Shake 3.5 System Requirements

Minimum Desktop Hardware and Software Configuration

• 800 Mhz PowerPC G4 Tower
• Mac OS X 10.3.2 (or later)
• 3-button mouse
• QuickTime 6.5 (or later)
• 1 GB local disk space for caching and temporary files
• 256 MB of RAM
• A video display card with 32 MB of VRAM and Open GL hardware acceleration, such as the NVIDIA 4 MX or ATI Radeon 7500
• 1280 x 1024 display with a required minimum of 24-bit color

Minimum PowerBook Hardware and Software Configuration

• 800 Mhz PowerPC G4 PowerBook
• Mac OS X 10.3.2 (or later)
• 3-button mouse
• QuickTime 6.5 (or later)
• 1 GB local disk space for caching and temporary files
• 256 MB of RAM
• A video display card with 32 MB of VRAM and Open GL hardware acceleration, such as the ATI Radeon 7500
• Optional external monitor with 1280 x 1024 display with a required minimum of 24-bit color

Minimum Server Hardware and Software Configuration

• 1 Ghz PowerPC G4 or higher XServe
• Mac OS X Server 10.3.2 (or later)
• 3-button mouse (optional for render station, required for compositing seat)
• QuickTime 6.5 (or later)
• 1 GB local disk space for caching and temporary files
• 256 MB of RAM
• A video display card with 32 MB of VRAM and Open GL hardware acceleration, such as the NVIDIA 4 MX or ATI Radeon 7500 (optional for render station, required for compositing seat)
• 1280 x 1024 display with a required minimum of 24-bit color (optional for render station, required for compositing seat)

Minimum Requirements for Render-Only Workstations

The Shake 3.5 render-only workstation requires the following minimum hardware and software configuration:

• 500 Mhz or higher PowerPC G4
  Note: PowerPC G4 refers to any Tower, PowerBook, iMac, eMac over 500 Mhz.
• 1 Ghz PowerPC G4 or higher XServe
• Mac OS X 10.3.2 (or later)
• QuickTime 6.5 (or later)
• 1 GB local disk space for caching and temporary files
• 256 MB of RAM

RAM Requirements

Playback performance is a function of RAM, processor, image size, clip length, and graphics card. In Shake, images are loaded into memory and then played back. Current systems cannot achieve real-time playback with 2K-resolution images. However, with sufficient RAM and a good graphics card, files of up to 1K resolution should play back in real time.

Use the following formula to determine the amount of required memory:

width * height * channels * bytes per channel * images = bytes

For example, a single 1024 x 768 RGB 8-bit (1 byte) per channel image is:

1024 * 768 * 3 * 1 = 2359296 bytes

Or, approximately 2.4 MB per frame.

Tip: To convert from bytes to megabytes (MB), divide by 1024 two times (1024 equals the number of bytes per kilobyte). Thankfully, all operating systems come with calculators. For a rough approximation, drop the last 6 digits.

Note: An 8-bit image is 1 byte, a 10 or 16-bit image is 2 bytes, and a float image is 4 bytes.