Foundry STORM - we're online [Archive]

View Full Version : Foundry STORM - we're online

Richard Shackleton

10-01-2010, 08:00 AM

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all of the enthusiasm, feedback and questions so far - and welcome to the STORM section of the REDUSER.net forum!

We are working hard to get the first version of STORM ready for beta. Please do keep providing thoughts and questions through this forum (we're listening) and keep checking in on http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/storm/ for product news updates.

Richard

Jon B.

10-01-2010, 08:02 AM

Perfect!

Martin Weiss

10-01-2010, 08:20 AM

Thanks. V. excited about this.

There've been some rumors about storm becoming a NLE system. Can you comment?

Simon Blackledge

10-01-2010, 08:55 AM

Whoop! :)

Richard Shackleton

10-01-2010, 08:55 AM

Hi Martin,

In the first instance, STORM aims to provide a familiar non-linear editing approach of a basic nature - suitable for experimenting with initial editorial intent (for example timing of shots, short-form cut-based sequences) and supporting conform of an edit performed externally in FCP (and later other editorially focused apps).

So, you will have a source and record monitor, multiple tracks and familiar trimming tools, but not the finesse of the UI or complete integration you would expect from something targeted at the editorial process proper.

As with many areas of STORM, we're starting basic but building a strong foundation - we're certainly excited and planning the potential of growing the editorial focus.

Thanks. V. excited about this.

There've been some rumors about storm becoming a NLE system. Can you comment?

Jody Neckles

10-01-2010, 08:58 AM

Nice to see you guys in Reduser! Really excited you guys are working with RED and looking forward to the release of Storm.

Curran Giddens

10-01-2010, 09:33 AM

In the first instance, STORM aims to provide a familiar non-linear editing approach of a basic nature - suitable for experimenting with initial editorial intent (for example timing of shots, short-form cut-based sequences) and supporting conform of an edit performed externally in FCP (and later other editorially focused apps).

I'm more interested in the conform capabilities of Storm than the actual editing.

You know what would be really useful is a feature like Automatic Duck / Clipfinder. I want to be able to take a FCP timeline edited in ProRes, QT proxies, or "Native" L&T and replace it with .R3D. Then send to Premiere or Avid EDL. That would be awesome!

Nick Shaw

10-01-2010, 09:38 AM

I want to be able to take a FCP timeline edited in ProRes, QT proxies, or "Native" L&T and replace it with .R3D. Then send to Premiere or Avid EDL.

In the current alpha version you can already do the first half of that. Currently you then grade and render in STORM and send back to FCP.

Curran Giddens

10-01-2010, 09:43 AM

I don't want to go back to FCP is the problem. I'm done with it. This is for when someone brings a project that was edited in FCP and I tell them: "FCP sucks for Red footage compared to Adobe, let's switch to Premiere."

Nick Shaw

10-01-2010, 09:48 AM

Curran Giddens

10-01-2010, 09:53 AM

Excellent! I don't even need it to show up on the timeline in Storm. Just import FCP EDL --- replace .mov with .R3D --- and then export Avid or Premiere EDL.

Ian Laurie

10-01-2010, 10:05 AM

Keylight. It would be AWESOME to be able to key the footage in something that allows the flexibility of the R3D media and would let you grade the 2 shots on top of eachother for colour matching, then export them seperately.

Jim Geduldick

10-01-2010, 10:15 AM

Ian Laurie

10-01-2010, 11:26 AM

Thank You!

Humberto Rivera

10-01-2010, 11:49 AM

A suggestion, if R3d files could work directly with the da Vinci Resolve, using the Unix System in a direct 16 GPUs, it would be the Ultimate. Just a thought.

Humberto Rivera

andrewhake

10-01-2010, 01:36 PM

There are already some pretty good tools out there, and maybe Storm already addresses this, but a full-on dedicated ingest and archive system built right into Storm would be fantastic. Especially if you guys are working this closely with RED, and could integrate perfectly with RED Station and anything else they have coming down the pipe.

And once more, I will throw my hat in the "I want storm to replace my NLE completely" ring, just to let it be known. You are already on the right track, any good editing system should also be a great ingest, file management, workflow, and creative tool first and foremost.

As others have mentioned, a system that could build a direct link to Nuke and AE would be fantastic, and more new creative ways to look at and analyze footage would be great as well.

Tim Lüdin

10-01-2010, 03:04 PM

You guys make me very happy. Storm will catch us REDusers by storm I guess.
If that thing will work as promoted, you will have a huge hit.
Put some decent editing stuff in it and we wont use Final Cut for long now.
At least for comercials.

