Community
Smoke Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Smoke Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Smoke topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Smoke 2015 on mavericks 10.9.2

27 REPLIES 27
Reply
Message 1 of 28
truss7
2133 Views, 27 Replies

Smoke 2015 on mavericks 10.9.2

Anyone else experiencing gradual performance degradation over time. Fine on start up, running like a dog within 1/2 hour. Feels just like 2013 did under mavericks. Running 2015 on non-mavericks 10.8.5 identical imac and all is fine...

 

OSX 10.9.2 imac i7 3.4Ghz GTX 680MX 2GB, 32GB RAM

27 REPLIES 27
Message 21 of 28
A_Over_B
in reply to: ksirul

ksirul

$0.02

 

For a while it probably seemed like you were sputnik - out there all alone, doing something unusual, heeding some advice, ignoring others and you got to speed around the world seeing things from a new viewpoint.

Now it feels like you're burning up on re-entry and you're somewhat crestfallen that things haven't been quite as predictable as you'd hoped.

 

You're a trailblazer.

 

The flame software environment was started by trailblazers.

 

These area forums are kind of interesting as a sounding board but the really interesting stuff happens between you and the support team at autodesk.

 

They're extraordinarily resourceful and clever and will often help you look at things from a different perspective, sometimes getting you right back on course and sometimes not.

 

It's impossible outside of the hush-hush environment of apple to know what the fluff they're going to do with software, hardware, firmware, not to mention the calculated obsolescence.

 

To that end I would suggest that it's almost impossible to make software that fully integrates with apple's technology offerings.

 

When you crack open your DS it will be interesting to see where it exceeds your expectations and where it still falls short.

 

When you then re-visit Smoke it will be interesting to properly compare and contrast the differences.

 

It will also be interesting to see the amazing potential of the apple equipment that you just acquired.

 

Painful and glib as it sounds, don't give up just yet.

 

Autodesk are proving that once they understand the technology offerings in the field, they are more than capable of writing extremely good code that almost, fully exploits everything that you bought.

 

I'm running flame assist pretty happily on this two year old macbook pro and have just rebuilt my 4 year old mac pro so that I can try to properly exploit this 4 year old red rocket paperweight that I have.

 

It's bitchin'

 

Better than when I bought the thing.

 

Pretty astonishing to a jaded old fart like me.

 

Oh and resurrecting the Mac Pro? Wouldn't you know it, my 10.7 and 10.8 USB sticks have disappeared so I had to move that 4 year old hardware to Mavericks 10.9.4. I thought it would be a disaster - so far no disaster...

 

I'm pushing a 84 minute project through it right now.

No heavy work yet, just conforming, transcoding, publishing, setting up batches for the effects software.

Oh and when backburner failed to write out some files during a 4K publish from R3D, I opened the web interface fro backburner and got the offending tasks to restart, opened the software again and the clips were there on the timeline.

 

Not as fast as the autodesk constructed HP z820 by any stretch of the imagination, but useable and way better than any alternative that I've tried.

 

Oh I know, flame assist and smoke are different'ish these days but I fail to believe that they're worlds apart.

It's early days and you're an early adopter.

It's bound to be a bumpy road for a while.

 

Message 22 of 28
ksirul
in reply to: A_Over_B

Believe me, I really hope these issues get worked out soon. .   DS won't work forever.  For now, it is useable and Smoke is not.  Regardless of Mavericks, the other bug that is a killer for me is the CTL 1 preview not working in text edit.  There is no way for me to reference text on a ref video or background video when in the text editor.  A workflow killer for sure. I was hoping that this experience wouldn't be so pioneering.  I really needed a working system to pick up my busy schedule when DS was done.  I was told that 2015 would work with Mavericks when released....not somewhat work, but work.  That is why I went this direction.  As long as this was supposed to work, there was no need for me to go the Linux/Flame (at the time, Smoke Advanced) route.  The lack of Sapphire was a bit of a disappointment as well, although, in lieu of many Sapphire FX, I can use the native CFX tools.  The recent discussions of AD letting Smoke operability drift away has also been a concern for me and certainly an unexpected bit of feedback from users.  I'm glad that support found the RAM issues but I'm just hoping they will have a solution soon.

Message 23 of 28
sidewalksurfer
in reply to: A_Over_B

Hi A_over_B

 

despite your waxing poetic about adks products, they have shipped a product that doesn't work in a production environment.  No mention of the problem in the FKBL released with today's service pack means a fix is a long way off....  

 

so much potential....  so useless.... 

 

best,

tim

SUSPECT

Message 24 of 28
A_Over_B
in reply to: sidewalksurfer

Tim

 

You are right about YOUR production environment but I've got an ~85 minute sequence with 1080 indiivdual batch setups published here on a 4 year old mac pro.

