Advice sought - Thinking of switching from Avid DS to Smoke

[roricam]

Following Avid's decision to kill off our beloved DS, my company is looking at Smoke as an replacement.  I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who's made such a switch about their experience and how the two systems match up.  Pros, cons, learning curve, frustrations, reliabilty, successes, workflow etc.

We use Media Composer for offline, Unity for storage and Protools for soundmixing as well as Maya and After Effects for design/animation work.  We occasionally use Final Cut Pro (not X) for offline also.  We work on a bit of everything but mostly broadcast tv shows and adverts.  The main formats we handle are Red, Sony XDCAM, Canon DSLR/C300, GoPro and Alexa.

I used to operate Discreet Edit up until it's demise and also used Combustion throughout it's lifetime so I would hope I'd be comfortable enough with the learning curve.  Is that naive of me?

Also, we're looking at a Mac based system.  Is Linux worth a look, or is that on its way out too?

Thanks in advance. 

[mikeparsons]

You'll be fine smoke is very easy.

Oliver peters says the new version is only 25% as hard to learn as the 2012 version and Walter biscardi says any non-linear editor could pick up the interface in 10 minutes.

The actual truth is it will take a bit of getting used to but the reality is you already know most if what you need to know almost of online is dealing with the codecs, formats, edl oddities and so on. You will like our paint node. You will love the Roto tools you be less excited by far by audio. Avid confirm isn't bad, it's not quite the total confirm you get in ds but its not far off these days.

You will feel horribly confined in a single monitor and ask why can't I use the other gpu output for a bin. You will ask why is my bin limited to one view and why are the thumbnails so small.

But most importantly you will miss the avid-l where people an be sarcastic without getting everyone's nose out of joint. Remember how everyone over there is annoyed that avid/ds does everything wrong? Yeah well it's the same here 🙂 except these guys still make their system.

It's a shame they killed ds, I've new really enjoying cutting in media composer 7 and onlining in smoke. If fusion ran on a Mac or redhat the avid fusion link would solve 90% of my projects but I can't do windows it makes me angry.

Mike

[richanderson]

I was an Avid DS user for many years before switching to Smoke last year. So here's my .02 worth.

Overall, you won't have too much trouble switching. For me, it was a matter of learning the new hotkeys and where the functions were in the UI. The editing and the node compositing should be familair to you. 

Every system has its pros and cons. One of the pros that Smoke has over DS is the 3D enviromnemt. When you go into CFX (connect effects -  the node based compositor) you have access to all of the various effect and utlity nodes much like DS. However, Smoke adds an extra layer by adding the Action node which is the 3D compositor. One great advantage of the Action node is that it can have multiple outputs. Even if you don't do a lot of 3D work, I think you'll be surpirsed at how handy it is to have that toolset available. Let's face it, the 3D node in DS was old, cumbersome and not very user freindly. I've found the 3D text, for example, to be very easy to create and animate in Smoke.  Smoke will also let you continue working while rendering deliverables. This function has really helped in my daily workflow - being able to work on the next spot while the other is rendering out. Smoke's media managent is also more user friendly. In DS the media was always tied to a certain project and you had to either link to that media in that project or copy it into another project which took a lot of time. In Smoke it's a simple drag and drop from one project to the next. Archiving is also just as flexible. You can archive an entire project or certain clips. So far, I haven't run into any media import issues - like having to scrub certain files through Media Composer then linking to it DS. These are just a few workflow things off the top of head. If you have access to a Mac I highly recommend downloading the free trial and jump in.

I think you'll find you can do everything on Smoke that you could do on DS. One thing I do miss is the editing flexibilty the DS had. For example, you still had editing access in the composite containers. I miss having access to the timeline for editing, node compositing and layers in one view. In Smoke you can have containers similar to a DS composite container but then you lose access to CFX. In other words, you can create containers that you can still edit on a Smoke timeline, but you can't edit once your in CFX. This takes getting used to and it's not a huge deal but I do miss that about DS. I half agree, half disagree with Mike about the paint node. Smoke's paint is very good and the autopaint function is very nice but I miss the DS graphics node which combined, paint, text and graphic shapes in one node with the animation ease of After Effects. When DS came out with a single screen layout I really liked it. For me, it made my workspace much more orgainzed as opposed to everything spread out over two screens. If you're using that now on DS I don't think this will be an issue. Actually, Smoke is very versatle in its screen layouts giving you the ability to do 1up, 2up, 3up or 4up splits assiagning different views in each for whatever function you're working in. I guess that should be in the pro section.

I can't speak to how well Smoke will play with Media Composer or Unity because we're a Mac based facility. However, I've had no issues conforming FCP projects with media on our XSAN.

By all means, use this forum - ask questions. The people on here are great. They were and still are a huge help in my continuning tranisition to Smoke.

Hope this helps!

