Intel Core i7 - A Choice of Professionals in Video Editing

To Be honest we all don't want that our rendering times to be huge and cumbersome.That is the reason why we run behind doing researches on processors and graphics cards and ram and various computer components.
However many of us couldn't afford the workstation processors like intel core i7 Extreme or Xwnono Dual Quad Core.This is really a point of fact. A Lot of us use Sony Vegas Pro, Pinnacle Studio or Avid or Premiere Pro.This are the most frequent softwares used by people at home.
In this article we will be telling You guys about How Intel core i& boosts in video editing in realtime besides Graphics cards.We wont be talking much about Graphics cards.

Ever since Intel unveiled the Intel i7 core 965 Extreme Edition processor, it has become a dream processor for people related to multimedia industry.

If you are confused with the terms above the do not worry as the clarification is just to follow. Intel i7 Core Review undoubtedly shows that it is the fastest processor till date on earth. This processor is not for people who chat occasionally, the series is targeted to processor intensive audience.
Adobe Premiere Pro Benchmark Results

Before the New Monster was introduced in the Industry, the throne of the best processor that your money can buy belonged to Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770. But this is not the case anymore. We were highly impressed with the Intel i7 Core 965 EE with the test that we performed with Adobe Premiere Pro.

The Video file that we used for Rendering took an almost 28 seconds to complete for the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650. This task was completed by the Intel i7 Core 965 EE within 22 seconds and that impressed us, and will probably impress you too is that when i7 core is over-clocked with the unlocked multiplier (24 max.), the same file was rendered in just little close to 18 seconds. This shows a performance boost of 55% i.e. the processor was faster by 1.5 times than the “then” fastest Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650.
Adobe After Effects Benchmark Results



Video Editing Intel Core i7 Extreme

This smart piece of Industry Standard software is known to heavily depend on the CPU clock speed and its memory bandwidth. So this is definitely going to make you happy if you are a user of Premiere Pro. Intel i7 core houses the memory controller on the die itself and has replaced the Old Fashioned FSB with a new generation QPI technology which it adopted from AMD. The data transfer speed is many times faster with this QPI technology as compared to the usual FSB technology. When the i7 core 965 EE is over-clocked at 3.88 GHz, the memory bandwidth available to the cores is a whooping 45 GB/s. That is impressive and we feel that the use of this technology in conjunction with the forgotten SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading) known in the times of Intel Pentium 4 Prescott edition has paid off Intel this time.

The benchmarks conducted with After Effects gave us another surprise. The video file that took 36 second to get rendered with the Core 2 Quad Q9650, took only 21 seconds with the new i7 Core 965 EE in over-clocked mode showing us a huge performance boost of 60%. This clearly knocks out the predecessor Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650.

This monster is still in its initial period and so buying a Intel i7 Core 965 EE system will burn a deep hole into your pocket. The processor is expected to be price at 1000 USD initially and the only chipset that supports i7 core is the Intel X58 which will also set you back by another 300 USD. Another thing that you need to consider before buying is that this chipset only supports the DDR3 version of RAM and it has three or six slots for you to use. The DDR3 RAM is not available at 100 USD but be sure to check that out before buying.

Whatever the case may be, but we can definitely guarantee that you will not regret the money spent on this system. It is unlikely that some another processor will steal the Throne of Fastest Processor on Earth currently possessed by Intel i7 Core 965 EE in near future. So you can safely invest your money in this system.

UNDERWORLD - AWAKENING & LUMA'S MAGIC VFX

UNDERWORLD AWAKENING- THE FOURTH INSTALLMENT IN THE FRANCHISE HAS ALREADY A SUPER HIT AND CONSIDERED A  BLOCKBUSTER. "LUMA PICTURES" HAS TALKED ABOUT THE WAYS TO CREATE SCARY LOOKING WARE WOLVES CALLED LYCANS...





THEMAN - LYCAN  TRANSFORMATIONS HAS TOO BE PHOTOTREALISTIC.ACCORDING TO THE SUPERVISORS THE TRANSFORMATIONS HAS TO LAST 20 SECONDS SO THAT THEY HOLD UPTO CONSIDERABLE SCREEN TIME. BACK IN FXGUIDE WE SEE HOW Vincent Cirelli who worked under overall VFX supe James McQuaide saying - “That uncanny valley part can be right during the middle point of the transformation when you go from the plate into the semi-human stage. It was that stage that we wanted to make sure we nailed. The best way to nail it was to use the dataset from a human and the reflectance from a human. This is where Paul Debevec’s and ICT’s Light Stage came in.”


