Choosing your next editing and finishing system

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

Sincerely, the biggest problem with Smoke is the price. Great for a house that requires serious finishing, but $15k (without subscription) is outside a lot of budgets I know of right now.

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.

No. Marc is a good friend to lafcpug and is an editor and filmmaker himself and is welcome to help us learn the in's and outs of Smoke. We have the ear of Autodesk here so might as well use it.

Michael Horton
-------------------

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...

[If you want 2K or 4K, you have to buy the full version]

Jon, I think that is a good idea!

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.