Damn, I've been looking for such a tool since the first RED ciné.
Bring it on guys.

Thanks
Tim

Peter Majtan

10-01-2010, 11:49 PM

Tim - Storm concept was born from and the the entire R&D process is driven by us - RED users. This is why the feedback we got at IBC was so tremendous. The Foundry lives by the same vision as Jim's RED - listen to Your customer and design products that the customer wants to use. This is also why it is important for all of us to provide constructive feedback. Just as RED, The Foundry listens...

:devil: Peter

shashbugu

10-02-2010, 04:16 PM

Just in case you guys at the foundry are out of the loop, NO ONE IS EDITING RED FOOTAGE TODAY IN FCP. Even the guy who invented Clipfinder has abandoned ship to Premiere and Smoke. With the level of technological expertise exuding from the Foundry, you might as well concentrate on the whole Red post workflow, cut, composite, color, conform, storm. you have the technology, the tools, plugins and know how. for everything you cant implement into the application right now make sure your plugin and scripting APi is open for it. I don't work at the foundry, but who ever came up with the pricing for Storm needs to rethink it. $375 is tooo low for a specialty software that works with only R3D to begin with. $750-$995 will make more sense to keep the R&D focused on making this a revolutionary application. Storm and Nuke together will ease up the current, 5 application conundrum we are faced with right now, edit>>clipfinder>>to RCX>>>>PPro CS5>>> to AE CS5/NUKE/COMPOSITOR,>>>>DAVINCI/SPEEDGRADE/BASELIGHT///>>>>>TO SCRATCH/SMOKE/DS/ conform etc etc. Tooo much time and money involved. Currently Smoke/Myst/DS are the go to systems.

MAKE SURE STORM IS A FULL BLOWN EDITING, COLOR AND CONFORM APP. for all other things there are AE/NUKE/PHOTOSHOP/PROTOOLS?LOGIC?AUDITION ETC ETC

Well CS5 is thanks to some Foundry plugins is currently kicking ass. We await Storm patiently

Peter Majtan

10-02-2010, 06:07 PM

Limiting the STORM to R3D is what makes it easier to develop and therefore the lower cost. Other format cameras have a plenty of good workflows to choose from, but there is a huge gap in the market for the RED workflow. As many have said - there are plenty of SW doing parts of the workflow, but there's no app covering the whole workflow from start to finish (as far as image is concern). I was also surprised when I have first heard the price before IBC, but this was rather a pleasant surprise. The idea is that at this price point there really is no excuse to not to have it for anyone owning RED or working with R3D media. The more people adopt one tool, the more it can be used to standardize the workflow, while keeping it flexible to adopt to anyone's specific needs...

In my honest opinion Storm will become the benchmark by which all other workflow tools will be judged...

:devil: Peter

shashbugu

10-02-2010, 06:13 PM

Zach Gray

10-02-2010, 07:03 PM

Really excited about the possibility of a Foundry NLE. I'm beginning to fear that FCP is going to eventually go the way of shake. I don't really like the Avid approach, and Adobe stuff tends to be a bit bloated and unfocused.

The thing I love about Nuke, Maya, XSI, Houdini is that those products have a really well thought out and extensible framework. You are presented with a predictable core set of functionality, and they you can build and build and build on that. Granted, in some cases, it's like taking a 747 to a grocery store, but the cool thing about these products is that they are flexible enough to feel quick and nimble if that is what you need. The trick about apps in this style, is that you need to acquire deep understanding of how the work to do complex work. Definitely not a preset mindset. But master the framework and you can do it all. There's a reason that the almost every studio feature animation shop aside from PDI and Pixar have built their tools around Maya.

Speaking of which, there are some approaches in Maya that would translate really well to a NLE. There is a single viewport to interact with your content, but the menu sets change based on your task - modeling, animation, effects, etc. I could see a NLE benefiting from this concept. Sets for ingest, tagging, editorial, color, and conform, all tied into a common core.

Anyway, looking forward to it.

J Davis

10-02-2010, 07:37 PM

I'm excited for STORM and for what it will do for RED in facilitating easy post pipelines.