“Light Stage provides you with all sorts of different types of maps,” explains Cirelli. “They capture reflectance in a 360 of how a certain point would properly reflect – a reflectance normal. They give you these maps and what you need to do is figure out how to create a shader so that when a ray hits a surface on a piece of geometry, it can do a look-up as to where the light is hitting that surface normal, and the incident angle at which it is hitting it. And it retrieves that lighting information from the map – the value or the map itself, and basically display that and blend that map in.”


The Lycan modes were sculpted in  ZBRUSH and detailed in the same application.There were 2D and 3D directors chalking out the details of the model.
The design process gave Luma some precise moments to hit in terms of the look, especially for the hallway transformation. “For example,” notes Cirelli, “when the character first starts transforming, his arms are elongated and then his chest starts to pop. There’s a moment where he’s out of control and he has to brace himself against a wall, and that was a key moment for us. So we sculpt-matched one of the key poses that we got approval on. It was all about making sure our rig deformed in such a way that you get from 20% Über-werewolf to 30% to 40% to 50% – all these approved poses throughout the sequence.”

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UNDERWORLD AWAKENING VFX DEMO REEL BY LUMA PICTURES

CREATING MUTANTS IN XMEN - FIRST CLASS

WE ALL THINK OF HOW DID THE VFX SUPERVISOR AND MODELLING DESIGNERS CREATED SUCH REALISTIC LOOKING MUTANTS IN THE XMEN FRANCHISE. WELL  THE SAME QUESTION DO CAME IN MY MIND WHILE I WAS WRITING THE POST.BACK IN FXGUIDE I GOT A NEW ARTICLE TELLING ABOUT HOW THEY CREATED THE MUTANTS IN THE FRANCHISE.SO.I THOUGHT TO SHARE IT WITH ALL OF YOU.


In this article, we go in-depth on the characters and final battle with the leading effects studios on the show: Rhythm & Hues, Cinesite, Luma Pictures, Digital Domain, MPC and Weta Digital.

Rhythm & Hues, under visual effects supervisor Gregory Steele, delivered 160 shots made up of character work for Emma Frost, Angel and Mystique, as well as set extensions and environments at the Lincoln Memorial, the X-Jet hangar and a CIA facility.

 

IN ADDITION TO HER TELEPATHIC POWERS, EMMA FROST IS ABLE TO TRANSFORM INTO A PROTECTIVE DIAMOND FORM THAT CAN REPEL BULLETS. TO DEVELOP THAT POWER FOR THE SCREEN, RHYTHM WAS INVOLVED IN AN EARLY LOOK DEVELOPMENT. “THERE WAS A SMALL TEAM THAT PUT TOGETHER A TEST FOR JOHN DYSKTRA,” SAYS STEELE. “THEY USED SOME DIALOGUE AND THEN ROTO-MATED A DIAMONDESQUE LOOK. IT WAS A GOOD STARTING POINT, BUT THE LOOK DID DRASTICALLY CHANGE OVER TIME.”

ONCE INTO PRODUCTION, AND WITH JANUARY JONES CAST AS FROST, RHYTHM DEVELOPED FURTHER CONCEPT ART TO SEE WHAT WOULD READ IN DIAMOND FORM. “ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WE HAD WAS HAVING ALL THE FACETS ON THE SURFACE THAT HAD A CERTAIN THICKNESS AND SIZE, SO IT WAS HARD TO READ THE FACIAL FEATURES, EVEN IF YOU ADDED CG EYES. WE DISTILLED DOWN WHAT REALLY MADE UP HER FEATURES – HER EYES AND LIPS AND EYEBROWS AND HAIR, AND THEN WENT ABOUT BUILDING THE MODEL FROM SCRATCH IN 3D. WE WOULD FIND THAT A CERTAIN DENSITY OF FACETS WOULD GIVE A NICE SHAPE TO CERTAIN AREAS BUT THEN OVER-COMPLICATE OTHER AREAS.”

ON SET, THE STANDARD GRAY AND CHROME BALLS WERE USED TO GATHER REFERENCE, ALONG WITH A FOUR INCH CUBIC ZIRCONIA PURCHASED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE FILM TO AID IN HOW A DIAMOND SURFACE WOULD REFLECT THE SURROUNDINGS. “IT WASN’T LIKE A STANDARD EFFECTS SHOOT,” NOTES STEELE. “MATTHEW WOULD SHOOT THE WHOLE SEQUENCE FROM THE BEGINNING ALL THE WAY TO THE END, AND THEN GET DIFFERENT COVERAGE FROM DIFFERENT POSITIONS. BECAUSE FROST WAS COMING IN AND OUT OF DIAMOND FORM DURING THE SEQUENCES, WE DIDN’T HAVE THE LUXURY OF PUTTING HER IN AN MO-CAP OR TRACKING SUIT. SO WE HAD TO GRIN AND BEAR IT AND DO THE HARD CORE MATCH-MOVING WORK. WE USED WITNESS CAMERAS TO HELP US ALONG, BUT IN THE END IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO MATCH-MOVE THE PERFORMANCE.”

