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Choosing your next editing and finishing systemPosted by MarcAndreFerguson
Ah, the other NLEs....
Are you thinking at changing your workflow? Are you looking at another NLE? And if so, why chose just one new application? Why not take this opportunity to think beyond your editing pipeline? I've been watching from the wings for the last six months, and I think you should give Smoke a try. Read my latest blog post on ProVideoCoalition to find out more. Marc-André Ferguson Smoke Industry Manager Autodesk Follow me on Twitter: @iluminance Read my Blog : Smoke & Dagger (http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marc-andre) Register for the Smoke 2013 Pre-Release Trial : autodesk.com/smoke-trial
Hi Jude,
I understand, and I hear this a lot. Let me ask you this: what do you think would a faire price be for Smoke, given it's capabilities? Thanks for humouring me, Marc-André Ferguson Smoke Industry Manager Autodesk Follow me on Twitter: @iluminance Read my Blog : Smoke & Dagger (http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marc-andre) Register for the Smoke 2013 Pre-Release Trial : autodesk.com/smoke-trial
I would like to jump in here...I agree with Jude = Price is the issue. I would say $5,000 or less would make it more competitive. Our facility could use such a high end finishing system but 5 seats x $15,000 will never happen when we have to figure the budget for a new camera, light kit, RAID & backup systems, etc. Smoke is very much out of the range of most of the facilities I know of in my small market (SE USA).
When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.
This seems to be an advertisement of sorts...
MarcAndreFerguson Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Ah, the other NLEs.... > > Are you thinking at changing your workflow? Are > you looking at another NLE? And if so, why chose > just one new application? Why not take this > opportunity to think beyond your editing > pipeline? > > I've been watching from the wings for the last six > months, and I think you should give Smoke a try. > Read my latest blog post on ProVideoCoalition to > find out more.
Well, Smoke has a lot outside of the 'normal' NLE functionality, so I'm not saying it's not worth the price, just that for a lot of companies that's like buying an airport to go with your small plane.
Perhaps if there was a specific Smoke NLE, with the high end stuff crippled out, the price point could be lower and therefore the market could be expanded. And if the market was expanded, people would feel safer about compatibility with other post houses and systems they needed to interact with. I agree with Joe that $5k is about the top end of what most facilities I know would be willing to spend on software, especially on multiple stations. And there's no denying it looks yummy (that's the technical term).
Hi guys,
Jude and Joey, I hear your plea, and listen to Mike here, I'm not peddling products, but I am fishing for instructive comments. I'm a user first and foremost, and I happen to have wanted to use Smoke in most of my career, so I'm happy to help drive the product into more of your hands. We want to make Smoke the way you want it, the way you need it to work, and as affordable as possible. When it came out on Mac, it was at a drastically reduced price, for Autodesk at least. We're listening... What other solution would you compare it to? What's your current workflow? See, I'm trying to find out where that 5K limit comes from, ammunition for my cause, if you will ;-) Thanks again, hope to show you some cool stuff in LA one of these days. Marc-André Ferguson Smoke Industry Manager Autodesk Follow me on Twitter: @iluminance Read my Blog : Smoke & Dagger (http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marc-andre) Register for the Smoke 2013 Pre-Release Trial : autodesk.com/smoke-trial
Hi Marc, if you ask me, the price is fair for what Smoke does. It is also fair for post houses that require finishing. However, the price is a little high for indies, freelancers and end users. And I think that is most of the users of the forum. One thing you can push for is a stripped down "lite" version with little or no hardware acceleration so more users are able to pick up the skills to use the platform. This also means that there will be a larger marketpool of users so post houses don't have to worry about either the cost or time in hiring and training a Smoke artist when they purchase a Smoke machine.
www.strypesinpost.com
Hey Strypes,
Let me ask you this. Suppose a lite version of Smoke existed, but had little or no hardware acceleration, would you buy into that? I mean right now, all we have is CPU and GPU-based acceleration. The beauty of Smoke's Action 3D compositor lies in it's responsive nature, which is largely based on GPU acceleration. What would Smoke be without action? Imagine FCP X without it's fast background rendering. Imagine Media Composer without AMA. Imagine Photoshop without RAW support. Would pros buy into that?