An important piece of information concerning STORM that should be included in this thread and as far as I know it has not yet been mentioned.
And this piece of info is killer for all of us scarlet hopefuls who cannot afford a rocket

...Storm is being optimized for use without RED Rocket as well ... but even without it Storm will work real-time - especially with 3K RAW data. As it is now the Storm is screaming fast on my MBP without RR - and that is with 4K RAW data. One of my favorite things to do during IBC was when people got amazed how fluid the Storm was even with tasks like range-limited color-correction on the Mac Pro with RR, I would pull out my MBP and show them the exact same clip with the exact same effects and blow them away even further with the performance on the MBP without RR, which was of course real-time...

here
http://www.scarletuser.com/showpost.php?p=79012&postcount=49

Chris Kenny

10-02-2010, 10:31 PM

As far as I can tell, current Mac Pros should be able to handle half-res decodes from 4K in real-time, with well-optimized software. SCRATCH was doing it with tricked out high-end PCs in the pre-Rocket days, and today's Mac Pros have to be faster than the boxes they had access to then.

Indeed, there are people over on the Creative Cow DaVinci forum reporting that on 12-core Mac Pros, Resolve will do "half-res good" playback of 4K footage in real-time. And Resolve is doing that with grades applied, and outputting via a Decklink card, which requires it to move all of those frames across the system bus at least twice (from RAM to the GPU, and then from the GPU to the Decklink). Straight playback to a screen directly connected to a GPU (a regular monitor hooked up via DVI or DisplayPort, that is) should be easier.

It seems like Red is working pretty closely with the STORM team, so I suspect they'll have the access they need to optimize performance effectively.

Ian Laurie

10-02-2010, 11:56 PM

roryhinds

10-03-2010, 12:10 AM

I think Storm is going to really send shivers down Scratch's spin
The foundry know what they are doing and at Storm's price point RED owners can finally have a solid R3D tool that doesn't cost a fortune, plus its runs on MAC :-)

Nook Kim

10-03-2010, 04:11 AM

Even the guy who invented Clipfinder has abandoned ship to Premiere and Smoke.

Says who?

Chris Parker

10-03-2010, 05:56 AM

The more support for AVID workflow the better in my world. Seeing less and less final cut used on projects I am part of these days. Glad to see the rennaissamce of AVID happening. Hope Storm jumps on board.

Chris Kenny

10-03-2010, 08:52 AM

Ahem.. Some of us are Actually editing RED footage in FCP. And i think you need to be careful about telling these people how to run their business... I think they may have a bit more experience in that area than you are giving them credit for.

Yup. We're doing dailies and post on another indie feature that starts shooting today -- they're cutting in Final Cut, like the last four indie features we've been involved with over the last few months, and about 90% of the Red projects we come into contact with in general. The Social Network was cut from ProRes transcodes in Final Cut. I think it just might actually be a viable workflow.

I'm really not entirely sure why people are so obsessed with e.g. the fact that Media Composer has R3D support now. The native workflow through AMA is very new, and is not exactly bulletproof yet. Anyway, Media Composer's Rocket support at the moment only works for transcode/rendering, not playback. Guess what? As of a couple of days ago you have nearly the same capability cutting from QT proxies in Final Cut and then sending to Color (which is now Rocket-accellerated) for output -- except that with that approach, you get access to much more powerful color correction tools along the way.

But in my experience, most cutting of Red material on Avid is still being done via DNxHD transcodes, and I imagine people will continue to cut from ProRes in Final Cut for the time being as well. Working with a format optimized for editing just makes things run more smoothy, and relieves editors -- who are supposed to be creative talent, when you get right down to it, and often aren't Red workflow experts -- from having to worry about a lot of technical considerations

I think some people in this forum are a little too obsessed with the technical capabilities of NLEs, when in the real world, editors mostly cut on what they're comfortable with, rather than choosing an NLE based on what codecs it supports. The truth is, for projects requiring maximum image fidelity, there's usually an offline/online workflow anyway, and technical considerations like native R3D access aren't an issue with the NLE at all. They only come into play with the tools used for the online edit; tools like Resolve, SCRATCH, hopefully soon STORM. Meanwhile, for projects that don't have requirements quite as demanding, it's often fine to just finish from ProRes or DNxHD transcodes right from the NLE timeline, so native R3D access isn't really an issue there either.

STORM seems to be targeted very cleverly. It can re-conform from Final Cut, so it can be used as part of bringing a project online after the offline edit is completed. But it can also send metadata/timelines out to Final Cut, so it can be used as a tool for working with Red footage before it gets transcoded; for tagging/organizing footage on set, and for prepping footage for an offline edit. Those are precisely the two places where you really want native R3D support, and as far as I'm aware, STORM is the first tool seriously supporting both pre-offline and post-offline workflow tasks in a single software package.

Gunleik Groven

10-03-2010, 09:10 AM

Can't wait to dive into Storm when given a chance...