Artists relied on Maya to model the base geometry, with rendering in Rhythm’s proprietary Ren tool. The reflections on Frost’s surface were created both in the render and in compositing using the studio’s ICY system. “In the end,” says Steele, “it couldn’t just be a render-only solution. She just looked too messy if it was only a render, so we had to re-introduce some diffuse shading in there to show some of the shape of her. So we introduced some of the light passes into that and did it as a comp trick where we modulated the reflection/refraction that way.”

The transitions from flesh to diamond form were created in Houdini by applying a frost-like effect. “We would combine some artwork along with several mattes to show this frosting that happens,” says Steele. “We went through a bit of a design process to work out what is the effect that happens as she goes from flesh to diamond shape – was it heat based, facets flipping over or would her skin be slightly transparent and melt out? We honed in on one with frost tendrils that grow out across her body and that shifts into a diamond form, and it evolved from there.”

Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) is a character appearing in the first X-Men films, whose shapeshifting powers are just developing in First Class. “Everyone was really happy with what had been done in the past,” outlines Steele. “For this film, John Dykstra was looking to make sure we could get a real dimensionality to the effect. He didn’t want it to be compy or too morphy-looking. We really strove to do a full 3D version of the transformation as much as we could, and tried to keep it out of the 2D realm.”

 For her transformations between human form and a blue scaley mutant – achieved with physical make-up – artists tracked both performances by Lawrence and created a morph between the geometries. “We used a full Mystique digi-double skin that would blend through,” says Steele, “and have the scales flipping over with the full geometry to get the lighting and the sheen reading and have the right shadows.”

“What was interesting,” continues Steele, “was that we would shoot these things kind of old school where you would have the actress sitting there and shoot one plate of one person and the next plate of the next person and then line them up as best you can in the video tap. We still had to spend a lot of time match-moving to complete the transitions. When she’s in the bedroom, on both the A and B side Jennifer Lawrence would try and give as close as the same performance as she could, but there’s always a lot of adjustment needed to get them into one place. We would leverage off one performance and pull that into the other one in 3D.”

Using its proprietary animation software, Voodoo, for the scales, many of the transitions were created by a single rigging supervisor. “We had a bunch of scale geometry placed in all the right places that would line up with the make-up set-up and we animated them to come out of the skin and lie down,” says Steele. “We also had to transition the hair, which on the other films they didn’t always need to do – they could do a color wipe. On this one we had Jennifer’s long hair, so we used the approach we took with the skin for the hair. The scales would come up through the hair and then lie down and create a new surface which would be the new hair. Also, instead of the scales coming up and lying down and then transitioning, we tried to take some of the plate information. As the scales lie down in their last 10 to 15 per cent of their lifespan we would introduce some of the plate color as it moved into position.”

 For Angel (Zoë Kravitz), who could grow dragonfly-like wings from a tattoo on her body, Rhythm referenced production concept art and then sculpted wings in ZBrush. The tattoo proved challenging, since it required four hours of application time and two hours to remove on set. “If the tattoo was on for a sequence,” recalls Steele, “we either had to remove it later or add it back in. We were tracking just skin with only a few tracking marks on her. In ICY, we took some of the texture maps that we had done for her digi-double and put those on the match-moves of the character in a digital environment and rendered those out and compositing it all in one step.”

A particularly complicated scene included the emergence of Shaw’s submarine from the water, pulled out by Erik Lensherr’s magnetic powers. “The hardest part of that shot was scale,” recalled Williams. “One of the first things you do is depart from reality in the way you want to stage the action. For example, they wanted the sub to come out of the water really fast and the problem is that you have an animator animate it and you get something looking really cool moving fast. But then you look at the numbers and it’s moving 60 or 70 miles an hour backwards and its props are kicking water in a backwards direction, so you have to put thrust coming off the props.”

“Something at the scale with that much water really wants to do exotic things with the physics of water. If you turn on all the proper bells and whistles and everything, it starts to do amazingly energetic things – you get these massive explosions in the water with water being kicked up hundreds of feet in the air. If you move something that big and that fast in the water without any kind of dampening, that’s what will happen. So you get into this whole delicate balancing game of bending the physics of the situation so that it still looks real but it’s not falling apart like it would at those kinds of forces.”

