one of the Holy Grails of media servers - only Richard can answer this one
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one of the Holy Grails of media servers - only Richard can answer this one
It would be extremely usefull to have frame blending available in catalyst when you slow down a movie
The question keeps cropping up and many many clients and users keep asking if it is possible...
SO
Richard:
Will frame blending ever be available in catalyst?
Simon
slowing a movie down takes a lot more than frame blending - if you have not used something like twixtor - i suggest you give it a go - to see what is really involved in "slowing things down" - its a little more tricky than dissolving...
http://www.revisionfx.com/products/twixtor/overview/
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sure- its not particularily difficult to do frame blending but it has to fit in with the other things i do and not kill performance
i have concentrated on many different things in the last couple of years - 32 layers and 32 mixes and 12 video inputs in current preview software and current computers can do 8 layers of hi-def 1080p without problems- with real world colour correction type things
features have to be performance neutral - because a lot of users push things very hard and the computer is already at its limits
This is not the direction that many of you want to hear but going back to re-redering content is the best way to handle slower speeds. I have some suggestions for those of you more familiar with networking, After Effects, and/or Final Cut Pro.
I have recently developed workflows with AE and FCP along with Chronosync to create modified content on the fly.
In short, I have started installing Qmaster and AE Render engine on all my Catalyst machines. I use either my MBP or an additional MacPro as a master repository for all content and Chronosync to sync to the Catalyst Machines.
The chronoscript is a push only script which targets a second SSD in the machines. I started using 64Gb SSDs. I graduated to 250Gb and now 512Gb. The larger drives work well for the majority of the show content. It's only the revised files I change on site that go to the 64s so I never have space issues with having multiple versions of a piece of content and never overwrite anything.
Most of my machines have 8GB of RAM and the rest have 16Gb. With proper CPU and Memory allocations setup in AE and Qmaster I have been able to keep Catalyst running simultaneously. I also use the smaller SSDs as a RAM disk which helps.
In the worst case scenario, I am down for 10-15 minutes waiting for render and copying but most of the time I keep right on cranking.
I don't recommend this process to those of you who are not quite as familiar with Catalyst or render clustering but for those of you who are, I'm sure speed changes aren't the only content modifications you make on site.
If you try this, it will speed up your time but if you don't know what you're doing, make sure to experiment extensively before going to show site so that you don't get hit with something overwhelming or unfamiliar.
I look back the to comments I made a few years ago.
Mbox, Hippo and Maxxedia have done this for years.
In certain markets, such as TV, Catalyst has lost a lot of ground to these servers because it doesn't do frame blending. This has now become a requirement of media servers operating in this environment. A lot of us have been grumbling about this for years - I have been for nearly 5-6 years.
I don't have the time to wait for clips to render, nor do my client, and unless our graphics department are involved in the show, the client ain't going to pay for an HD edit suite either - most rental companies, ours included, do not supply Catalyst machines with anything other than the standard RAM and without AE and FCP.
It's a long overdue feature. Maxxedia will soon be able to do this for video input too.
Hugh
Great!
Can you post a download?
NICE! I would love to test this as well! I actually have machines and time available for once.
I am hoping this is available before the 17th... I have a show that this feature would benefit me greatly on.... I have come to the realization that I am not good at waiting :)