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.