[Avid-L2] Re: Mac Smoke Official

Ian,

I think the whole resistance we have to the RR idea is because it goes in the opposite direction of everything being done by every NLE (and other video gear) manufacturer. Everyone is moving towards - or being pushed towards - "off-the-shelf" hardware + custom software. And they are all doing it for the obvious reason that it is the only sustainable business model if you aren't a boutique developer. This means that more and more of the heavy lifting is being done by CPUs and to a greater extent GPUs. This means NVIDIA, ATI and potentially Matrox.

In order for RR to work within the NLE video stream, it basically has to function in the same way a GPU inside an NVIDIA or ATI card does now. Multi-stream commands have to be decompressed, combined with effects, displayed and ultimately re-encoded. Currently it's the software+CPU that's doing the decoding and re-encoding and the CPU+GPU does the rest. You are now expecting the RR card to do both and I just don't see that happening. ATI's and NVIDIA's advancements come because of video game development - a mass market driver. NLEs reap the benefits of that work.

You may be right that ultimately RED has to build its own special purpose NLE. If so, I wouldn't expect it to be very viable for anything other than exclusively REDCODE media projects. Think in the context of your own case. You have discussed using P2 and Canon media with your RED. How does that work in the native REDCODE/RR world? I don't think it does.

Don't expect Smoke on Mac to be the answer to this. Autodesk/Discreet has never made there own hardware. Going to the Mac means embracing even less customized gear than Smoke on Linux. If anything, I'd place my bets on Quantel. They are more likely to still tinker with the "off-the-shelf" products and blend those with proprietary tools to get advanced results.

So the bottom line for me is that RR will probably be a fast decoder to go to displays or an intermediate codec for quite some time. At best, it may become the core of a DVS or Assimilate-style assembler/grader.

- Oliver

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