Is Commotion dead?

[Paul Miller]

It’s pretty dead.

You could take a look at Silhouette, from SilhouetteFX, LLC (https://www.silhouettefx.com), which is replacing Commotion and gfx as the new standard roto and paint tool.

[Carsten Orlt]

Yes Commotion is dead in the regard that it has been discontinued, even so there are some rumors that Avid (after buying Pinnacle) might do something with it.
But I never sell my copy as I find Commotion can do things no other package at this price (when you still could by it) can do! And I’m not talking roto matte work.
I’m an editor and not an compositor so in the regard to high end compositing I can understand why everybody has moved on. But I use Commotion mainly for one thing and that is paint on my pictures! The other day I needed to remove a number plate from a car while a guy was moving in front of it and revealing it from time to time. Doing this with masks in AE or FCP or any other package would have taken ages. Sure I could export to PS and do single frames, but why bother when I can open the quicktime in Commotion and just paint over the picture, press play, make adjustments and save and done! Also in the package I bought I got all this great filters. You can buy them for all the other packages but for a lot more money. And not compositing all the time I couldn’t justify the extra cost for very ittle use. I find Commotion an indespansable tool for an editor.
my 2cents 🙂
Cofe

[J Bills]

have you tried silhouette? worth a demo.

it plugs right into FCP. can’t get much better than that!

they also have a paint tool in beta at the moment – it’s very nice. Should be releasing a user downloadable demo within the next couple weeks I would think. it also works right in FCP and AE. It’s very similar to what commotion would be like had development continued.

[Matt Silverman]

Silhouette is a great replacement.

[Alan Lacey]

Well said Cofe, me too.

It does today exactly what I bought it for five years ago.

alan