Reels

[Anonymous]

I've been playing with this in the taxi all morning

http://www.padgadget.com/2013/02/18/iron-man-editor-creates-the-ultimate-ipad-video-editing-app/

it once again totally reaffirms my belief that for short form fast cut up work especially animation style jump cuts havign two film strips (like flame) is 100% the best editorial interface.

I know reels are the product differentiator between flame and smoke so can we PLEASE just have two film strips so we can edit like this, its a workflow AD originated on computer but now an ipad app is taking it to the masses 😞

best regards

Mike

[Anonymous]

Thats pretty cool! Thanks Mike!

And if I had the time I would add a manifesto on Reels, and how flame's reels are the greatest thing ever.

Wile we are on the subject, WTF IS UP WITH THE REELS IN SMAC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! GIVE ME MY FUNCTIONALITY BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the rant, it's just a very frustrating area of the new smac, that seems to only bother me!

[Anonymous]

Two reels would be wonderful!! But given the time we are asking I would already happy if they put back the storyboard view like we had before.....

[Anonymous]

Agreed x1000

[Anonymous]

Happy?  I'd be merely back to not being angry, not feeling betrayed, not feeling abandoned, not feeling bitter and frustrated like many of us out there if AD simply UN-KILL smoke on mac by restoring back the sanity of the original UI first.  That would be the starting point and everything else comes later for a majority of us out there.

 Got a voicemail from AD last week again for subscription renewal.  If I had not missed the call, I'd have asked the caller what should I pay my subscription for now?  Should I pay for being abandoned?  Or should I pay for things like the K5000 not being supported on 2012 anymore, etc, so we could be left high and dry in the middle?  Or Should I pay for the right mouse clicks and drop downs with my stylus?  Should I pay for the instability that inevitably results while trying to support multiple IO cards from multiple vendors as an attempt to make the whole planet happy?  Should I pay for AD effectively killing a product by diluting it to death to appease a totally different market instead of making a new product for this newly fallen-on-the-lap-opportunity-to-make-more-money market?  Should I pay the subscription for us, the actual users of the software, not being consulted at all before diluting this software into something that "changes everything"?  Should I pay my subscription for now us being put in a situation where us, the decades plus supporters/users/owners now have to beg, literally beg, to get our tools back?  Should I pay for the fact that the respectable systems customers/users/owners like mike and others (who made AD what it is today) are being belittled by being forced to beg, cry, and bend down on their knees to get the extremely important, critical to our jobs, and essential tools back in the version 2014?  Or Should I pay for spending ridiculous amount time writing these long walls of text trying to instill some sense and explain why we need the tools we need and that why what you have done with the software has screwed us big time in terms of efficiency, productivity, and waste of time.

Sorry, cant help and find myself being forced to vent every now and then when I read threads like these where we are making requests that should have been part of constant development vs restoration process.  And trust me, many of us out there do not have the time to write/communicate, maybe thats why we are dealing with what we are dealing with today.

[majush]

I think if AD cared to consolidate all the user frustrations, they would be coming out with 2014 as how it used to be. But I honestly dont think anyone out there care. Accepting failure or defeat is not part of current management strategies. Hence the only possible way they could justify the sales would be to add changes on top of existing madness to make it much more messed up or straighten out a few wrinkles.

Like those directors who are sure that their work is amazing while we know its horrible, AD would continue to believe that smoke 2013 is better than 2012 and we users are just incompetent to comprehend the wisdom in their new release.

[Anonymous]

As a long time user I have to disagree. AD is a big company with lots of people and every single one that I have met personally cares very much and is very passionate about their products, the industry and film and tv in general.

I honestly feel Flame is coming good with recent releases and now thats out of the way somewhat they can refocus on Smoke. However I think its fiar to say that they almost dont know what to do with Smoke on mac. It seemed a good idea, it sold some copies but not enough to make the volume profits that a low cost product needs to make. 2013 was another attempt to get into the high volume low unit return market and didnt conenct with new users whilst alienating existing users.

What we are seeing is a retreat to big steel and linux based speed demons with the newer builds of smoke advanced clearly setting itself up for a push at the top end. Where does that leave smoke on mac users? I know as much as everyone else here but I think there has to be some reticence to undermining its systems products for a market thats been less than enthralled so far.

I said it at the start of the beta, AD can't compete with the offline boxes, their philisophy is too different, the needs of offline are too different and their total focus on image quality that we current users depend on undermines any attempt at more real time performance with adaptive playback quality, frame drops and all the other hideous nonsense that is acceptablein an offline box. With this in mind I fully imagine Smoke on mac being sadly left out in the cold somewhat as the price doesn't justify the effort. We need to be paying 15 grand for an online box for it to have a future given the smaller market such products cater to. That doesn't gel well with teh mac crowd who are now used to everything being about a grand, (avid/resolve/CC etc). On the other hand I still hear people say Smoke on mac is too expensive so what chance does it have at 15K in today's economy?

