Re: Smoke is changing- into Final Cut Extreme- New Features Page?

[Michael Gissing] "Although impressed by Walter's excitement, The other issue is the rolling costs of owning Smoke. It used to bug me that AVID charged ongoing upgrade fees for basic point upgrades or bug fixes. A friend just installed old Smoke on Mac and I will be watching very closely how little guys, in one man shops like his, are going to be treated."

Yeah I wouldn't quite say it changes everything but it changes a lot. I think the real pressure is on Adobe. I've been doing some stuff in PPro 5.5 with AVCHD and the experience has been terrible really. Crashes, mysterious pauses, the monitors freeze, it's hard getting it to just play back without skipping. And I can never figure out where the auto-save folder is as it seems to move, and BTW auto-save will stop whatever you are doing including just playing back, hopefully they fixed that. All in all it still seems like a toy compared to Avid on which I'm doing at another gig and coming from FCP, Avid is now my editor of choice.

But in the end it's all quite interesting and it's a buyers market. And I think if you do a lot of green screening, and comping Smoke could be the ticket. I use Smoke but still prefer AE for motion graphics.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist - FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

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