I think if there were to be a Smoke lite version, it should be comparable to what ever other software you are going up against. So if Adobe's Production Premium is going for $1,699.00, then offer a Smoke version for around the same price that has pretty much the small comparable features as Adobe's Production Premium. Throw Avid MC6 into the mix and come up with something between the two. I just bought Adobe's Production Premium a few months ago. I would of looked at Smoke if there were a comparable software at the same, or close price point. Competition is a good thing.
my 2 cents...
I think the best way of doing this is to target a particular user or workflow with the Lite version. So you could target it at the TV industry by having all of the GPU acceleration of the full version (that is Smoke's selling point after all) but limit it to HD output. If you want 2K or 4K, you have to buy the full version. That's what Blackmagic did with Resolve.
My software: Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more More tools...
That's funny, there used to be 2 versions of Smoke, Smoke HD and Smoke 2K, which became Smoke and Smoke Advanced, even though the resolution differentiation didn't exist anymore.
Now there are still 2 versions of Smoke, the Mac version, and the Flame Premium Timeline version, on Linux, part of the Flame Premium package. In a nutshell, Smoke on Mac is kinda like the lite version, except we didn't limit it in any way, resolution-wise, or effects wise. Yes, the Linux version has more bells and whistles, but Smoke Mac can do practically everything it's brethren can do.
I'm looking at it without devaluing Smoke- have it ridiculously cheap, in the $300 price range. No Realtime, maybe SD only, software only, no hardware, no monitoring, but with batch. Then it will be like an educational version. I'll buy that just to pick up smoke. It doesn't eat into Smoke's market share since no one at Autodesk expects to sell a machine to a 2 guy in a basement operation, and it could give AE a run for its money (there isn't a competitor for After Effects). Also, it opens up a 3rd market- people who want a render node. What I know about Smoke is that it isn't just about the Realtime, but also the efficient way of getting things done.
www.strypesinpost.com
I think this is quite the good discussion and price is 100% the reason I hear from people that they won't consider Smoke. $15,000 for one workstation, no matter how "fast and powerful it is" is still for me, just one workstation that can scream. I have 6 workstations set up right now with each costing about $15,000 including the software. So now each of those workstations is going to run upwards of $25,000 to $30,000 if I want to run with Smoke.
Now you have made a great argument in the past that maybe we install one copy of Smoke as the "Finishing System" because we can send FCP, Avid and even Premiere Pro projects into Smoke to finish. So now I have to train someone in my shop to learn the Smoke workflow specifically to finish things. Or I have to hire an outside freelancer to finish things. Because the workflow is so different you can't just bounce around from FCP to Smoke and quickly finish. And then I also have one dedicated Finishing system and when we're not "finishing anything" it's just sitting there. And if my trained editor doesn't use it for a few months because we have nothing to finish for a while, they get rusty and have to re-learn it. So how's this for a "Smoke Lite" idea. It's a straight up editing tool with killer multicam features so all of my editors can edit with Smoke day to day, all day using that same interface, same workflow, but without all the finishing tools. I say killer multicam because multicam reality shows rule broadcast right now. I have editing, transitions, filters, fx, basic audio controls, just like FCP let's say. But I don't have all the realtime, the finishing tools, the 3D, the unlimited compositing, etc.... I can play multiple layers of video, but filters / fx / etc... need to be rendered. So I have 6, let's say $1,500 - $3,500 Smoke Lites in all my edit suites and I have one $15,000 Smoke for Mac installed in my finishing room. Now I have 6 employees all trained in how to use Smoke and any one of them can go into the Finishing Room. Their skills don't get rusty because they're using it all day and I feel better about the $15,000 investment I made in the finishing system. In addition, any FCP, Avid or Adobe editor can bring their projects to us for finishing because I can assign any one of my editors to run that session, not a dedicated "Smoke Artist." That's one way I could see Smoke gain more traction in the primary NLE market where you're competing with FCP, Avid and Adobe. Walter Biscardi, Jr. Biscardi Creative Media biscardicreative.com
Agree with all these guys. Make it dumber and cheaper so we can all get a chance to learn it properly, and therefore desire the big guns.
