Smoke 2013 Changes Everything

[Chris Harlan]

[Walter Soyka] “And superior is really hard to define. Are you talking about ease of use? Workflow? Performance? Depth or breadth of tool set?
“

Oh, I know. By throwing that question out there, I’m just looking for scatter-shot reaction. Sort of just thinking aloud, trying to figure out which way is up. How’s that for the mother superior of mixed metaphors?

[Walter Soyka] “[Chris Harlan] “My quandary, as I look at these things arrayed, is that I can reasonably budget this year for, say, Symphony and CS6, or Smoke for Mac, but not for all three, without just being stupid about it.”

What are your workflows like today?
“

Well, when I’m working on a big sizzle, I do a lot of compositing. Over the last few years, I’ve been using a combo of AE and Motion. That 2.5 D tool of Motion’s has been very useful, btw. I’ve enjoyed using the cameras and lights to quickly create some nice compositions and effects. I use the tracking tools, and especially the masking tools to do things like remove distracting actors or objects from a shot. I really like the way I’ve been able to do this in FCP 6-7 from my timeline, straight into the comp. Round tripping–depending on how a version or use of a particular CODEC broke it–often sucked for return, and had to be worked around with renders, but the source in the timeline was always very useful. Hence, my extreme interest in Smoke. But, I can’t help wonder if the price tag (and all of the “Hey, look how cool it works on an iMac) is actually an acknowledgment of the end of the upper end on the Mac platform. The Smoke tools look to me to be a worthy investment, but will I be happy–a year from now–that I’m not using them on an eight or twelve core?

Now, the other side of the coin is that I do A LOT of editing that does not involve compositing. I’ve been enjoying my sojourn back to Avid-land with its seven billion ways to make a trim. And, I suppose I could get used to AE only workflow for compositing. I’m a one-man band that floats around–jelly fish-like–with a lot of other one man bands, and I need to be able to orchestrate with them when production ramps. Avid has been the mantra for the last year, with a few peeps of CS6 (principally from gfx designers, since it would make their lives easier, and editors are just editors anyway.) Since most of these fellow jellyfish parts tend to be a bit more off-line than I, I’m guessing that the siren of Avid will continue (unless Craig is right, and ancient gods from Baal rise up and pull the company whole into the bowels of the earth.)

So, I sit between these two thinking “Great compositing with limited power on my 2008 8 core or a new iMac? or a full commitment to Avid and CS6 on a Dell or HP workstation?” I don’t think there will be Smoke for Windows, as that would undercut Autodesk’s IRIX line, whereas iSmoke acts as a great introduction to it. I’d be happy to be wrong about this, btw. And, maybe Craig is right that there will be some sort of modified iWorkbeast, but my money would go on “not happening.”

[Katherine Taylor]

Oh yeah. I guess that would be Batch then 🙂

[Wendy Walker]

Yeah. I get that Autodesk got scared and changed the interface to look and act like FCP when you first launch in, but for those of us who spent years to learn the old interface, in my opinion, it sucks. Once you
understood Smoke’s interface, and how to navigate, you could move faster than anyone in AE or FCP.
The interface was originally designed to be gestural, and for artists. I hate the bin on the side, and miss the old Edit Desk . It made much more sense to me from a screen real estate saving philosophy.
I got used to no right clicking. And no drop down menus. In fact…I didn’t miss them at all!

Craig “A traditional NLE like FCPX?” Really? lol. FCPX isn’t taken seriously by the pro community. JKL could be handy as key commands, instead of C and V, but I agree with Walter. As for the FCP Extreme comments. Smoke isn’t FCP, and it was never trying to be. It’s a FINISHING SYSTEM.
I guess at this point, everyone wants to edit and finish in the same system now, instead of doing a conform, and they’re not wiling to learn anything new. I agree with Shane on many points. I would hate to see Paint disappear altogether. It was useful and fun.

Smoke’s Color Correction and Grading have worked just fine for the advertising industry clients with big budgets since 2005. Hopefully it’s good enough for you? 😉

Smoke does support Euphonix panels. Good to know Tangent will be support.

What I would like to know is what happened to Video Tracks / Layers. When I launched in, all I saw were video tracks.