Autodesk Smoke topic

shian

Autodesk announces the be-all-end-all of postproduction workflows, by making Smoke 2013 one hell of a editing, grading, compositing beast...and SLASHING the price.

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/walter-biscardi-yes-autodesk-smoke-2013-changes-everything

Still too pricey for me, but If I had a small production facility. It'd definitely be an option.

Trial link:

http://usa.autodesk.com/smoke-for-mac/trial/

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Autodesk, Inc. unveiled the latest version of its powerful professional video editing software Autodesk Smoke 2015 at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB). In addition to significant new creative tools and performance enhancements, Smoke 2015 will soon be available as a Desktop Subscription, so customers can access the software on a pay-as-you-go basis for the first time.

“When Autodesk launched the ‘radically redesigned’ Smoke two years ago at NAB, we made a commitment to bring high-quality effects to editors in post, video production and corporate branding. And Smoke 2015 delivers on that promise,” said Chris Bradshaw, senior vice president, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “Smoke 2015 not only features highly-requested new creative tools and improved workflows with industry-standard tools such as Final Cut Pro, but also an even easier and more affordable way for small studios to get started with the software.”

Smoke 2015, a professional video effects and editing tool for Mac-based studios, now features 3D Tracker, a new Timeline FX workflow, added hardware support and optimization for the new Mac Pro running OS X Mavericks and better interoperability with Final Cut Pro X.

“For us, Smoke is a fantastic tool. I love the one place solution that Smoke offers; it saves hours of production time. We use Smoke as our main tool on music videos, tour visuals and motion graphics – from Madonna to The Prodigy to MTV. I want Smoke on every desk in my studio,” said Eugene Riecansky, creative director, Rockstar (UK).

Key Features

New re-architected Timeline FX offers new effects capabilities for editors - such as direct access to the Action 3D compositing environment as a segment-based effect

New timeline-integrated 3D tracker allows editors to match original camera movements in a clip in order to realistically add new elements: video layers, text or 3D objects

Improved support for Blackmagic DesignLink card and UltraStudio for Thunderbolt devices and extended video IO support for AJA Video Systems to offer dual stream stereoscopic output

Improved integration with Final Cut Pro X that supports more timeline and effects metadata for a fast, high fidelity project transfer between the apps. In addition, Smoke sequences can be exported as XML with accompanying QuickTime media files.

Pricing and Availability

In these competitive times, software accessibility and flexibility become ever more important especially to start-ups, freelancers and very small businesses, which make up the majority of new Smoke customers. Autodesk polled a sample across the professional video market and 68 percent responded that term-based software licensing is a great option. Smoke 2015 will soon be available via monthly, quarterly and annual Autodesk Desktop Subscription plans; customers who commit for a year save more than $500^. Smoke 2015 Desktop Subscription will be available starting May 8, 2014, on the Autodesk eStore for $195 SRP/month, $545 SRP/quarter and $1,750 SRP/year.

Available at http://store.autodesk.com/

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Big thing to consider is that Autodesk is known for good products support along the time. Usually they do not drop things, do not make sudden moves. Also for many products they have training, certifications, etc that helps serious guys to hire you and even help in finding all specialists.

Lincoln11

When I was helping my friend who started up a post house in Santa Monica in 2005, I had a chance to get on one, but it was still an expensive black box system. The house was pretty much centered around a Flame and an Inferno. I just couldn't deal with the interface. The timeline was there, but it wasn't functional in a way that was intuitive. Discreet products were high end systems that delivered real-time effects. Now, I have been on pretty much every NLE that existed, and they all were functionally the same, except Lightworks. I could be up and running in an hour. But I just couldn't get the Smoke.

I'm sure it's changed quite a bit, but the reason to learn it is if you want to get a job working in Smoke and learn how to use the family of products. You can make great money, but it's not applicable to other systems. You don't really need to know other systems though, because Smoke is kind of a "do it all one-stop shop", kind of like online edit rooms were. We didn't hand off to other departments, we finished there. Like Shian said earlier, if you were a small production company doing finishing in-house, it would be cool.