Most of us have work going all day every day, and often are already learning new software, so spending $15k for a new station we don't know how to use with features we wouldn't use on a daily basis seems outside the realm of good business sense. If I had a job where they installed it and gave me time to learn it, I'd jump at the chance, because it looks wonderful.
I like all of these ideas, thanks guys.
I think we've gone over the price pain point; all of you seem to agree that the price is the big obstacle that deters potential users from even trying it out. Let's imagine price wasn't an issue, what would be Smoke's most compelling features for you? What would make you want to have at least one station in your studios? How would Smoke benefit your workflow? Again, thanks for humouring me. Trust me, this is valuable and is very (very) useful for me.
> what would be Smoke's most compelling features for you?
Easy. It's like AE with a timeline. Fundamentally, that's powerful. You can't actually finish in AE. I mean, you can, but it's painful and there is a lot of pre-comping. And AE doesn't do Realtime playback. Only RAM preview. Not even render down. You can only render out. Which isn't great when you want to watch down a film or even a scene. So this to me is Smoke's biggest feature- an environment for finishing and a timeline where you can watch your show and do touch ups. www.strypesinpost.com
MarcAndreFerguson Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > Let's imagine price wasn't an issue, what would be > Smoke's most compelling features for you? > What would make you want to have at least one > station in your studios? > How would Smoke benefit your workflow? > > Again, thanks for humouring me. Trust me, this is > valuable and is very (very) useful for me. Mark, it's all about the price and the workflow for me. I have employees on staff who edit all day. None of them are familiar with the Smoke workflow, including me. So I have no one on my shop who understands how your system is laid out. I have to now train someone to run that system, or I have to hire someone to run that one workstation to finish something. I can set up Davinci Resolve software on a Mac for $999. That's a somewhat specialized color correction software that I can learn in a short time since I already mastered Color. I can hire hundreds of After Effects artists in town to come in and do composites and special effects in AE for the cost of a $1700 package. Yes, I will have to render, but I am saving money both in the set up of the system and in the amount of money I have to pay for the artist to run the system or in the training I'll have to pay someone to learn a particular workflow by one piece of software on one machine. I already have software in my facility that does pretty much everything Smoke does, albeit slower. So why should I spend $15,000 for software only for one workstation just so it all goes faster? I'm not seeing the benefit in just "going faster" and "all this performance" I prefer to have 6 or 7 workstations all making money at the same time than invest a lot of money into just one workstation. That's what you're fighting. You can have absolutely EVERYTHING be realtime, no rendering no nothing, and I would not invest in it for my shop at this time. I need something that all of my editors can use or it's not worth my time to install in my shop for a specialized person to come in. Like ProTools. I took an older Mac, outfitted it with ProTools HD Native, had our theater specially designed for 5.1 surround and installed a beautiful set of Genelec Surround Speakers. Why? Because it cost less to do that than install one Smoke workstation and sound design is something that I really wanted to add to the shop. It's a value add to our facility. Smoke is a replacement for something we already do. Again, give me a "Smoke Light" that's a killer editor so all my editors know the workflow and make it something that can do killer multicam and especially documentaries and you have my interest. Smoke still seems best suited to the Broadcast / High End / Quick turnaround situations right now. I absolutely love what it does and how fast it is, but I'm not going to invest $15,000 in it for "Choosing my next editing and finishing system." ALL of my editing systems ARE finishing systems. Walter Biscardi, Jr. Biscardi Creative Media biscardicreative.com
I can't complain that much about workflow. I've seen Flame take pretty much anything- RED, movs from an FCP XML. And Jeff Harrell was trying out AAFs with subclips to Smoke. The compatibility with interchange formats seem pretty rock solid.
