Nekonomicon - Piranha vs. Shake Irix

cybercow
From Europe
Who joined March 21, 2007, 7:07 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 5, 2008, 8:10 a.m...

How many of you still uses this kind of software for effects on Irix ? and what are the differences ? I know both software apps require big bang octane2`s or tezro`s but i get a try to shake 3.5 on Indigo2 impact and for "minimal" things is quite usable, at least for user interface exploration and command hierarchy learning ... etc ... maybe for first steps too... in fact i was surprised how usable is this thing on 10 year old machine, ok this is classic constatation so i will skip this one ... i even maked some simple effects in few minutes that surprised me.

I know today shake is primary apple-platform thing for powered pro-mac`s, but wondering how wide was the usage on Irix platform when it was available ... in the other hand the v3.5 seems not so distant from 4.1 (or 4.2 dunno) that is apple current version, i mean the version distance is short in relation to hardware/generation that run`s it ... for example Maya 6.5 (last Irix v.) and Maya 2008 that is straight 3 versions ahead 7,8 and 2008 ...

Piranha still retain Irix support at least for v4., and i think is on the higher range of pro-usage and definitely needs nice powered Octane2 to run smoothly ...

fvador59
From The Death Star for vacations
Who joined April 3, 2007, 2:38 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 5, 2008, 9:31 a.m...

The reply is inside your Signature "- It`s time for Octane ? hmmm ... oh dear god, not again :O"

Time to let oldies.Both are completely out from the tools we got now.
Or it's time to move to the Octane2 + other kind of apps

Octane2 Irix 6.5.28f.
PC_Linux Redhat.
Smoke Artist.

jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 5, 2008, 10:24 a.m...

cybercow wrote: How many of you still uses this kind of software for effects on Irix ? and what are the differences ? I know both software apps require big bang octane2`s or tezro`s but i get a try to shake 3.5 on Indigo2 impact and for "minimal" things is quite usable, at least for user interface exploration and command hierarchy learning ... etc ... maybe for first steps too... in fact i was surprised how usable is this thing on 10 year old machine, ok this is classic constatation so i will skip this one ... i even maked some simple effects in few minutes that surprised me.

Piranha struck me as a significantly different program from shake. I'd almost think of Piranha as more Flint or After Effects like than Shake/Fusion/Nuke like. I wouldn't say one style is better than the other, just that they are better for different things.

I wonder if there is any chance of IFX ever being convinced to sell older versions for Irix cheaply.

Timberoz
From Brisbane Australia
Who joined April 25, 2003, 8:06 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 5, 2008, 6:25 p.m...

I wonder if there is any chance of IFX ever being convinced to sell older versions for Irix cheaply

I have often thought this with many of the comp & editing apps that were available for IRIX. It's a dead end for most of the software companies, But having said that........ :mrgreen:

How many people out there are genuinely interesting in purchasing legitimate versions of these software packages. If there were enough neko users out there with money to part with I would be interested in contacting companies on behalf of a "Group of buyers" to see if they would offer a 1 time limited release of the their legacy IRIX lines. Some of the Avid products also come to mind (Elastic Reality would be 1 of my 1st picks, Jaleo for the O2 would be another)

I am not sure what the interest level would be. But I would assume that if there were enough users willing to part with cash then it might appear worth while to do. I assume that the last version release & licence with access to all of the patches would be a fair ask with a text or pdf user manual to help things along. What have we too loose?

Perhaps a limited list of apps (wish list) would prove helpful? I think by keeping this small it would keep purchase numbers high rather than scattered breakdown?

Perhaps the suggestion of an upgrade path/option to a non IRIX current version could be suggested to the supplier. This may give the companies more incentive if they can see the possibility of continuing brand loyalty? With respect, it would be foolish to assume that people are not running cracks etc on systems. If most were given the option of a legitimate license at a realistic cost..........

What are peoples thoughts on this? :?:

Timberoz>Craig

jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 5, 2008, 6:53 p.m...

Timberoz wrote: How many people out there are genuinely interesting in purchasing legitimate versions of these software packages. If there were enough neko users out there with money to part with I would be interested in contacting companies on behalf of a "Group of buyers" to see if they would offer a 1 time limited release of the their legacy IRIX lines. Some of the Avid products also come to mind (Elastic Reality would be 1 of my 1st picks, Jaleo for the O2 would be another)

I don't that Avid would be convinced to do any such thing, but it could be worth a shot, since they do give away (or least until recently did) ProTools 3.4 (I guess this would be 12+ years old).

