Good Bye FCP X, for now

[Dennis Radeke]

[Brooks Tomlinson] “Okay, Will do, I have two 60sec simple promo’s coming up. But they will require some aftereffects. So I will let you know how it goes.”

That will only highlight the pros/cons you discover because you can use Dynamic Link between Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Good luck,
Dennis – Adobe mouthpiece.

[Bret Williams]

A little. But it’s major beta. They’ve improved the edit interface, but the rest of it still feels like, well, like Smoke always used to look like. To me they could really use some interface design 101. Stuff is just stewn everywhere. There’s not anything really obviously grouping things together, in hierarchies, or by most important to least significant. Everything is just a button with the same weight or importance.

This is where X shines to me. I mean, there’s only so many flavors of video and so many sizes. Why on earth do we need a million preference panes and settings? I’m all for advanced settings or preferences, but hide them away deep if I shouldn’t be messing with them. Smoke likes to just throw them all at you and tempt you to screw with them.

[Brooks Tomlinson]

The work I do on the DS is all rapid fire commercial work. One day to prep for the edit. One day to complete the edit. I also use alot of after effects for the stuff the DS can’t do, mainly 3d. After effects is fast enough to use in session while clients watch my every click Most 3d is not (like maya or something)
You can look at some of my examples below. (the pb network was not created in a day, it took an 80 hour week)
https://www.icantellyourstory.com/commercialgraphic-examples/

So my evaluation of smoke is looking at how it can help my commercial work flow. Not long form.

First let me say that I really like smoke. I enjoy the true 3d environment, where when you put things outside of the viewing area you can SEE THEM! Unlike in after effects when you are trying to build a world you have to guess which wireframe is right if you move objects outside of the viewing area. (if you don’t know what I mean, take an object in after effects and just drag it left while working In a 1080 project. Once it reaches the left it disappears. )

In the DS I hit the scaling restriction all the time. A DVE can only go to 10000 percent. There are work around, but it’s annoying. I like the idea of 3d text In smoke, and for graphic positioning, there is nothing more powerful than the set z scale. Where if you made a 3d element to the position you like, but it’s I the wrong z position, you can have it maintain the scale, but move in z. I can’t tell you how many times in DS and after effects I move something, then rescale it.

DS vs smoke (I’ve been editing on DS for 5 years, but I still find out some new things)
Pro smoke, I would no longer have to hop Out to after effects to key.
Pro smoke, I have to label replace a lot. Being able to warp in true 3d would make that task easier.
Pro smoke, The trackers are better than DS, with a richer set of options.
Pro smoke, Mask feathering in smoke is really nice, where you can have it feather
Pro both, Making and using expressions are similar.
Pro DS, you have one level of real time. So that means real time color correction. That is huge. I was upset to see smoke not have guarantee real time on the color correction. But on my MacBook retina, it will play back fine, some times. That leaves me to guess that autodesk is betting on the new Mac pros for huge speed gains. (pre-trolling alert, don’t harsh my high)
Pro Smoke, it can handle pro res. I get a wide variety of footage, and I’m tired of the time it takes to get started on the DS. Any pro res footage is actually play out of our final cut suite, and captured by the DS.
Pro DS, the timeline cuts really well and fast. I was un-impressed with smokes timeline editing. It felt a little clunky. Plus no trim viewers. (I think autodesk can and will make improvements to the editing side. )

So for me it boils down to this I think The DS is rock solid. If I had to cut a show, where you have graphics and effects and titles, I would say DS all the way. (like a discovery show) I would even say its way better than symphony to cut on. But it’s back end, the graphics part is not as strong as smoke.
On the smoke side, I would hate to cut long form (that is how i feel right now) but smokes back end is awesome! The 3d and the keyer look great. And just have a huge and wonderful toolset to use I also like the back ground file conversion. And that producers can use back burner to make outputs. (don’t know if that is in smoke 2013)

Lets not forget that the DS feels really long in the tooth. Almost like a forgotten child. Why Avid doesn’t promote it os beyond me.

To me smoke is almost there. It is still heavy on the finisher side, instead of the all in one. I would love to feel confident to take a project from start to finish in smoke, but right now the editing still trips me up. But Egads! Is 2013 a giant step in the correct direction!! 2012 was hard to learn. I never made it past simple stuff. I also love connect effects. The power of node base is awesome.

Sorry if this is too long. And cut me a little slack I wrote it on my iPad. Now, we still usefcp 7 to cut our long form shows. If our whole building switched to pc, adobe cs6 is really enticing me. The dynamic linking almost makes it as powerfull as the DS on my opinion. I’m still playing withit so I’ll keep you guys informed.

Brooks
“I dream in 32 bit float”

Brooks Tomlinson

[Walter Soyka]

[Don Walker] “I’ve been meaning to ask….. I have migrated from 7 to X, and have solid “big room” linear, Quantel and Avid background, but I have no idea what learning Smoke will do for me…… Can somebody spell that out to me please?”

Smoke unifies editorial, effects, compositing and coloring into a single application (and therefore a single timeline) reducing the multiple application shuffle.

With Smoke, you wouldn’t need to bounce back and forth between, say, FCPX and Ae, as you cut, composite, and create effects — and you don’t have to manage all the intermediate XMLs/EDLs and renders.

All effects work can be done directly within the context of the edit, meaning a small editorial change doesn’t necessitate stepping through the entire multi-app workflow again and again.

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]

Thanks for your thoughts, Brooks!

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

[Brooks Tomlinson]

Okay, I cut two easy 60 second promos in Cs6. Here are my first
reactions. (MacBook pro retina, FYI I use the mbpr in full resolution
mode. So no complaints about blurry icons. Small but I have good eyes)

-Ohh, cool, it works really fast with my h.264 af-100 footage.
-Cool I don’t have to render it, even though it’s red.
-Oh, this no rendering is keen
-My heart skips a beat every time I launch the program, because for a
brief period of time it says media off line
-What !$@&$!!! When you cancel a render it doesn’t keep the part it
has rendered? Wth? (what the heck?)please tell me I’m doing it wrong,
and it’s an easy fix.
-I wish you could change sequence settings, instead you have to make a
new sequence.
-Keyboard short cuts work fine
-I can cut with this just fine, fcp7 replacement in my book
-Ohh, me likey the rate stretch tool
-Dynamic link with after effects works awesome. No hiccups so far
-I could actually color correct something.
-Sad, Speed Grade doesn’t dynamic link. Wait, that’s a no brainer, why doesn’t it dynamic link?
-yea, I can set my workspace how ever I want it. “~” key is my best friend

That is my impressions so far. I was happy with the color correction I
could do. I watch the ripple training and a bunch of tutorials for
fcpx and never could cc to my liking. Here I was able to get it with
out much effort. (I’m no stranger to color correcting, example, Pass: color ) With these two 60sec promos
projects I worked all native. And just dragged the clips I wanted off
the copy of the SD card. Next project I do, I want to see how prelude
does, in converting, and work in a pro res work flow. (I’m just a fan
of the pro res codec)
Interesting to note, I exported out a 22sec clip from premiere pro, and it was 120mb bigger than the same clip from fcpX. It makes since that apple would have the proRes clip down. I’ve always noticed that adobe is a little fat on the proves.

My number one favorite feature? dynamic link between after effects, and CS6 having a catch (finally!!). It was like if I had to much of a problem, I could “run home to momma” and get the job done there. AE is the swiss army tool that everyone need to know.

I could say a lot more, but just ask me questions, I don’t want to make it tldr.

Brooks Tomlinson
“I dream in 32bit float”