However, I have sat next to the Flame guy and I haven't been able to figure out how the interface works. I understand batch to the same degree i understand how nodes in Shake and Color works, but that's about it. There's a ton of buttons in there. Smoke is a creative finishing station to be used after picture lock and the show sent for audio mix- roto, key, color correct, comp, playback, etc... The closest in terms of real time is probably the Resolve (or some of the newer GPU powered CC machines) for real time color correction, but you can't pull a green screen key or do a quick roto or try out a new effect in there. Then it would be a combination of After Effects/Premiere (minus the color correction tools), or to some degree, FCP/ Color / Motion (without the bugs). But without the media management of the NLEs, so no, you may not want to do offlines for multicam reality shows in there. I guess one issue is that Autodesk has little vertical integration (no viable offline editing machines). I don't know how Edit is faring (or did that belong to Quantel). On the other hand, autodesk has loads of horizontal integration- Smoke, Flame, Maya, 3DSMax, softimage, etc... I wonder what happened to Combustion. My issue as a freelance editor is that it costs about $30k for the whole kit, just to get a copy and I can practice on it, so I can be sharp on it if I do get a job on it. Yea, it is the price for me, as an end user. That means it only goes into my dream list of tools I may want to learn, next to Nuke, and Flame. www.strypesinpost.com
You could employ all of us to learn it, and then disseminate the information with tutorials and world tours to prominent Film Schools to prepare the next generation. Personally I wouldn't even require First Class on most trips. Only the very long ones.
From your perspective, Marc, what does it have that we don't know we need?
Good morning, having my "cup of comments" and trying to digest them all,
I hear you all about the whole NLE issue. Avid, Apple and Adobe make great editing tools that have finishing capabilities. Smoke is a great finishing tool that also has editing capabilities. I understand this distinction does not make it suited for all editing work. For example, Walter mentioned Reality TV shot with multiple cameras. Smoke does not have Multicam. Then again, if your tool of choice is MC or FCP 7, then go ahead and cut in this app. Jude, you want these words associated to your NLE: Reliable : Smoke is not a 1.0 app. It's been around for 15 years, a little over 2 on the Mac. It's proved it's worth several times over. It sports robust network managed media, project and clip-based archiving and rock-solid video I/O, at the highest quality. Flexible and Fast: this is what you want your effects package to be, flexible enough to let you do whatever you want, yet fast enough to work with a client by your side. In Smoke, you can mix flat images, 3D models and volumetric lighting in a scene and still keep it snappy. Compatible : you can throw pretty much anything you want at it, from multiple camera formats to tape to EDLs, AAFs and XMLs, then export in the format of your choice. Gerard: Vertical integration lies in the compatibly with other NLEs. Edit and Combustion are gone, but Smoke shares clips and projects with Flame, or colour information and clips with Lustre. Then again, on the Mac, it supports direct ingest and output of QuickTime, MXF, RED media with Rocket support, and a few other tricks it's Linux-based cousins don't have. Walter, and the rest : where does finishing fit in your pipeline? How long do you take preparing a session for finishing, either effects in AE or colour grading in Color or Resolve? What percentage of your projects actually involve a finishing stage, even minor? Is there even a finishing "stage", or are effects, colour balance and text applied as you go along? As an editor I've been in situations where I did have to build effects and looks while cutting the story together, just to please the director, or to get a feel of where I was going with a piece. Actually, that's what I loved about FCP when I first saw it, the understanding that the story and the look are often intertwined, and having access to "half of AE" right in FCP's timeline was a blessing. I think this is "what you don't know you don't know", Jude, the way Smoke offers instant access to effects and colour tools, right from the timeline. No plug-ins, no XML export, no jumping through hoops, it's all there. How much is that worth in time? I remember reading an interview with the "Phantom Menace" editor, explaining that sometimes George would want a character's reaction to a line come sooner in the shot, so they'd export it from Avid to a Flame, retime the shot, bring it back in Avid and continue editing. The process would obviously take some time, and they would work on something else in the meantime, but I'm sure there would have been way more "enhanced head turns" in Star Wars had they cut the thing on Smoke ;-)
Hi Marc, which formats in particular does the Mac version support which the Linux version doesn't? I am guessing it is the proprietary QT formats (eg. Prores, XDCAM, HDV, etc). Do they exhibit the notorious QT gamma shift? I noticed that this happens quite often with proprietary formats and I am guessing those softwares took a legacy QT to RGB decode.