Smaller manufacturers seem a more likely target though.

BTW, Jaleo is from SGO, which is still in business, so that is likely another good target.

Although, I would rather see them just provide an unlimited license key for free for sufficiently old applications on platforms that are no longer supported.

vishnu
Donor
From Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Who joined March 18, 2007, 3:25 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 12, 2008, 10:50 p.m...

Basically the reason I sit in front of my nearly 4 year old Octane2 each day is to run Maya 6.01 and Shake 3.5.

I live in fear of the day that these app's no longer 'cut it' because I cannot part with the frogskins necessary to 'upgrade' to the modern (i.e. non-IRIX) versions of these apps. Oh, the painfulness and anguishment...

Project:
Temporarily lost at sea...
Plan:
World domination! Or something...
:Tezro:

cybercow
Who joined March 21, 2007, 7:07 p.m.
and authored 540 notes

Wrote the following at Feb. 19, 2008, 3:51 p.m...

Maya (and Shake) on Irix have one big fall, it`s not possible to directly render the animated scene to some standard movie format like quick time, avi or something ...
what are standard procedures to convert image sequences for example sequence#.iff (0001,0002,0003,4,5 ...) to video ? or is better do this on another platform than irix ?
the tool fscheck can play the seqences, but can export be made ?

_________________

-----------------

ka0s
From The Netherlands
Who joined March 20, 2004, 5:23 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 20, 2008, 3:53 a.m...

Maya and Shake definitely rule this side of the Universe.
I use Shake and Maya on a SGI quite often and althuogh these machines are concidered
to be slow compared to todays standards I still love the responsiveness of my SGI !
Where Pyrana is concerned its just like shake but with a somewhat simpeler UI.

I can feel it, my mind is going ....

ka0s
Who joined March 20, 2004, 6:23 a.m.
and authored 589 notes

Wrote the following at Feb. 20, 2008, 4:39 a.m...

There are a whole lot of different ways to export image file sequences with ffmpeg using memcoder.
The only downside is that it is a commandline app and the commands tend to become astronimical.

But in short Yes it can be done on a SGI with a healthy dose of persiverence 8-)

Look at the man for memcoder or ffmpeg.

Cheers,
Bob

_________________
I can feel it, my mind is going ....

GIJoe
From Germany -> UK -> Germany...
Who joined March 29, 2003, 11:44 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 20, 2008, 7:36 a.m...

afaik, piranha is another one of these hardware-accelerated compositors with a layer/stack kinda approach vs. a node-based one, some video editing module and intended for those client-attended sessions. looks nothing like shake to me, more similar to smoke or perhaps mistika.

jan-jaap
Who joined June 17, 2004, 11:35 a.m.
and authored 3051 notes

Wrote the following at March 3, 2008, 2:33 p.m...

I'm having some troubles to get video (not monitor output, but PAL resolution video) from an Iris CG3 (genlock option). I think I've got a complete set:

* The CG3 card (a 6U VME card that goes into the VME slot of the Personal Iris)
* A short BNC cable to connect the CG3 to the Iris genlock clock BNC
* A DB15 (?) cable to connect the Iris 'genlock option' connector to the CG3
* A short cable to connect the RGB out of the graphics to the CG3
* A new PROM for the GR1 board but my GR1 has a more recent PROM rev. still
* 4 RAM (??) chips in an unopened static bag -- I'm clueless about these.
* And a breakout box with a dozen or so BNC's and a cable to go to the CG3.

Everything is hooked up, the 4D/25 is running IRIX 4.0.5, and I have connected a video camera to the 'vid out' BNC of the breakout box.

The video doesn't synchronize. It looks a bit like a monitor that doesn't sync, so I'm assuming this is a similar problem. I've tried to 'setmon PAL' it (it's the PAL version), followed by stopgfx; startgfx. Something is happening, but the picture doesn't sync. gfxinfo tells me my graphics is still running at 1280x1026_60.

The BOB has component (RGB+sync) video out but I don't have anything to connect it to.

There are two knobs on the BOB marked 'HOR PH' and 'CSC PH', I assume they have something to do with phase control but I can't restore the picture by turning them.

