-
FCP vs. Smoke
is there any QUALITY differences between a fully configured FCP suite and a typical high end editor like Smoke?
using the kona 3 capture card.
thanks,
j
-
20 Replies
-
I’d say that depends a lot on what you do.
Straight SD or HD 10-bit editing shouldn’t have any noticeable difference. When you’re looking into color correcections things could be different. However, if you complement a FCP suite with Final Touch for CC’s you’re competing even with a Luste system from what I’ve heard (Final Touch uses a 32-bit float internal rendering for everything).
I’d say in the end it really depends on what you do. Scaling images will differ depending on software and scaling algorithm. However, FCP with a Kona 3 card has some of the best SD <-> HD conversion available even in realtime.
-
[jamie] “is there any QUALITY differences between a fully configured FCP suite and a typical high end editor like Smoke?
using the kona 3 capture card.”
Zero. Last year an Avid DS/HD editor tried to prove the quality difference of his system vs. my FCP / Kona 2 system. He did a split screen of two identically captured clips using the SDI output of my system. The split was not visible to my client, to me or even to the Avid editor. And this was on a $30,000 Sony broadcast professional CRT HDTV monitor.
FCP with a Kona 3 IS a high end editing system. Add Final Touch HD for color correction and you surpass what an Avid can do.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
-
[jamie] “typical high end editor like Smoke”
Smoke is not really a typical “editor,” its a finishing system. You would find it a most difficult system to actually cut on, as in offlining a story. It does have very impresive realtime color correction, compositing and keying features that it inherited from its bigger brothers Fire, Flame and Inferno.
Smoke was originally pure Unix, running on the SGI platform, and it was not burdened by the huge overhead of a big OS designed as a Swiss Army Knife, so it was originally incredibly powerful and incredbly fast, much faster than anything on an ordinary computer, and it could handle 10-bit uncompressed and HD long before PCs and MACs could. However, now that processor speed and dual core technology has made all computers very powerful and very fast, and since Smoke has been ported to Linux and Windows, its speed and power are no longer nearly as impressive. Its getting awfully hard to justify the price these days. As the others have said, the output of the high end cards these days (both Kona and BM) is as good as you can get, so this makes FCP a real steal.
DRW
-
Smoke was not ported to Windows. It runs either on SGI hardware (under Irix) or high end PC hardware (on Linux). The Linux version has generally been acknowledged to be noticeably faster – particularly in terms of user interface interaction – than the Irix version.
The price has been lowered on the Linux Smoke product. It is sold only as a turnkey system, complete with very bullet proof storage. It has a good deal of the Flame toolset in terms of compositing capabilities, as well as the ability to take in Avid OMF’s and Final Cut XML’s directly. It can also deal with film files (DPX and Cineon) directly, making it capable of conforming film scans for use in digital intermediate environments. In short, it is a much more comprehensive toolset than Final Cut, and is positioned as a high end finishing system, a task for which it is very, very well suited. Its real competition is other high end finishing systems, such as Avid DS Nitris, Quantel EQ and IQ, and, yes, Autodesk’s own Fire system. It is well worth its price if your business model requires high end work under client supervision, and particularly if you also use other Autodesk/Discreet products, such as Flame.
It is not built for or intended for use by individual editing entrepreneurs.
-
It seems you have some insight here Mike – How does a Smoke perform interface/user wise compared to a high-end Final Cut or AVID Symphony Nitris System? I ask this cause I was surprised at how poor the Nitris worked when I tried it earlier this year. This is in terms of user interface feedback / realtime performance. For it’s price I’d reckon it should shoot my FCP-station out of the water, but that wasn’t my experience at all.
Also, what ball-park figure does a Smoke land on these days?
-
User interface interaction often depends on what video standard you’re working in, how full the disks are, and how much you have open on your desktop. Avid systems do a lot of checking and double checking of many things as you work, all in the name of making the system a bit more bullet proof. For instance, when you import a folder full of Targa files and make them into a clip, DS Nitris reads and verifies every one of the files before it starts importing them, imports them, makes the clip, and then verifies the integrity of the clip it created. That’s a lot of extra work that some might consider extraneous, but finishing artists thank their lucky stars for, and it’s the type of thing that systems like Final Cut don’t bother with.
Symphony Nitris has been updated since its original release, in part for better user interface interaction. It is also a very new product, grafting the Symphony interface onto what is essentially the DS Nitris hardware base. Do I find it as responsive as Media Composer? No. But it’s doing a lot more than Media Composer had to do, at least when dealing with HD material. Those of us who have used Avids rely on its much more comprehensive media management to minimize a lot of issues that we constantly struggle with in Final Cut. On an Avid, we can take in a timeline of a early picture lock of a program, ingest everything based on that timeline, then take in the final locked version and relink without any file name problems or manual interaction. The reliability of that gives us a lot more flexibility in meeting tight turnaround schedules. So if there is a slight slowdown in user interface response in exchange for that, it’s a price many are willing to pay.
Smoke is another world entirely. Some functions are considerably slower, but in general, the interface is very responsive. It is also a lot more of a “free form” interface than either Avid or Apple, and so it relies on proxies for the desktop that are created immediately following ingest. All proxies on the desktop can be freely moved and played, so you basically create your own desktop interface as you go. Some operators love this, some hate it. But there is no argument regarding its visual effects capabilities – it blows even the DS Nitris out of the water on that score. So if you happen to do a lot of finishing that involves extensive visual effects touches – such as music videos and commercials, where Autodesk products are strongest – it’s a great system to use, as are their other systems, Fire, Flame, and Inferno.
The last time I checked, the basic Linux Smoke package was around $65,000. But don’t quote me on that.
-
Smoke has 4:4:4 not nitris , FCP with Multibridge on SD I dont know but HD 4:4:4 supported you can have a external 30: as a broadcast monitor not possible on a Smoke.
Sapphire and effects renders faster in Quad compared to Smoke on Linux. Mainly a single software Smoke if you need to do the same you need FCP with Automatic duck AE or Better Shake 4.1 , whihc is again a sepertae software.
But I feel if you are a post house and you rent the studio time you can get more for a smoke since its got hype and people know its expensive and FCP is not expensive so you will not be able to bill that much.
If you are Production house and need to do your own jobs both SD or HD and not rent your system as a studio then FCP Shake with sapphire plug ins
and FC storage is the way to go , save that money and get a SAN , cheper upgrades. Smoke AMc is expensive. Now with KONA 3 and Multibridge extreme you can do 2K too. In a SAN you can use Picture ready a Great APP for the OSX only.regards
Sanjay -
[mody] “Smoke has 4:4:4 not nitris , FCP with Multibridge on SD I dont know but HD 4:4:4 supported you can have a external 30: as a broadcast monitor not possible on a Smoke.”
4:4:4 is supported with AJA Kona 2 and Kona 3 boards.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
-
Digitizing the same clip into a top of the line Smoke and into a top of the line FCP w/ Kona 3, I doubt you would be able to see any difference in the picture. But, like other have said, FCP doesn’t have the color correction or compositing capabilities as a Smoke. So, it really depends on what you mean by QUALITY.
Also, Smoke on Linux isnt as expensive as you think, 65K sounds about right, but I havnt checked prices lately.moody glasgow
smoke artist / editor -
[moodyglasgow] “But, like other have said, FCP doesn’t have the color correction or compositing capabilities as a Smoke”
Add Final Touch HD for $5k and that takes care of Color Correction and Color FX. You still come in significantly lower than $65k. Heck for $65k I’m going to build two or three FCP suites.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up