Rich

[peppermintpost]

yes DS is eol now that is sad. i agree. i was thinking of buying a DS more than 10 years ago when avid took over DS from softimage. at that time i compared DS with flint (on sgi) and i bought flint. ds had more render power, the online was way more advanced coz it was completely connected to avid media composer and the

render/picture quality was the same. but anyway i hated the gui. and i thought and still think it makes no sense to work on a node based gui for simple tv and tvc shots. (cinema vfx is a different story)
BUT, when you like the gui and feel comftable with it, why switching then???

keep in mind that the basics of online editing/finishing/vfx are only a few fuctions.

you need a paint, key, roto, tracker, transform, colour correction, blur and a merge and thats it.

that covers 99% of everything you need. i am not 100% familiar with DS but i could bet that these functions are there. and i am sure they are well done. ds runs on a simple pc hardware so you can upgrade to whatever hardware you like. and DS is is far as i know resolution independent.

so what is the point? why switching?

dont understand me wrong - smoke is not bad, it does the job. but what bennefit do you expect from switching?

when i switch from one software to another i have 3 major points where i look at.

1st - how much can i charge my client for it, 2nd - will it improve my workspeed (will it decrease costs of human recources), 3rd - what is the price of the software.

so when you look at these points, can you charge more for it? when buying a flame i guess you can, buying a smoke i guess not. will it increase workspeed - same thing i guess a flame will speed up things, a smoke will not. what is the price. well a smoke is allmost for free about 4000$ for a professional tool is more or less for free and a flame is roughly 100.000$

in other words - when you have a DS, then upgrade to a flame if you can afford the price, otherwise stick with your DS coz there is no bennefit in switching.

thats my personal opinion - lets see what the autodesk people have to say.

[roricam]

Thanks for that Mike. Good to hear the learning curve won't be too bad. I think the single monitor won't be too big a deal. From the tutorial videos I've seen there's a lot of pros with Smoke.

[roricam]

Thanks Rich,
Nice to get an ex-DSer's opinion. I think the paint function in DS is one of the best things about it, particularly for grading and cloning, so I think I will miss that alright.
The media management and rendering sounds good. I've had a look at the free trial but was running it off a laptop so it wasn't too fast. Great to have the chance to play with it though.
Composite containers are another great feature in DS but the Smoke CFX look pretty good.
I guess the big test will be integrating it with our mainly Avid based facility. But Autodesk seem to have looked at this and on paper at least it looks solid.
Thanks again

[roricam]

Thanks,
We used our DS across a range of projects so we need the long form abilities that Flame doesn't have. Also, the DS allowed for very fast and easy workflow which isn't really a strong point with Flame.
Our decision to switch would be based on the fact that our hardware is over 4 years old at this stage and starting to fall behind what we need it to do in terms of speed and capacity, so we need as fast, modern system that will do the tasks that the DS currently does.

[joecrewe82]

Hi all,

Glad to see other DS orphans here.  Our facility is also considering moving to Smoke so I am having a nose around following my Avid parents abandoning me. Smoke does indeed look like a decent alternative to the DS.  Whilst I agree that the DS can still do plenty of cool things without needing to switch systems, from a marketing point of view, it's hard to sell services of a product that isn't current. Apart from that, I'm in the market to future-proof my career and adapt with the changes. Smoke seems pretty decent and these kind of posts are very useful to help me decide on my new path.

Cheers

Joe

[BlueMath]

Actually with the latest Flame 20th Aniversary release I would say you might want to take another look at Flame.

It now can be best to simply link to the files instead of importing everything into the Flame.

Also, the overall workflow "in and out of", as well as within Flame, is much better and faster. Some Flame vets may disagree on the "within" part.. Lol  

Grading with Luster..?

Luster is still a seperate application from Flame, but it's interopability/integration is pretty good now(not completly integrated, BUT very good given that it is a seperate application).

FXPHD does an overview here:

http://www.fxphd.com/news/flametraining/

And there's also the Autodesk one's here:

http://area.autodesk.com/masterclasses/masterclass/class2_q1_2013_lyne_lepage_Taking_a_Project_from_...

http://area.autodesk.com/masterclasses/masterclass/class3_q1_2013_lyne_lepage_Taking_a_Project_from_...

http://area.autodesk.com/masterclasses/masterclass/class4_q1_2013_lyne_lepage_Taking_a_Project_from_...

You may allready know and considered the above, but just in case I thought it best to mention..

[nlcedit]

We are in the same boat here.  We have an Avid DS and 2 Avid Symphonys.  We love the DS, but I think the writing was on the wall the last time we upgraded.  You had to also have Avid MC to work with AMA files.  Seems the DS could not find a way to make this work.  Big problem!!  Someone asked why would you change from DS.  The answer for us is that it can't link to AMA files!!  None of the footage being shot with all the new cameras can be brought directly into the DS.  It makes for a very difficult work flow and now that they are ending the DS we know that it never will be able to do this.  For us that means it is time to switch to a new system.

For now we are doing most of our work on the Avid Symphonys, but we really miss the compositing power of the DS and are hoping the Smoke can fill that need.