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Resolve XII…
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[Tim Wilson] “Anyway, I think that Smoke on Mac offered exactly the environment you’re talking about, but I only know what I saw in demos. I’ll defer to astrophysicist, editor, and motion graphics researcher Professor Soyka to tell it like it is.”
[Shawn Miller] “Smoke was on my list for a while as well, but it never seemed to keep my attention long enough to consider picking up, so I would also be curious to hear Professor Soyka’s thoughts on the matter. 🙂 “
Tim, I’m not sure anyone would care to read it, but if you opened a Smoke or Not forum, I could fill it arguing with myself. My relationship status with Smoke would be “complicated.”
I’ve been in and out of it for a few years. I’m currently on the upswing, catching up on what’s new in 2016. Here’s the short version (ha) of my thoughts:
Smoke can be rightfully accused of being “jack of all trades, master of none,” but it also fills out the second, lesser-used half of the expression: “often better than master of one.”
One the one hand, it’s a fantastic tool. I love compositing in editorial context. Once you get used to it, there’s a lot to like in the workflow and interface. I like (most of) the Action 3D compositor.
On the other hand, it’s a frustrating tool. I think that Smoke’s heritage makes it a lot less accessible than FCPX/Pr. Even after you get used to it, there’s a lot to dislike in the workflow and interface. The pool of freelancers is small. There are some important tools that are still very old-school, and the bulk of the design tools that I’d really like to have are missing from Smoke and reserved for Flame.
Smoke is too light on the animation side to be the tool Shawn describes. Ae, even without realtime performance or an NLE-style timeline, is closer.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “It’s people who need just a few more features than they have now.
“Where I was going with it is that between feature creep and different users wanting different things (one person needs X but not Y and another needs Y and Z but not X, etc.,) where do you draw the line between, say, PPro getting some of AE’s tools and PPro trying to swallow all of AE? Because I’m sure no matter how many tools PPro borrows from AE there will be users that want more and more and more. And there will also be users that scream about adding useless features while ignoring core functionality.
I feel like this is how Photoshop has become, depending on how you look at it, a massive boatload of extraneous feature creep or a very powerful tool with broad functionality.
I know next to nothing about Smoke but it seems to be an example of an app that’s too much of a hybrid so it’s stuck out in no man’s land. Do you think FCP Legend a good balance between NLE and compositor?
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[Walter Soyka] “FCP, Color, STP, Motion, etc. are all fundamentally applications that store and process information about creative decisions with media clips and effects over time. If they could all “understand” their own parts of the same timeline and refer to media based on a centrally-organized database — instead of each application creating its own separate interpretation of the original editorial timeline — we could have all the power and flexibility that the separate apps provide without all the pain of round-tripping. This would create entirely new workflows and offer new possibilities.
Would Adobe’s DynamicLink and DirectLink be examples of what you are talking about? Or at least examples of things headed in the direction of what you are talking about?
Bonus points if the database is multi-user. The necessity of picture lock before audio sweetening and color grading could disappear entirely. Editorial would be the hub, and the other departments could work on their shots or their scenes throughout the process.””
To a degree but if editing is still going full throttle then audio and grading will be doing a lot of needless work since the edit will be in constant flux. Even if editing is really close to locked you’ll still have to have a conform process of some sort so that the editing changes can be non-destructively passed along to audio and grading.
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[Tim Wilson] “Is it that X has taken a step back from the compositing environment Legacy offered? Or that it pales in comparison to the renamed reorganization? LOL “
We can’t talk about compositing/animation in FCPX without mentioning this:
https://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/1571-old-school-magic-in-fcpx-a-breath-taking-combination
I’d cringe at the method, but I respect the result.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Andrew Kimery] “where do you draw the line between, say, PPro getting some of AE’s tools and PPro trying to swallow all of AE? Because I’m sure no matter how many tools PPro borrows from AE there will be users that want more and more and more.”
For me, looking at the Adobe tools, I don’t think it would help anyone to merge Ae and Pr into one single UX. I agree with Tim that they do different things, and they do them differently. It’s completely appropriate to have separate UXes.
Our workflows now are suboptimal. Picture lock does not exist because we’re all awesome at making decisions. Picture lock is a necessary evil enforced by the way our current tools are designed. The lack of interplay among apps forces linear workflows. Non-linear workflow should be a design goal for the next generation of creative tools.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “[Tim Wilson] “Is it that X has taken a step back from the compositing environment Legacy offered? Or that it pales in comparison to the renamed reorganization? LOL ”
We can’t talk about compositing/animation in FCPX without mentioning this:
https://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/1571-old-school-magic-in-fcpx-a-br...
