Shake 4

Shake is generally used to composite images, blend layers, paint out mistakes, colour correct and add special effects. Think of it as After Effects on steroids. 

Although other pro-compositing tools exist, Shake is the product of choice for compositing in the movie industry. With this market secure, Apple is now promoting Shake as suitable for lone creators as well as big companies. Shake, says Apple, is ideal for the most demanding of projects, for small companies working on commercials or music videos, and for individuals training themselves to get a job in effects. 

The benefit to the industry is that freelancers and small companies are taking care of the training required to get the most out of Shake, and breeding a whole generation of new ‘Shakers’. By establishing Shake at the grass roots level, its future will be more secure. The problem is that this software has a steep learning curve and a hefty price tag, too, so only the most serious of users will take the plunge. 

If you simply want to add some effects, filters or perform basic compositing, you should probably stick with After Effects, but if you want the best compositing package on offer, this is it, and the cost is low given the available power. 

Shake doesn’t have the look and feel of a Mac application, especially when it comes to importing materials. When you apply a File In node, for example, you are presented with an ugly window that’s difficult to navigate. If you’ve used Shake for years, this may not be a problem, but for Mac users who expect a standard Mac functionality and appearance, it’s a minor annoyance. 

A greater problem is Shake’s instability, even when running under OS X 10.4 Tiger on a G5 loaded with RAM. In tests, crashes were quite frequent when other apps were running with no disruption. When the machine was dedicated to Shake, it worked like a dream, but if Apple wants this software to appeal to the freelancer who owns a single G5, it’ll have to be more stable than this. Most users can’t afford an extra G5 on which to run Shake alone. 

This early release may be updated soon, and stability problems will almost certainly be addressed, but crashes are not welcome in the tight-deadline world of compositing. 

Stability and importing aside, Shake is a joy to work with, and the new features are more than mere gimmicks. Many of them speed workflow, and some make difficult tasks almost automatic. Auto Align, for example, lets you stitch still images together seamlessly. Although you can do this in Photoshop, it’s handy to have the node there to do the work in your compositing environment. 

Slow-motion excellence
Another new addition is Optical Flow-based retiming, used for speeding up and slowing down footage. Most video applications can do this, of course, but the result usually looks jumpy, slurred and far from broadcast quality. The results gained with Optical Flow-based retiming are the best possible, whether you’re using film or video. 

The pixel-sampling and calculations are enormous, so this is a render-heavy activity, but the results resemble real slow-motion footage. Speed the footage up and the results are less pleasing, but that’s more to do with the nature of this process than the software itself. 

The benefits to the industry will be enormous, because the need for high-speed cameras to create slow motion is removed in most cases. As always with Shake, the controls are far from simple at first, but they are completely flexible as a result. Once you’ve learned to use Optical Retiming, you’ll never consider using any other retiming tool. 

Multi-Plane Compositing is another welcome arrival, giving you the option to blend 2D paint, images and effects in a 3D environment. You can even paint a 2D layer in the 3D space, should you want to. The ability to get outside the image, which has been present in After Effects for years, can help give you perspective on more complex projects. 

Another interesting addition is Truelight, used to calibrate your monitor. It’s well known in the effects industry, and among those working with colour correction, that accurate monitor calibration is a fine art. The light in your room must be consistent, and your monitor should show colours accurately, as they will appear on a projection screen. 

With Truelight, you can calibrate your monitor to give an accurate impression of the finished shot when printed or projected. This saves a fortune on major projects where film-out tests are a huge expense. 

Shake has maintained its usual high standards, such as resolution independence. You can create a project with any mix of resolution and bit depths, and even change these settings as you work. From one project, you can output a film-res image, while outputting a video-resolution image from another, which ensures maximum quality. 

Morphing and warping tools are easily the best in the industry. Simply by using shapes and splines you can accurately change the shape of an image. More complex effects are also pretty easy to achieve. 

Although Shake lacks the particle effects and titling capabilities of applications such as After Effects, Combustion and Fusion 5, it remains unmatched when it comes to effects and compositing.