J Davis

10-03-2010, 11:12 AM

Hi Richard, Jim Geduldick or Peter,

since Peter has demonstrated that its easy to cut, key and cc r3d's on Storm without a rocket then I would plan to complete edit and cc with storm then pay someone (or post house) with a rocket to do the debayer for final delivery. But in the editing process, often I want a lower res intermediate export of the entire project for viewing away from the edit environment. For example a 1280px width prores at reduced quality or quarter res debayer. Can storm handle that without a rocket?

Sidney L. Plaut

10-03-2010, 11:33 AM

I'm more interested in the conform capabilities of Storm than the actual editing.

You know what would be really useful is a feature like Automatic Duck / Clipfinder. I want to be able to take a FCP timeline edited in ProRes, QT proxies, or "Native" L&T and replace it with .R3D. Then send to Premiere or Avid EDL. That would be awesome!

OMG that could be utterly fantastic!

Richard Shackleton

10-04-2010, 03:43 AM

If I'm understanding your requirement correctly, yes, you will be able to deliver intermediate exports from STORM without a Rocket.

Richard

Hi Richard, Jim Geduldick or Peter,

since Peter has demonstrated that its easy to cut, key and cc r3d's on Storm without a rocket then I would plan to complete edit and cc with storm then pay someone (or post house) with a rocket to do the debayer for final delivery. But in the editing process, often I want a lower res intermediate export of the entire project for viewing away from the edit environment. For example a 1280px width prores at reduced quality or quarter res debayer. Can storm handle that without a rocket?

J Davis

10-07-2010, 01:58 AM

One other question. If I want to check color with AJA express. Is that possible? Or is that red rocket only?

Kaku Ito

10-08-2010, 06:25 PM

I have a suggestion. Regarding to video output from Storm, it would be nice if you can include monitor calibration scheme within Storm, then don't have to be concerned about getting the accelerated video out through video I/O cards. So GPU out to HDMI or DVI can be trusted. Video Display like TVLogic has DVI input with parameters with RGB gain and bias (one of the decent Mitsubishi LCD does, too) to control RGB balance through out the whole range, that makes it better than normal Eyeone calibration for serious grading.

Another information, TVLogic OLED 15 display is seriously good. So, say if you have Mac Book Pro connected to OLED 15, say you have RR with PCI express expansion chassis, you are set.

Richard Shackleton

10-09-2010, 01:40 PM

Tim Hole

10-09-2010, 02:28 PM

Are we looking at a Windows version before the free period finishes in new year or is it going to be a windowless period?

Petri Teittinen

10-09-2010, 03:24 PM

Are we looking at a Windows version before the free period finishes in new year or is it going to be a windowless period?
^what he said.

J Davis

10-09-2010, 06:44 PM

Not possible at the moment. We're thinking around AJA, Blackmagic, Rocket and GPU. We'll be interested in what monitoring solutions people feel are suitable in which situations, given the various price, performance, and implementation trade-offs.

Richard

The more I think about this the more I realize that having color correction tools for r3d while in the edit phase (as amazing as it is) is pointless unless we can monitor correctly.

Without correct monitoring, the entire timeline must be moved again to a system that can ie. in that situation STORM will not be a finishing tool.
I have a feeling that you do want STORM to be a finishing tool as well as edit.

All the pieces are there - especially as the source media is RAW. Considering many apple laptops are shipping without PCIe the AJA express solution looks good.
Looking forward to seeing what direction this turns to.

Tom Turley

10-11-2010, 08:22 AM

Hopeful questions...

1) Say we're shooting multiple cameras in mixed formats (eg, I get a lot of Red shoots with EX1/EX3/7D/5Ds as extra cameras) - can I get them into Storm easily and get them on the same timeline, and grade (with a more limited set of tools, obviously)??

2) There also seems to be mention on the website of using Storm to run automated backups of footage:- Please tell me these can use checksums? And that, again, it will talk with other camera footage??

Loving the idea, loving the look of the GUI, and loving having scopes. Very excited.

Tom Turley
---------------------
tom@filmtom.com
www.filmtom.com

Chris Steele

10-11-2010, 08:54 AM

1) Say we're shooting multiple cameras in mixed formats (eg, I get a lot of Red shoots with EX1/EX3/7D/5Ds as extra cameras) - can I get them into Storm easily and get them on the same timeline, and grade (with a more limited set of tools, obviously)??

We expect to support other cameras over time. Each camera may need its own special "camera effect" like the RED one now. Once the media is in you can use any effect on it except a camera effect from a different type of media. So you could not use the RED effect on 5D material, but there are plenty of others.

2) There also seems to be mention on the website of using Storm to run automated backups of footage:- Please tell me these can use checksums? And that, again, it will talk with other camera footage??