I’d cringe at the method, but I respect the result.”
The compositing you can do in X makes Legacy (and Pr if you don’t have AE) look like a toy. You may need some plugins to do more complex stuff, but the built in tools on their own are really nice. Fun even. 🙂
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Andrew Kimery] “Would Adobe’s DynamicLink and DirectLink be examples of what you are talking about? Or at least examples of things headed in the direction of what you are talking about?”
Dynamic Link is a purely uni-directional bridge from one application to another. It reduces the friction in a multi-app workflow by eliminating intermediate renders, which is nice, but it still requires two apps to have their own native and separate representations of the underlying edit.
Direct Link is conceptually much closer to what I’m suggesting, in that SpeedGrade is using Pr’s timeline and feeding back into Premiere.
Sidebar: Adobe is selectively picking up bits of their other apps and putting them into Pr. Look at masks and Lumetri. Which is better? Duplicating functionality across related apps, or connecting the apps more cohesively?
[Andrew Kimery] “To a degree but if editing is still going full throttle then audio and grading will be doing a lot of needless work since the edit will be in constant flux. Even if editing is really close to locked you’ll still have to have a conform process of some sort so that the editing changes can be non-destructively passed along to audio and grading.”
I want to eliminate conform as we know it. Conform means “to make similar in form, nature, or character; to bring into agreement, correspondence, or harmony.”
This is necessary when two different applications have two different representations of the same edit.
“Conform” could be changed to “update” if there were only one timeline that many applications viewed. Because the editorial timeline could track changes from version to version, the audio app can highlight the areas impacted since the last audio pass.
This gives you the option of getting a head start, letting a team work in parallel. It would certainly require some thought about where time would be spent most prudently.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Charlie Austin] “The compositing you can do in X makes Legacy (and Pr if you don’t have AE) look like a toy.”
Really, how so? Premiere Pro has a number of blending modes, trackable masks, adjustment layers, fairly decent matte tools, a solid key framing system (for an NLE) and native support for lookup tables. What gives FCPX the edge for compositing? Honestly asking, I had never seen FCPX used for compositing before today (referring to the video that Walter shared earlier).
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “Really, how so? Premiere Pro has a number of blending modes, trackable masks, adjustment layers, fairly decent matte tools, a solid key framing system (for an NLE) and native support for lookup tables. What gives FCPX the edge for compositing? Honestly asking, I had never seen FCPX used for compositing before today (referring to the video that Walter shared earlier).
“X has that as well. Some maybe better than Pr, some perhaps not. Pr arguably has more refined key framing, (though X is much better these days) And you need plugins for tracking and LUT’s in X. But things like clip skimming (huge timesaver with lots of layers), the ability to adjust relative or absolute transform and effects parameters on groups of clips, Compound clips vs nesting (similar, but different in implementation) etc.
It’s not specific feature set vs feature set thing. Pr may win that one. But the X timeline is really well suited to working vertically. In Tim’s earlier reply describing compositing vs editing he was specifically not talking about X, but he could have been.
I’m doing some pretty basic compositing in Pr this week and it’s maddening. Not because of the feature set, that’s fine, but because of the way you need to work, if that makes any sense.
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “But things like clip skimming (huge timesaver with lots of layers),”
I guess I don’t see the advantage in the context of compositing. Truthfully, I don’t even do much timeline scrubbing when trying to match the elements in a composite. I’m usually concerned with color, luminance, edges, etc at that point.
[Charlie Austin] ” ability adjust transform parameters on groups of clips”
That is nice – AE has this feature, but its (sadly) missing in PPro.
[Charlie Austin] “Compound clips vs nesting (similar, but different in implementation) etc.”
I confess that I don’t really understand compound clips… what makes them better (in your opinion) than nested sequences or comps for compositing?
[Charlie Austin] ” But the X timeline is really well suited to working vertically.”
Are you saying that the FCPX timeline is more vertical than other timelines when compositing? 🙂 Kidding aside, I don’t understand what you mean here… aren’t FCPX, PPro, AE, Motion and Photoshop more alike than not in this regard? I mean, compared to something like Blender or Smoke.
Shawn
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