Apple Shake 3.0 - Manual (Page 5)

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m 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 render-only workstation requires the following minimum hardware and software
configuration:
m 500 Mhz or higher PowerPC G4
Note: PowerPC G4 refers to any Tower, PowerBook, iMac, eMac over 500 Mhz.
m 1 Ghz PowerPC G4 or higher XServe
m Mac OS X 10.2.5 (or later)
m QuickTime 6.1 (or later)
m 1 GB local disk space for caching and temporary files
m 256 MB of RAM
RAM Requirements
Real-time playback 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. 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.