Hey, If it's free, why not? Check it out, maybe you'll love it. But you might not be so happy when trying to hand off your work to other systems.

qwerty123

As a student, one can get a free (three-year!?) license of Smoke!

Can someone kindly explain what advantage there is to using Smoke or why someone would use it who has Resolve for Color Correction, Pro Tools for Sound, and Premiere for Editing? Just curious, and would love to be enlightened!

Vitaliy_Kiselev

By the way -- this is off topic, but I was wondering if it makes sense to do a "camera census" for PV visitors, i.e., so we can get some statistics on which camera systems, workflow, NLEs and preferred lenses are used by this community. Is there a survey software package that integrates with PV software that we could self-register such information? I think it might also be a good resource for people looking to hire professionals in the different global areas. What do you think?

Post this to suggestions topic.

ahbleza

@Vitaliy_Kiselev So what software does the motion, color correction and editing workflow on Windows for $999? Incidentally, I personally will be buying Davinci Resolve for $3,000 (apparently, it comes bundled with a free camera. :-)

By the way -- this is off topic, but I was wondering if it makes sense to do a "camera census" for PV visitors, i.e., so we can get some statistics on which camera systems, workflow, NLEs and preferred lenses are used by this community. Is there a survey software package that integrates with PV software that we could self-register such information? I think it might also be a good resource for people looking to hire professionals in the different global areas. What do you think?

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@ahbleza

But I think smartest will be go for $999 price range and move to Windows PC market.

ahbleza

I attended a great demo of Smoke last night, showing actual production usage in a customer video, i.e., compositing a still with moving keys into a sequence (basically, zooming in and rotating a picture on an open book.) The demo also showed color matching between scenes, and a few other really cool capabilities.

My impression is that Smoke seems to be an amazing package for its capabilities, and has come down in price substantially. The biggest advantage is that once you master its hideously complex UI, you can save tremendous amounts of time in advanced video editing (i.e., stuff you simply can't do in FCPX.) The downside is the long learning curve to be productive.

They announced there is a 20% discount until the end of this week, reducing the base price of $3,495 down to less than $2,800. For a professional production house with regular editing gigs, I would say this is a great adjunct to AE and FCPX. They've worked hard on stability, and I think performance was good on the latest MacBook systems.

Bueller

I have started using it and it is interesting, and seems fairly easy to use, but it does crash a lot on my system OSX Lion 8 core.

joesiv

Wow, wasn't expecting this! I have quite a bit of background with 3ds and maya, the node interface and 3d workspace makes so much sense for video and comp work! Seems pretty amazing, I'll have to give it a try!

Vitaliy_Kiselev

eyefi

Look at the rest at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SmokeHowTos

alcomposer

@VK

I don't think that Thunderbolt will go any time soon... Intel have a LOTS of hopes for that tech... and it its scheduled to run on optic anyway...

However - I still don't really understand why not just use 10GiE? Thats fast yeah?

Only thing I like about TB tech is that you can run 'any' standard through it... Like VM- its all virtual...

shian

yeah, I downloaded it yesterday, but haven't installed it yet. Too much other stuff going on.

Oedipax

The Smoke 2013 trial/beta is available today. First impressions - interesting, but performance is very sluggish on my ATI 5870 GPU doing simple CC adjustments on prores footage. Not surprising I guess. I'll get an nVidia card in here soon.

http://usa.autodesk.com/smoke-for-mac/trial/

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@shian

Personally, I hope that Thunderbolt will vanish and will be replaced by industrial standard optical interface, say USB 4.0 :-)

shian

Also, I'll be beta testing Smoke in June.

shian

Its also good to know that by 2013 Thunderbolt (per Evan Schechtman) will be the ubiquitous transfer mode of the future we have all been hoping for... finally.