The theory of the CG3 option is that it encodes the RGB out of the GR1 graphics into a composite or component separated video signal, and can genlock either this video or the graphics output (?) of the Iris to an external genlock source. But does it need a genlock source to work at all? Would that explain my lack of sync?

Oh, I've got a Broadcast Video option (BVO) in my PowerSeries 4D/440VGX. This does basically the same, and I've tested it with the same camera. It also adds genlock in/out the the 4D/440, but seems to work fine without an external genlock source.

I'm running out of options. Does anybody have any experience with this thing?

_________________
Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet

It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service:

(2x)

In the museum : almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Wanted : GM1 board for Professional Series GT graphics (030-0076-003, 030-0076-004)

jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
and authored 547 notes

Wrote the following at March 3, 2008, 4:22 p.m...

jan-jaap wrote:

Everything is hooked up, the 4D/25 is running IRIX 4.0.5, and I have connected a video camera to the 'vid out' BNC of the breakout box.

Shouldn't the video camera be hooked to an input rather than an output?

jan-jaap
Who joined June 17, 2004, 11:35 a.m.
and authored 3051 notes

Wrote the following at March 4, 2008, 12:36 a.m...

jdboyd wrote:

Shouldn't the video camera be hooked to an input rather than an output?

No, I'm using the camera as a (tiny) TV screen. Genlock doesn't provide video input btw.

_________________
Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet

It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service:

(2x)

In the museum : almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Wanted : GM1 board for Professional Series GT graphics (030-0076-003, 030-0076-004)

jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
and authored 547 notes

Wrote the following at March 4, 2008, 7:47 a.m...

jan-jaap wrote:

jdboyd wrote:

Shouldn't the video camera be hooked to an input rather than an output?

No, I'm using the camera as a (tiny) TV screen. Genlock doesn't provide video input btw.

What does it use for a sync input if not a video signal then?

jan-jaap
Who joined June 17, 2004, 11:35 a.m.
and authored 3051 notes

Wrote the following at March 4, 2008, 9 a.m...

jdboyd wrote:

What does it use for a sync input if not a video signal then?

I was hoping it was using an internal sync generator?
Here's a fragment from a post on comp.sys.sgi:

Quote:

they [CG2] are a pain, mainly in that
they don't put out bi-polar NTSC, which results in a grey-level shift
that is quite objectionable, and the internal sync generator is so awful
as to be unusable without a time-base corrector.

The example code in the same posting contains this comment:

Code:

  /*
  
  *  Optional CG2 GENLOCK board is installed.
  
  *
  
  *  Mode 2:  Internal sync generator is used.
  
  *
  
  *  Note that the stability of the sync generator
  
  *  on the GENLOCK board is *worse* than the sync
  
  *  generator on the regular DE3 board.  The GENLOCK
  
  *  version "twitches" every second or so.
  
  *
  
  *  Mode 3:  Output is locked to incoming
  
  *  NTSC composite video picture
  
  *  for sync and chroma (on "REM IN" connector).
  
  *  Color subcarrier is phase and amplitude locked to
  
  *  incomming color burst.
  
  *  The blue LSB has no effect on video overlay.
  
  *
  
  *  Note that the generated composite NTSC output
  
  *  (on "VID OUT" connector) is often a problem,
  
  *  since it has a DC offset of +0.3V to the base
  
  *  of the sync pulse, while other studio eqiupment
  
  *  often expects the blanking level to be at
  
  *  exactly 0.0V, with sync at -0.3V.
  
  *  In this case, the black levels are ruined.
  
  *  Also, the inboard encoder chip isn't very good.
  
  *  Therefore, it is necessary to use an outboard
  
  *  RS-170 to NTSC encoder to get useful results.
  
  */

Maybe it defaults to syncing to an external source and I need to tell it explicitly to use internal sync. I guess I'll have to load the compilers and check out the 4Dgifts. Right now I just (from a serial connection) set the resolution to PAL, and ran stopgfx; startgfx so the graphics console is at the login prompt.

AFAIK, CG2 and CG3 are the same, only CG2 is NTSC and CG3 is PAL.

_________________
Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet

It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service:

(2x)

In the museum : almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Wanted : GM1 board for Professional Series GT graphics (030-0076-003, 030-0076-004)

SGI: Video

Piranha vs. Shake Irix