FXGuide got a great look at Autodesk’s new Smoke on the Mac and is publishing a 3-part expose on the whole affair, the first part already available. It’s got great detail including hardware requirements (both stated and actual), and several advanced configuration details. He gets into details like Autodesk states the NVidia QuadrofX card as a requirement, while the reality is a bit different:
That being said, the software does actually run on other graphics cards including — yes, it’s true — current MacBook Pro 17″ systems. I’ve installed Smoke on Mac on systems with GeForce cards as well as the MacBook Pro 17″ and it does run — certainly well enough if you want to install the free trial on a Mac system. To be clear, this isn’t listed in the requirements or recommendations, so If you’re gonna put together a system without these, buyer beware. Especially if you’re investing $15,000. But I’m sure over time we’ll hear from the web universe what works and what doesn’t.
One critical point is that the display needs to support at least at 1920×1200 so that the entire UI can be displayed. The other point is that if you are buying a system that you need to have running at the highest level — go with the recommended hardware. Autodesk tests the software on systems that meet the suggestions, so if you’re running on a different configuration there is no guarantee it will run.
Also he gets into using the Kona3 card and pricing. Short story: it ain’t cheap.
If you wanted to build a system from scratch, here are some ballpark numbers which would provide the foundation of a solid Smoke on Mac system:
- Smoke on Mac: $14,995
- MacPro: $5,000
- Display: $2,500
- QuadroFX 5600: $1,800
- AJA Kona3: $2,400
- LaCie 12big Rack Fibre Drives (4×4Gb): $5,999
- Atto Celerity FC-42ES Fibre card: $1000
- LaCie 12big RAID Controller: $2,800
Read the full story on his site, and hit Autodesk to download the 30-day trial now!
I am currently testing smoke on a 2.93GHz macBookPro It seems to be working fine, but when I upgraded my finalcutstudio to version 3, conflicts seem to arise. I have an eSATA ProAvio 4x diskdrive running with an addonics XpressCard/34, and I can get 24fps HD playback if cropped at 2:35. FullRez HD drops frames after a few seconds. Will upgrade to sonnet xpresscard soon. They claim I can get 200Mbs out of the expresscard slot so I will give this a try since 24fps8bitHD requires between 180/190 Mbs.
I can access a remote stone on a ip network so that when working in my linux suite, i can actually use my laptop as a remote working station side-by-side, or on any table with an ethernet connection nearby. Sort of like a killer backdraft/burn/precomp station. I actually completed a whole national commercial spot with comp/tracking/paint using media on a remote stone running another live session with clients while I was upstairs in another room. When those clients left, my clients walked right in and i did my presentation as if I had been in my suite all day.
You can actually use any GUID partitioned disk as a stone. Archiving material to USB disk is easy, and I actually finished my HD session on the train with a 350G usb drive. I did everything in 720×405 proxy rez since no HD RTplayback and refresh was slow, but still managed to get an hours’ work done without power supply. Almost missed my stop. Tweaked everything after my kids went to bed and presented to clients the next morning in studio.
Seemed to render soft FX just fine, but again, updating FinalCutStudio2 to FinalCutStudio3 may create some conflicts. 10bit HD multilayered SoftFX renders crash after a few minutes. (Remote stone via Ethernet) Probably has to do with the NVIDIA 9600G memory allocation limits. Local stone renders through eSATA seem fine. SmokeMac Crashes when i load an action with several different resolutions in the source clips, but had no problem with my old FinalCutStudio2 setup. Console now gives me an adobelivetype conflict message.
After testing extensively with actual HD production footage in a real studio environment, I would’nt recommend using smoke/mac on a laptop as a main production tool, unless you have FinalCutStudio for IO and audio playback and presentation using the publish/DPXtoQT workflow. But for precomps, rotos, keys, paint, dusting, stabilising, archiving, RED XML conforming and parallel session work, it is a fabulous idea, and has saved me from doing any overtime (!). Can’t wait for CORE Audio support.