I'm pretty happy about that - it's been a good decade that I've been thinking about such a thing and some very smart people have realised the situation for me.

The batch setups mean that I can move to my flame or flare and write out new files that update the timeline on the mac pro.

All the published image files are in a format that most other software can understand.

There is source tape information, timecode, flame friendly shot names, batch snapshots, an independent batch setup for each segment of the timeline that automatically updates with each new version, in fact, a proper paper trail of all events. (all about to go to shotgun for online tracking)

 

All working on 4 year old gear, running mavericks, running flame assist 2015.

 

It's an indie film so you're right - it's not proper production but it's working for me.

Message 25 of 28
A_Over_B
in reply to: A_Over_B

A postscript to all of that, as one of the unwashed & unloved, I'm looking forward to the day when I can use this experience to somehow qualify to apply for a proper job in a proper production environment.

God knows I could do with an income & it would be great way to clear out my hat closet...

😃

Message 26 of 28
Boutchie
in reply to: Robert.Adam

Hi Robert,
we got the 2015 for about 6 months now
1 Mac Pro Trashcan, bugging on the D700, 1 on an late 2013 iMac i5, slowing every second.
The bug for the D700 we know an can work arround, the iMac not. Did a test with some 50 nodes in action, 1 view up. Just moving the nodes or panning around makes the whole system freez for 30sec to 5 mins. Maybe is the mavericks maybe not. But I did not have the time to downgrade the OS.
Happy I still got my 2013 on a 2009Macpro
and a 2013 on a 2012 iMac.
Message 27 of 28
videofxguy
in reply to: truss7

I was just about to upgrade my 2009 power mac to Mavericks (long story... so I could download x code, which is only available in the app store as a "10.9.x" app... -- Long story short I was attempting to install software which requires x-code, etc. - to overclock my graphics card, a gtx780 "overclockable"... which seems to mean that it can be "overclocked" but does not come that way.  And to do it, because I need x-code, ---> Mavericks.  Is there a previous version of x-code perhaps that is 10.8 compatible, he wondered out loud...(?)

 

But - now from what I am reading here, it seems that there are serious Mavericks issues.  So my question:  should I sit tight for now and avoid Mavericks? - I would love to know the general consensus   Do people on 10.8 have the same bugs that I have read mentioned here which are supposedly mavericks only bugs?  Does it work fine on the trash can mac?  (Which I believe is only available with Mavericks)  Please weigh in.  THANKS.  

 

THE CURRENT FLYfx SETUP:  Early 2009, 4,1 power mac 8-core, 40 gb ram, 4.5 terabyte internal raid 0 on three 1.5 black caviar drives, 480gb ssd system drive, 10.8, nvidia gtx780 graphics overclockable card, running Flame Assist 2015.1.1, Adobe CC, Mocha Pro.  

 

ralph scaglione

FLYfx

Message 28 of 28
A_Over_B
in reply to: videofxguy

Ralph

 

I ran flame assist on a 2012 Macbook Pro with 10.8 - worked great - no surprises.

I ran flame assist on a Mac Pro 4.1 with 10.9.4 (I think) - worked great - no surprises.

Bugs? - yep.

Workarounds? - yep.

Is it better than all previous cuts? - yep - for me at least.

 

Why have two OS's for the mac? - RedRocket Card runs better in the MacPro than in a thunderbolt enclosure.

 

Why Mavericks on the Mac Pro? - couldn't find my other system software installers.

 

Why 10.8 on the Macbook Pro? - just haven't updated it because flame assist is just chugging along.

 

My partner installed his Adobe Software on the Macbook Pro - no drama - everything worked - no-one has fired any of that up in 40 something days but it probably still works just fine.

I don't have anything of note on the Mac Pro except flame assist 2015 and maya 2015 - both work fine.

Everybody else's mileage varies.

The big difference for me might be the Quadro4800FX Mac as opposed to the nvidia card that you have.

 

I ended up running the software mostly on the Macbook Pro because it's portable and I have mountains of media on thunderbolt arrays.

Otherwise the Mac Pro would have been the host - there's little difference in it for me - I don't have the new dustbin mac so I can't say.

 

BTW - A nice cheap upgrade for your mac pro:

Buy a PCIe SSD boot drive - there is one that has a couple eSATA ports as well as the SSD - super cheap - very fast - cheaply expandable.

Replace all the four bays in the mac pro with cheap SATA III 6Gb/s drives.

Rip out the DVD drive.

Stuff another two SATA III 6Gb/s drives in there.

Stripe all of those together.

My Mac Pro definitely experienced a new lease of life.

 

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Autodesk Design & Make Report