Flare is a fully compatible assistant to Inferno, featuring the same creative toolset as Inferno Batch. All Batch nodes found in Inferno are fully supported in Flare. You can extend the capabilities of Inferno by performing any Batch task on a Flare system. You can also offload time-consuming tasks such as rotoscoping and particle creation to Flare.

Because the focus of Flare is on the Batch toolset, there are some tasks performed by Inferno that cannot be performed by Flare. For example, Flare does not support video I/O, broadcast monitoring, or conforming. In addition, Flare supports archiving, but only to or from file archives.

You can use Flare in an independent system workflow or in a remote connection workflow. In a remote connection workflow, the same (Inferno) storage is used by both Flare and Inferno so there is no duplication of media. Multiple Flare systems can connect to the same Inferno system. Each can be used to work on the same project at the same time, speeding up the production pipeline workflow. Overwriting work on a Inferno system from Flare is not a concern. Precautions have been put in place to ensure efficient collaboration between systems. You can even perform project management tasks of Flare libraries without leaving the Inferno station.

If being able to work on projects collaboratively with Inferno is not your main objective, you can still take advantage of the assistant capabilities of Flare in an independent system workflow. There will be duplication of media since you need Wire to transfer media to/from a Flare system. However, there are fewer workflow considerations than in a collaborative environment since Flare work is done on its own framestore.

The rest of this chapter discusses Flare in the context of a remote connection workflow.