So I think its not AD hiding their heads in the sand or pretending they didnt badly fumble the 2013 revision in the marketplace but rather a complete shortage of a forward plan to address so many different demands.

If I was AD I would;

- increase the price to $5,000

- add a tab to 2013, call it legacy and unlock the hidden tools pallette that was there in the first beta - that shuts up 90% of old users complaints in an afternoon

- add a Toxik tab, allowing a full toxik environment for node based comping of 3d - add one node, read from library and its done - new features in an weekend

- add OFX support immediately, maybe 2 weeks work and 2 months of talking to plugin manufacturers then BUNDLE all the plugins, this way Smoke users get Keylight, Primatte, Beauty Kit, Sapphire, Monsters, RSMB, Neat Video etc etc - at present from my experience 1 in 100 smoke users buy the plugins. Even at full retail if they bundle at 1/100 of the inidvidual costs a grand would cover all the plugins

- new keyboard shortcut GUI allowing drag and drop and menu to button assignment like in Avid/FCP, save and load user settings - remove another 50% of complaints in maybe 2 weeks work

- rewrite the export engine for standalone operation to be an internal service and drop backburner - we all know why - maybe 2 months work

- add a render slave mode such that an unsused smoke install can be slaved as a mac burn unit to another system - maybe 2-3 months work this saves the need for network licensing and backburner services, an extra 5k for a renderer that can also be an additional machine on demand is a bargain

- implement a tiered license structure, extra grand unlocks the toxik tab, Another grand unlocks a flame style batch tab, and another grand unlocks flame GUI reels

AND lastly, think outside the box more. Adobe has take license compliance from 10% to 90% by moving to the cloud - people are falling over themselves to pay 50 bucks a month for a package where hardly anyone uses more than 3 of the apps they rent. I suggested this to Quantel 18 years ago and its time for AD to look at it now.

Buy the base Smoke for 5 grand.

Rent the features you need by the month. Need smoke advanced or flame effects, turn it into a flame for a month. Just editing for a while, let the advanced features drop off. With online credit card purchasing like I do for additional Nukes when I need them its a no brainer. The days of handing over quarter of a million bucks and hoping you stay busy are pretty much gone. Likewise they need to drop the hefty license transfer costs, having little no resale value in such an expensive purchase is a massive disincentive to purchase. Same with subs on the systems products, they are simply too much a month - jack up the purchase price and reduce the subs - most businesses operate like mine now, I buy everything cash so I have no ongoing overhead so if my business goes quiet I just take a holiday with zero long term risk. 

I struggle with this all every day having built a pretty successful business around a couple of Avids a couple of Smokes a Resolve and a bunch of other apps. I'd buy a flame but the subs make me step away as I just don't need the ongoing exposure in case things go quiet or the protests close the city here in Bangkok for a month again as they did a couple of years ago. Or floods. Or whatever. I'd buy a Smoke advanced if it was realistically priced, right now I'm hearing silly numbers quoted. So instead I do nothing, keep quietly making money on my 2012s and wait for the ripples to subside. One thing is certain though Smoke/Flame is still my preferred online tool and thats after a year of testing everything else out there. It may all be a bit broken right now but even broken it still hammers the rest when you're up against a deadline. 

I do need an upgrade path though as 2012 isnt going to get any more love from here on out and it's only a matter of time before it won't work with new hardware...

And I hope my next system is an AD solution as I know they do care and a lot more than they make apparent in online forums (fora? hmm been a long time since I did latin) but they are in a very difficult place, no high margin low volume video hardware supplier in history has every successfully made the transformation to low margin high volume. Davinci Resolve is kind of the exception but the owners changed to an already established low margin vendor.

Mike

[majush]

If I was passionate about a movie, I would focus on the content than making money out of it. If I was focused on the commercial aspects like a studio, I wouldnt mind how it looks or feels. I just want to make money. So I dont think "AD people are passionate", works in this case. May be they used to be. May be everything changed in the last couple of years. Otherwise, why is that we havent seen a single announcement from the side of AD at-least in acknowledging our requests and the situation we have been faced to deal with? We have had a full year of silence from their side with a few service packs and an Extension which fixed some bugs.

It could have been made into an open discussion to gain further insight into what makes 2013 a useless piece of software that comes with a "frustration guaranteed" tagline.

Only when I see it, I would say they care. With regard to flame, its a different game altogether. Even 2013 flame is much easier to work with when compared to smoke.