Shake Officially Discontinued
 

According to R.I.P Shake 1996-2009|Final Cut User

I don't expect anyone to take this very lightly.

I'm not even a Mac user and I don't like it all.

I was/still am considering getting a Mac, and Shake was one of things that attracted me the most due to its reported ability to do the best 30p to 24p conversion for my 5DmkII files. I hope there's a true replacement available sometime soon.

Jacob,

Doesn't Cineform have something thats works really well for our 5D Mark II file conversions from 30p to 24p?

I never used it but I don't understand the logic unless it's now just built into Final Cut Studio 3. Or maybe users were working with other software.

Heath

No, actually I've been engaged in a number of discussions with a whole lot of 5DmkII owners who are trying to do a successful conversion, using everything from Pemeire, AE, Vegas, Shake, Twixtor, etc. etc.

According to user tests, the results I've been seeing, Shake comes out looking the best. You can use Cineform's neoscene, but it produces double frame ghosting artifacts, like a frame blending sort of side effect. Most other forms of conversions using other types of programs created the same effect. I think Twixtor created a really good conversion too, but it wasn't as accessible, and it took a lot longer for rendering. It's been acknowledged by Cineform that the 24p conversion in neoscene isn't intended for the 30p files of the 5DmkII, but rather coverting the 6oi wrapper files. I use Neoscene simply because they convert my footage to a much more NLE friendly file, but it still needs to be 30p.

Some people are testing that now, they're trying to see how FCP and Motion have been enhanced to handle what Shake did, and I'm hoping for good news from those preliminary tests.

In our tests of the 5D2 footage we successfully used Episode Pro (now called Episode Desktop) to make the 30 to 24p conversion with great results. However when it comes to the 5D2 I always have to make the preface that it looks good from a frame-rate/low noise perspective but due to the limited dynamic range that comes from the little Canon color is definitely an issue regardless of other specs.

Since we elected not to make the 5D2 part of our production workflow (didn't pass the stringent color standards we're stuck with for our clients and the rolling shutter issue reared it's ugly head too) I don't have that test footage anymore but suffice it to say that Episode was able to convert the footage far better than Compressor or AE - not sure why.

One of the leading Shake guys switched to The Foundry (Nuke) a year or more ago and from that point, the community knew that Shake was destined to die. There have been talks about phenomena but the shake guy has stated on twitter and other media that you shouldn't count on that. The market for compositing is too niche for Apple.

I just hope they won't do the same with color. First buy it and then kill it.

Weird, my copy still works. This is a bummer, but they moved a bunch of the functions of Shake into Motion to make it more a competitor to After Effects.

I don't see this as a bad thing. It was being used for compositing and color correction... These things are now done using motion and color. The functionality is still there, it just moved into something that actually has a more familiar workflow/ interface (be honest, shake's interface was pretty bad from a usability/learning curve standpoint). If they keep making Motion more powerful, I won't miss Shake that much... although it's hella powerful nodal compositing allows me to really pull some cool keys out that I simply couldn't do with a standard timeline based tool, including AE.

Things change, cut, print, moving on.

Macworld even does and EOL obit:

Farewell, Shake | Create | Creative Notes | Macworld

Heath

Let's hope Apple donates the program to the open-source community.

A nice idea, but I think they integrated it into Motion 4.

Heath

Shake, like Jack Palance, has been dead since 2006. It's really time to get over it and accept Nuke as your new overlord.

I am of course very sad by this news. I have used Shake long before Apple bought it and killed PC support. Yes I used Shake on a PC and it worked great. As a compositor who really learned my craft on Shake this news really breaks my heart. At the same time however it is sort of like the news you hear when an old actor you grew up with passed away. You are really sad and you will cherish the memories and moments but in the end life goes on and you move on.

Shake was one of the most amazing pieces of software ever created. The reason is because it was designed by fellow compositors and artists and not a bunch of C++ geeks. It was designed solely for what the industry asked for and wanted. Very few programs ever get built that way today.

With that said it was kind of time for it to go. Sort of like finally getting over the loss of a pet. I was sad at first but I will get over it. For me this is the third stage of the death of this great product.

1. The death of the PC version. This really boiled my blood and I swore to hate Apple forever for this move.
2. Apple announcing Shake would no longer be developed. Sad because we new stage 3 was going to come eventually. Sad for Apple because of how dumb they were with Shake. They were like a cancer that took a great product, sucked the nutrients out of it and then left the carcass to rot until they tossed it in the trash forever.
3. Apple just one day deciding to rip it from the world and officially killing it forever with no notice or warning at all. No official word from them either. Apple just opened up a wormhole and poof Shake was no more.

Anyway just had to get that off my chest. I salute Shake which to me has and never will be an Apple product.

The foundry just announced a plugin for nuke and AE that eliminates rolling shutter:

The Foundry - Overview

Did we miss the point?
 

Shake's engine may have got inside Compressor and Motion, but Shake was about something else: nodal compositing.

The use of nodes and noodles is rather a specialist thing, but as soon as you're into doing complex compositing it's a great way to work. If you're going to get involved with match moves, high end chromakey and the like, nodal compositing - the tree like structure of how a composite is built up using layers made of layers, and garbage mattes masking the same object several different ways - is an established metaphor that a large swathe of the professional market agree upon.

If Apple have got an even better way of doing this sort of complex comping in Motion, bring it on. The Quartz development environment looks suspiciously familiar.

And so is this: http://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit2