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Avid DS as alternative?
I placed in one of the qualifying scores in an international contest held by Softimage back in the Softimage 3D days. The reward was a week of training, and being part of the first class to be certified in the highest level of SI 3D. One of the other bonuses, was that I got to play with Softimage XSI and Softimage DS before they were shown to the public. I thought DS was very cool, but I was primarily working in 3D at the time. I know that there’s some people out there who have been using DS (now Avid DS) for many years, and love it, but it never really caught on with a large user base. I was just looking at it again, and I see that it has direct import capability of Avid MC projects.
Is there anyone in here who has been using the more recent versions of DS who would like to share their opinion on the capabilities, workflow (both within DS and alongside MC), and support for DS?
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22 Replies
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Try posting this on the AVID Forum here at the Cow, You may have better luck getting good feedback there.
Best,
Richard Cooper
FrostLine Productions, LLC
Anchorage, Alaska
http://www.frostlineproductions.com -
I’d be interested in this discussion, too. I’ve been doing a bit of Smoke training, and I’d love to hear how people are using DS for finishing in the real world and how it compares with Autodesk.
I believe Tom Daigon is an experienced DS user — hopefully he’ll see this thread and chime in. I think he’s moving to PPro, and I’d be very curious to hear his take if he’s interested in responding.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Thanks, I’ve posted this over there too. For those interested in following;
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/45/880935 -
A very biased personal opinion:
Softimage DS was an absolutely brilliant product that was way ahead of its time – and then a company called AVID came along and bought it out and it stopped developing meaningfully and started become crankier and crankier. In many respects it’s still really great and can do a lot of what Smoke can do – it’s a really great nodal compositor in addition to everything else it can do.
But it’s hardly a tool for everyday offline editing – any more than, in my opinion Smoke would be. You’d only be using a fraction of its power and it’s not the greatest editing tool out there anyway, any more than Smoke is.
As I said, very a very personal opinion …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
I’ve been lurking on the DS list for a while to try to get a sense of what issues people run into with it in real usage, and it seems like DS is very much playing second fiddle to MC — especially around new features like AMA.
I’m also highly disturbed by the reports of poor stability with the 3D DVE.
Finally, I’m shocked that while Autodesk has spent the last year and a half selling Smoke hard to FCP shops for finishing, Avid marketing barely seems to know DS exists…
Simon, do you have any thoughts in particular on areas on DS that are particularly good or particularly bad for finishing and for compositing or graphics-heavy short form work?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “Simon, do you have any thoughts in particular on areas on DS that are particularly good or particularly bad for finishing and for compositing or graphics-heavy short form work?”
I have to say I haven’t used DS in earnest in the last two years so things may have improved – but nothing in its development since AVID took it over leads me to suspect that would be the case. I have had bad experiences with AMA using Media Composer and don’t expect it to be that great on DS either, but I might be being unfair.
As a finishing tool, I think DS is a serious contender and has been for a long time. The nodal compositing was always very well thought out to my mind and puts it in the big leagues if you know what you’re doing. I don’t think it’s the greatest tool for grading because you’re stuck with the appalling AVID color correction toolset which I can’t believe that anybody takes seriously, though I know many people do.
I don’t know what it’s like now but I found that the more code that AVID carelessly slapped onto it the slower it got overall to the point where it seemed to me not to be as fast as it ought to be in today’s terms especially when working at 2K, but maybe my experience was unfortunate in this regard.
I do think it’s well worth having a good look at – I much preferred it to Smoke personally … My only worry is that AVID have always appeared to be on the point of dropping it as a product and we all know how scary it can be when a supplier does that to you!!!!!!!!
😉
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Editing functionality is hardly present. Keying and compositing math is good. As for grading it didn’t have any colorist panel support last time I checked.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “But it’s hardly a tool for everyday offline editing – any more than, in my opinion Smoke would be. You’d only be using a fraction of its power and it’s not the greatest editing tool out there anyway, any more than Smoke is.
“I disagree. I use Smoke everyday for creative editorial for spot work and short-long form. It is a good editor. The fact that you can make edit decisions and then apply FX or edit with FX, gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility.
Brian Mulligan
Senior Editor – Autodesk Smoke
WTHR-TV Indianapolis,IN, USA
Twitter: @bkmeditor -
if you post here…
https://community.avid.com/forums/34.aspx
that is a VERY active AVID forum that might add to the creative cow information
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I agree with Brian. Smoke is a very capable editor, but it does have a relatively steep learning curve.
moody glasgow
smoke/flame
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