The missing Source Window

[Andrew Hays]

wht I can’t seem to understand is why Apple thought it was such a good idea to get rid of it in the first place…

Things are gettin’ interesting…

[Dominic Deacon]

[Ben Scott] “is that compared to using a mouse to change between windows?”

No. Compared to not having to change windows at all because they’re both just sitting there.

[Al Ellis]

Since first seeing fcpx i thought apple had just copied the smoke 6 ui and stuck it in their programme the colours and thw desktop architecture was uncanny, the similarity between smoke and fcpx ends there however. Smoke allows editing like an avid, like fcp, like fcpx and its own novel gestural editing and its been doing all of this for years. The reason it’s not seen as dumbed down is because it carries some of the best fx/graphics tools out there, it’ll properly edit 4:4:4 uncompressed , truly uncompressed. no not pro res, dnxhd or any other ‘flavor’ that says it’s near as dammit uncompressed, although it’ll handle both prores and dnxhd or anything else in the same timeline. It does multiple bitdepths, stero 3d, real 3d compositing and it still supports ancient legacy workflows and all hi end or low end finishing deliverables.
Smoke is an interesting comparison to fcpx, the comparison is how to do it properly and how not to. And oh yeah, the autodesk forums are a pretty lively place where, when people ask for new features or bug fixes, someone from autodesk posts a reply and the gripe is addressed and is normally in the next release, and if it is’nt you always get the reason why and not just a wall of silence or guff about paradigms/conceptual shifts and get told your way of working wasnt working. In short, you get what you pay for and a smoke these days is about the same as what an avid was a few years ago.
Getting back to the thread point, the reason for smoke having a single monitor and a swipe to source was, if i remember rightly, because of the type of video cards smoke used on the sgi platforms, nevertheless you could always set up your desktop on smoke to have multipe scalabe preview windows as well as your record (timeline) window.

[Walter Soyka]

[al ellis] “Smoke is an interesting comparison to fcpx, the comparison is how to do it properly and how not to.”

Agreed. I think that while that FCPX UI and the Smoke UI have some common design goals, Autodesk’s implementation is superior.

The thing I like the best about the Smoke UI is how highly contextual it is — for any task, the UI exposes everything you need and nothing you don’t.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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