Various simulations worked together to form the layers of water, bubbles and foam. “When it breaches the water it starts to create foam on the surface of the water,” says Williams, “which then slides along the surface of the water based off the motion of the actual water itself. As the props splash onto the water, you have another sim that’s doing little splashes. Then there’s another sim just doing the aeration and the bubbles underneath the water, as it starts to get close to the surface of the water you allow cavitation to occur – pulling little pockets of air out of the water and creating little bubbles that want to float around for a second. As the underwater bubbles get closer to the surface, they actually turn to surface foam. It’s this nice giant integrated family of effects that go into creating the end result.”

 The final missile launch – thwarted by Lensherr who then turns the missiles on the Soviet and US navies – allowed Weta to undertake some significant research into advanced weaponry. “We got to be completely nerdy fan boys and go off and research lots of Russian and U.S. military hardware,” says Williams. “The Americans make these missiles that are 12 feet long, like a Tomahawk or a Harpoon. The Russians make these monstrous missiles – about the size of a school bus! The problem we ran into there is that we had this flight of missiles coming in towards the beach and initially it felt too close to camera, but actually it was about a 100 yards away because it was just enormous. So we had to keep that in the back of our heads in terms of the relative sizes and create a faux sense of perspective.”

A first taste of Shaw’s power comes when he absorbs the explosion of a grenade and uses it to kill a government informant. “That was a real head-scratcher,” recalls Kalaitzidis. “We were trying to design the character and giving him multiple hands and arms. Is there one arm that fans out? Is it high frequency? In the end, the character was entirely CG – his face, his sunglasses, his hair, his hands. The explosion was tricky because we didn’t have any reference of someone holding a grenade and it exploding – was it slow-motion? No, it was more or less real time how he absorbed this grenade. We went with the thought that the grenade energy was this zero gravity explosion that happened – he’s absorbing it and it’s going into his skin and up his sleeves. The fire and absorption was done in Houdini. We had a lot of rigging techniques for the animation of the multiple arms and multiple heads. There were different models of the heads we used that were introduced into the animation for the horror effect. ”
At a later point Shaw destroys an atrium, an environment augmented by DD with fully CG explosions, debris and fire. “Our atrium explosions were led by effects animation supervisor Brian Gazdik,” says Kalaitzidis. “We used Houdini to break things and add fire on top of that. It included desks, and ceilings and windows and even typewriters on the desks. In the past we’d use real pyro elements but I felt like this was one of the shows where we didn’t need to do that for CG fire. And not only did we have CG fire but all the characters shooting at Shaw from the top of the atrium were all CG and mo-capped.”


After attempting to draw the nuclear power of the submarine, Shaw is confronted by Lensherr in a ‘mirror room’, an environment shot completely against greenscreen. Once filmed, DD assembled some rough post-viz to help establish the key beats and rudimentary, but multiple, reflections. “That was approved by John Dykstra and then we came up with a look-dev for the mirror room,” says Kalaitzidis. “We used reference from Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, in the mirror maze. That showed the imperfections and the hues and mutual density that we needed to add in.”
Witness-cam footage of Shaw and Lensherr, again, was used to copy their performances via roto-mation. “Using this animation,” explains Kalaitzidis, “we reflected CG doubles into the mirrors themselves. They’re fighting each other and there’s breaking glass which was done with Maya and Houdini, and then composited in Nuke.”


SOURCE-FXGUIDE

PIXAR'S CARS 2 VFX BREAKDOWN AND ANIMATION PROGRESSION

FIDO WORK ON BEHIND THE SCENES IN "ATTACK THE BLOCK"

TRAIN CRASH IN SUPER 8 - VFX BREAKDOWN

IN THIS VIDEO DENNIS MURREN AND PAUL KAVANAGH TALKS ABOUT THE TRAIN CRASH AND MANY OTHER VFX SHOTS USED IN MOVIE..CHECK IT OUT..

SOURCE - YOUTUBE.COM/THE DAILY

CONNAN THE BARBARIAN VFX BREAKDOWN BY MILLENIUM STUDIOS

CHECK OUT SOME REAL COMPOSITING OF THE MOVIE CONNAN THE BARBARIAN.ITS A REMAKE OF THE ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER STARRER CONNANA THE BARBARIAN.

VFX Compositing Demo Reel Esteban Olide from esteban olide on Vimeo.