deleted]

hmm, have you tried to copy over the old qt codec from the g5 to the intel mac?
that's kinda a wild shot which could also result in problems (make a backup). also are the blackmagic and the apple codecs installed? if yes you could try to see what happens with either of them solo

but i agree an official statement would be much more useful, maybe try the mailing list or the apple discussion board.
++ chris

[user_deleted]

QUOTE(zem @ 02/25/07, 05:12 PM) [snapback]260988[/snapback]
hmm, have you tried to copy over the old qt codec from the g5 to the intel mac?
that's kinda a wild shot which could also result in problems (make a backup). also are the blackmagic and the apple codecs installed? if yes you could try to see what happens with either of them solo

but i agree an official statement would be much more useful, maybe try the mailing list or the apple discussion board.
++ chris

I've confirmed this issue occurs on all Mac Intel CPU's. The QT codec's installed on both the G5 and the MacPro are the same version, so I don't think copying from the G5 to the MacPro will help.

It seems many others are having the same problem, so I must either wait to see if Apple/Shake is going to rectify the issue or (reluctantly) recapture or convert everything to a different codec that doens't exhibit this problem. We wanted to stay in the uncompressed Apple codec since all the material and FCP sequences were already working in this format.

Thanks Chris.

Michael