We are in an "interesting" situation - small facility, grew from one Smoke 2012 to three systems on 2013 Ext1 - and we were waiting until NAB news to purchase a Burn Node or two. We've also done a job with a rental Flame, and connected everyone into a temporary "big" facility for a few weeks. Even without owning a Flame, we were using parts of the Flame ecosystem, and planned to expand incrementally - and were considering getting a real Flame, but like everyone else, finding it hard to justify the costs.
So, now - looks like our choice is simple. Step up, buy a Flame and run with the big boys, and enjoy all of the components of the Flame system, or stay on the Smoke path, give up the idea of render nodes, and see where Smoke is headed.
Breaking the link between Smoke-Flame sucks for us, and for FLame freelancers that run Smoke on their own systems, but when I look at it from ADSK's persepective, it does make a lot of sense.
From reading the forums and talking with other users, it seems like Smoke 2013 had 3 obstacles to overcome:
1) Price - $3500 isn't cheap, when you're targeting a crowd used to paying $1000 for Final Cut (especially when a 30 day trial isn't enough)
2) Under the hood - Mac users expect programs to operate in a similar manner as others. I tried to explain to people that Smoke-Mac is like running a Linux virtual machine - you can't treat it like a mac app. All of the backburner issues, no user friendly project files, etc. - all of these made it hard for people to embrace and use the way they were used to working.
3) Complexity of the App. The new UI gave it a more user friendly starting place, but learning Action & CFX is still quite a challenge for most people.
I have a small glimmer of hope that they'll address #1 and #2, but not take #3 and dumb it down into Smoke Light in 2016.
This is pure speculation, but by breaking all of the Smoke-Flame compatibility, they are free to re-engineer the product under the hood to make it much more user friendly, and nimble. Build it so it works with a single "Project.smoke" file and user-defineable media folders - allow you to work from a USB drive that can move about like NLE project files, use OFX plugins, etc.?
HOPEFULLY - addressing #1 and #2 may remove some hurdles for new users, and they may give Smoke another chance, or give it a try for the first time, etc... and ADSK will NOT do anything to dumb it down. If they were to do that, and remove any of the power of CFX/Action, etc., then Smoke would be just another NLE, right? So I have to think they know the only reason anyone would want to use Smoke is for the powerful effects.
All that being said... They've doubled down on their high-end Flame market, and if they give Smoke-Mac a 3rd chance to catch on and it fails again, I would not at all be surprised if they kill the product entirely...
my two cents...
(and I may be using Smoke 2015 until they pry it from cold dead hands...)
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SmokeUser since 2012
MacPro w/ K3
32 GB RAM
CalDigit HdPro2 RAID
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