@Juan Salvo

As someone who has also used smoke in the past I 100% agree. The new smoke is a triumph of marketing. Because its the old smoke with some ui tweaks. Once you get past the editing interface, it's still every bit the old smoke. As tough and obscure as it ever was.

This was developed by a different team over three years. Some elements of it appear to be the same, but I can tell you that it's not "tough and obscure" as you put it. Took it for a short test drive at the show and it felt like a regular NLE, not the "how do I do this" editing of the old.

Getting Footage into the application is wholly different as is the native support.

Rendering to ProRes now lessens the storage requirements.

Connect FX comes down from Flame and is quite easy to pick up. Tracks on the bottom stack up, nodes show the effects tree and allow you to quickly change effects just like a filter stack in your NLE or After Effects.

The Color Warper has many of the controls right in front of the operator instead of being in a Filter Tree / Multiple Rooms / In a Tab. The controls are right there for adjustment instead of changing / twirling / moving to get to them. Makes it appear much more confusing at first until you actually look at it and realize it's not much different than what we've used in Color for example, just laid out differently.

Bottom line, if you can work an NLE, After Effects and Resolve/Color, you should be able to translate your skill set over to Smoke 2013 in short order. The Editing part will be quite natural for anyone coming from FCP / Premiere Pro / Avid. The compositing / color correction will take a little longer, but it's not nearly as obscure as it once was.

This application feels much more natural, easy to navigate and most importantly, easier to remember than the earlier or Linux versions of Smoke. Now we need to see other third party hardware support and at some point in the future, a PC version.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

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