Yea, I like the compatibility with exchange formats, and I believe that Smoke/Flame is 2nd to none in that category. Beats FCP to Avid, Avid to After Effects, Avid to Premiere/After Effects, etc.. However, there is the PPro to AE integration, as well as the FCP to Motion integration, which is tighter. If you need to track, right click, fire up Motion, track, save and quit Motion, and it's there in your FCP project. In some cases, you can also share some effects settings. Sure, Smoke isn't designed like that. It was meant to be a finishing station. And one thing Smoke has to its advantage is that it minimizes tweak loops between the finishing machines (eg. CC, roto, gfx, etc), as it does all that within the software and powerfully. In response to Walter's mention of speed, Smoke does one thing that makes it unique- the ability to make changes on the spot, and the ability to see your show as you are finishing, not just one to two shots. This is very elegant and sets Smoke apart from the rest. Imagine you work in FCP/AE and you have a 3 minute, fairly complex scene with lots of green screen. You send it to AE, and you get hundreds of layers, because AE doesn't have a timeline, but you need to see your color adjustments, and check your background elements for continuity between scenes (or shots). So you pre-comp the scene into little segments. Then you start comping. When you are done, you try to do a watch down. Crap. RAM preview runs out of juice, so you watch it down part by part, over some 6 hours. That or you render out half rez (to save render time), watch down, take notes, then go back to AE and do your fixes. Then you render everything out again to preview. When you are finally happy, you render out in full rez, send it back to FCP. Then crap. The director wants a shot re-graded and he wants to add a couple of shots and trim some shots. So you make those changes in the NLE to fix the time duration, leave markers where the changes are, pop those to the CC room, and then to AE as individual shots. Then you send those individual back to FCP and manually insert those shots back into the timeline. Pretty nutty workflow? Yup. This is where Smoke comes in. You can afford to make changes (not sure about Smoke's ability to export an OMF/AAF). Don't need to go back and forth between the CC room and vfx department. You can watch everything down and fix it as you go along. It's not just fast, sometimes this efficiency is a requirement. That said, I wish there was a competitor for AE. Motion came closest, although it still falls behind by a mile. Nuke is probably taking over the market share in the VFX category, since AE isn't great at complex effects and heavy comps. But yea, bottom line is that the more complex the project requirements, the more sophisticated the tools needed. It isn't just about speed. It is also about being able to deliver the project in front of the clients, being able to meet deadlines while you churn out work of the highest quality. www.strypesinpost.com
Strypes,
Smoke supports the same formats on Mac and Linux, both import and export. The Mac version has the added benefit of exporting ProRes files. A Linux box needs a Mac connected to it to support certain QuickTime formats, and uses the Wiretap Gateway to dynamically send files to Smoke in real time. Also, you need a Mac to add a Red Rocket to a Smoke.
> and uses the Wiretap Gateway to dynamically send files to Smoke in real time.
That sounds pretty clunky for a QT decode. And I would wonder why anyone would do that- an XDCAM shoot that require access to all the raw rushes? www.strypesinpost.com
Actually, most codecs are supported natively, including XDCAM, DNxHD and most QuickTime codecs. See here:
[wikihelp.autodesk.com]
Ah. I see. Apple's proprietary ProRes format.
>Actually, most codecs are supported natively, including XDCAM, DNxHD Aside from DNxHD, the XDCAM support is non-Quicktime. Of course, if you ask me, native Quicktime support of mpeg2 based formats would be even better. That means when the editor is done, he can media manage (copy) onto a separate drive, export xml and send it to Smoke. That reduces the need to send all 3 months of rushes to Smoke. This also makes it easier for mixed format workflows. But yea, I remember sending an FCP sequence with scale, rotate, dissolves and speed ramps to Flame and the Flame guy imported it all with minimal fuss. That was DvcproHD with a bunch of P2 folders attached. That said, the price is the main thing that stops me from trying to pick up Smoke. I don't exactly have $15K lying around in my garage. Would be nice if there was an affordable educational version. www.strypesinpost.com
Got any links to tutorials Marc? Like I said, love the look of it, but don't know how to use it and it would be bad business sense for me to spend that 15K there right now. Maybe if we had less fear about buying a box that we didn't know how to operate, we'd be more inclined.
Or, stay in the high-end market. That's up to you guys. Maybe most of us are not the ones you're trying to hit with your product, and that's fine too.
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