Subject of a lot of discussion internally. We know how important this feature is, but we really don't want to release it half baked, so no backup in the Nov release.

Loving the idea, loving the look of the GUI, and loving having scopes. Very excited.

Jimmy, our STORMing product designer is going to love you for that!

Ryan E. Walters

10-11-2010, 09:12 AM

In response to Backup / archive / Checksums:

Subject of a lot of discussion internally. We know how important this feature is, but we really don't want to release it half baked, so no backup in the Nov release.

+1 - As awesome as Storm looks like it is going to be, I would love the ability to stay in one app to do what Storm is doing and backup footage in the background.

What would be brilliant, would be to have Storm back up the footage to two locations, and then add the footage to the bin as soon as the second copy of footage was done being verified. Just a thought - keep up the great work, I'm looking forward to November.

KETCH ROSSi

10-11-2010, 09:18 AM

Juts a Tough, but some one might just want to FIX the LINK on the Advertisement Banner here on Reduser, since when you click on it it just does not work.. just a tough ;)

Following the progress anxiously btw, can't wait to get it installed in my machines and start learning it together with my DIT's.

Lewis-M Soucy

10-11-2010, 09:49 AM

This is going to be huge! There's a huge buzz over Storm since the IBC prez... Can't wait...

Chris Steele

10-11-2010, 10:06 AM

Juts a Tough, but some one might just want to FIX the LINK on the Advertisement Banner here on Reduser, since when you click on it it just does not work.. just a tough ;)

Oops! Thanks for that Ketch.

Luis Ortiz

10-11-2010, 10:19 AM

Any chance that Storm could be used with Matrox MXO for monitoring?

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mac/mxo/

Kaku Ito

10-11-2010, 10:27 AM

Any chance that Storm could be used with Matrox MXO for monitoring?

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mac/mxo/

Luis,

It should work up to 1920 x 1200 if you don't mind 8bit. I was going to try it but I realized all of my MXOs were out for demo.

Luis Ortiz

10-11-2010, 10:32 AM

Luis,

It should work up to 1920 x 1200 if you don't mind 8bit. I was going to try it but I realized all of my MXOs were out for demo.

Thanks.

Bruce Ingram

10-11-2010, 12:12 PM

*sigh* I would punch a stranger to test Storm out. Well, here's to waiting until next year.

PaulClements

10-11-2010, 12:56 PM

*sigh* I would punch a stranger to test Storm out. Well, here's to waiting until next year.
Hi Bruce,

You will be able to download and use Storm free of charge from November 1st till February next year. So you only have to wait 3 weeks... No punching strangers please :)

Paul

David Rasberry

10-11-2010, 01:44 PM

Hi Bruce,

You will be able to download and use Storm free of charge from November 1st till February next year. So you only have to wait 3 weeks... No punching strangers please :)

Paul

I'm assuming that will be only the Mac version?

Bruce Ingram

10-11-2010, 05:12 PM

Hi Bruce,

You will be able to download and use Storm free of charge from November 1st till February next year. So you only have to wait 3 weeks... No punching strangers please :)

Paul

Yay, not soon enough for our next big shoot, but better than I was hoping. :boxing_smiley:

Nik Skjøth

10-12-2010, 03:32 AM

I to am exited about storm, and I havn't even tried to work with red footage yet.

What I hope for the most is that storm will develop into a multiformat do it all system. Just as premiere pro, but on a higher level. Proper colorgrading sollution, and red raw handling.

I believe that integration of other codecs will be key like others have metioned. It will be to limiting if you were unable to intercut R3D files with XDCAM or DSLR footage.

And . Just out of couriosity. How will storm handle the mp4 files from the proxy module?

I plan to use the proxy module as my primary recording module, for any doc/event/run n gun projects. And I just need a reason to kick premiere pro out of my workflow.

Don't get me wrong, I like premiere. But it's lacking high end support, such as. Grading Control Surface and propper realtime histograms, and waveform monitors.
I was so happy to see the integration of those tools. It's exactly what I have been waiting for Adobe would have done, but didn't.

I think you guys don't even know what golden ratio you are about to hit with this product. It has the high end stuff, it has the accessibility, the price tag, and it seems to be flexible enough to potentially become the swiss army knife of post work.
Most important. It has the right developers who are dedicated for all the right reasons.

So I guess I formally ask if the foundry would like to be my new NLE supplyer.

Richard Shackleton

10-12-2010, 09:55 AM

Hi David,

Yes, Mac only in November for the beta.

Richard

I'm assuming that will be only the Mac version?