Hello,

I am planning on doing some intense compositing of greenscreen, 3D and 2D layers for a new project.

I own a Mac with FCP 5.1 and a PC with Adobe Production Premium, so I could really go eaither way, Shake or Ultra 2.

Can anybody give me solid advice on choice. These are the things I want

1. Ease of use, but robust features
2. Support of DV and HDV
3. Intuitive GUI
4. Speedy processing
5. Best compositor

Thanks for your input.

Ultra 2 (http://store.seriousmagic.com/seriousmagic/stores/1/ultra.aspx) costs $495 (pre-sale)
Shake 4.1 (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=MA434Z/A) costs $499

I understand the ease of use Ultra (http://www.seriousmagic.com/products/ultra/?CFID=2948024&CFTOKEN=47304635) offers and find it very attractive being new to composting myself and that Ultra is so simple to use in the same way iMovie is easier to work with right out of the box, but since you have made the effort to push your skills further by learning Final Cut Pro why not go for Shake and kick some ass.

The scary part is like omg I have to learn it. wtf!?
That you have to read the 1054 page manuel, fuggetaboutit, your insane.

Joe Letteri spoke highly of it's use at a recent seminar, that it was and still is his weapon of choice, and hey, it use to cost $2000+ a few months ago, so duh.

There is a massive collection of user shake macros, plugins and tools - free at fxshare (http://www.fxshare.com/shake/) so go git!

If you do buy and learn Shake, you'll be one elite ninja (http://www.fuggyfuggy.com/).

Go with Shake dude. It's a higher learning curve, but the results will be worth it. With it's cheap price now, it's a real bargain.

Thanks all. I will order my copy of Shake today.

Yeah i would also recommend shake most of the movies that have won an award for special effects used shake during their production

also if your tentative about learning the program the book i used to help me learn Shake was the Apple pro traing series for SHAKE 4 by Marco Paolini it helped a great deal in learning what i needed to learn....

Putting duct tape were my mouth is, I've finally picked up my copy of the book mentioned above and jumped into the interface of Shake.

First lesson, "skip to the end" well the middle actually.

Bullet Blast Through Glass (http://www.powerbookfiend.com/ake/MegatonBlast.mov)

It took me a while, having ignored the first 241 pages. It is simply 19 frames compositing a 3D bullet, colour correction, reflection of bullet passing over glass and surrounding the bullet with the shattered shards. I stayed up 21 hours to finish this, though I didn't work on it for 21 hours, I just get easily distracted.

I would love to base a short film around this shot with changes to colour, speed, angle and even direction of bullet, backwards memento style and then blam.

Is that completely created in Shake? No actual footage?