Topic awaiting preservation: Quintessential Questions We All Must Ask Ourselves (Page 1 of 1)

There are 2 things that I REALLY need to know all about and have explained and clarified to me:

1. What is the ideal computer for doing mainly CG work? Is a Silicon Graphics workstation the ideal one? Or are there better ones, cheaper ones even? Im after a computer that can do all aspects of CG, video editing, sound mixing, compositing near enough to perfection.

2. What is the best video codec and video codecs? Im after codecs that will work well in a number of purposes. Im working on a showreel this year and obviously need good quality but while also keeping the file size down to a minimum. Secondly Im doing some CG and video work for the web. What codecs should I be using?

Through me every link, information, fact, statistic, shannigan, pros and cons in my directions for these 2 important questions everyone. I really need to know all the problems and resolutions about these two points.

Cheers.

"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

Ooops..thought I stopped the posting in time before it submitted.

"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

Luxo_Jr: No worries the duplicate is gone - carry on as usually..........

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Cheers mate.

"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

and this really should be down in 3D Modelling, cause that's what all it's questions are based around.

Hopefully someone replies to this..down there.

"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

They will...you can build your own system...render times are all down to basic hardware...processor, Motherboard, memory and HDD access times. If you put a fast processor and enough memory in the right board with a 7200 RPM drive...you can get phenominal render times. I have a Pentium 4 2.26 GHz and 768 meg of ram in mine and I get some pretty damn good render times. Graphics card don't really have that much to do with CG renders. No system is ever going ot be perfect though, and you're going to have to make sacrifices somewhere along the line...you can't have everything.

SGI workstations are no longer the end-all CGI systems. Not too many years ago, an SGI Octane would be the dream system. The heavy-hitter apps are getting ported to the Windows platform, though, and the SGI systems no longer leave Intel (or AMD) systems in the dust.

While an argument can be made for some platforms for some applications, your best bets are a Windows box with all the horsepower you can cram in it. If you're a big fan of the Mac, you can do ok with that too. Windows is stronger, though, mainly because of the diversity of 3D apps: Maya, 3DSMax, Houdini, Lightwave, Hash, etc. etc. etc. A good Windows box is also just about the cheapest power-per-dollar, too. My home-built 2.4Ghz P4 with a gig of ram was dirt cheap, comparatively.

If you have a ton of cash, some people prefer have both a Windows box and a Mac, running strong 3D apps on Windows, and Adobe products on the Mac (Photoshop, After Effects, etc).

As far as codecs, I'd suggest keeping your work clips in DV if you have enough drive space (DV has a very low generational loss). For final output to Quicktime, use the latest Sorenson codec, or MPEG-4. Quicktime was recently chosen by the ISO commitee to be the official file format for MPEG-4 (really pissed of Microsoft). You need Quicktime 6 Pro to author MPEG-4 content, though, and there's a small charge for the Pro version. For output to AVI, most everyone uses the lates Divx codec (5 atm, I think). I think Divx is still free.

Since Divx is based on an early MPEG-4 spec, it gives great quality at small file sizes. The official MPEG-4 in Quicktime does too, of course




[This message has been edited by Das (edited 01-12-2003).]

Thanks for that Das

After doing numerous tests with the video codecs, Ive found for Quicktime, Sorenson 3 and MPEG 4 does wonders and so does DivX 5.02 and 4 (Fast Motion) but the only problem is it has this vibrating, unsteady look to the rendered DivX file. Whats causing this?

What are some good audio codecs?

"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

the MPEG-4(AAC & TwinVQ) ones.

I root for Ogg Vorbis myself, of course it hasn't caught on yet.

It will though, oh you just wait!!

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/

That audio codec doesnt make any sense genis. I ran it and it just says drop files here, so I did that and nothing happened:

What? The ogg vorbis?

You were trying OggDrop?

What were you dropping?
It only takes wav files in, that i know of.

Like I said, I don't think anything will allow you to attach an ogg as an audio source, much less anything play it, except maybe winamp 3.

But hopefully acceptance will grow for this unpatented, open source, BSD-like licensed codec.

But if you're looking to rip straight from CD to .ogg to play in winamp (2 or 3) I reccomend CD-DA Xtractor. Also open-source. Look for it on Sourceforge.net

if i were going to do a lot of video i'd get a mac, FAR easier to import sources into than a pc and you've got final cut pro (and the new final cut express) to edit with. lightwave and maya are both available for the mac, which would be the two packages i'd recommend for 3d (unless you have tons of cash to burn and want softimage xsi).

chris


KAIROSinteractive

A mac isn't actually the best option, especially when your entire life has been spent on a PC. It's not like a mac can do anything a PC can't. You can get IEEE 1394 Firewire cards esaily for PC, my Sound Blaster Audigy has one built into it. A mac's interface is also awkward ot anyone who's used a PC mainly in life, the whole COMMAND+CLICK interface is clunky. Just about the only thing from a mac that you can't run on a PC is iMovie, which I wouldn't use in a pink fit anyway.