Smoke 2013 Pre-release Performance

[Björn Benckert]

thanks did not know about "/" is that even with flame hotkey layout?

[Erich Ocean]

thanks did not know about "/" is that even with flame hotkey layout?

No idea. Apparently you can also hover over a button and do alt-ctrl-spacebar to get info, too.

[shashbugu]

I don't know about you guys but i transcoded my R3d's to DPX file in RCX. I usually work with Proress 4444, but I know smoke loves DPX files. Its way faster than working with R3D's in Smoke 2013. I used both a Hackintosh, GTech esata raid, 32gb ram. real time playback. You still have to quick Render effects.

Don't bother using 5D or C300 XF 422 files in Smoke. You will drive yourself crazy. Its simply not well supported in this version. I now believe Smoke 2013 was written from the ground up. A lot of features are missing or not optimized.
Besides thanks to the reworking of the interface plus the batch effects, I'm learning new effect tricks. I now have a better understanding of how to get things done in a nodal interface without watching a tutorial.
Beyond the editing interface the effects have been better arranged and the modules are easier to access.

[Björn Benckert]

I don't know about you guys but i transcoded my R3d's to DPX file in RCX. I usually work with Proress 4444, but I know smoke loves DPX files. Its way faster than working with R3D's in Smoke 2013. I used both a Hackintosh, GTech esata raid, 32gb ram. real time playback. You still have to quick Render effects.

Don't bother using 5D or C300 XF 422 files in Smoke. You will drive yourself crazy. Its simply not well supported in this version. I now believe Smoke 2013 was written from the ground up. A lot of features are missing or not optimized.
Besides thanks to the reworking of the interface plus the batch effects, I'm learning new effect tricks. I now have a better understanding of how to get things done in a nodal interface without watching a tutorial.
Beyond the editing interface the effects have been better arranged and the modules are easier to access.

I agree.
To make it work you need to convert to a uncompressed format. Working native with r3d or proress is just not working... do not know if I should write "just yet".

As in flame you can link to original source over network and such. but the thing with the FFI, smokte etc is that when riding with heavy source files even the gui get sluggish. It's something they should have optimized long ago but for some reason they have not done it. On this smoke it gets even mor obvious.

Example, having a big comp and then fiddle with some curves in the curve editor, the actuall interface gets lag. This is to me not acceptable even for a pre release 2013.

And since it's there it seems like they gone down the same route as always so I think they need to rethink how this is going to work.

The also need a good way to swap between proxies, linked clips and full res stuff. now it is kind of a mess.

But I really like the layout and the batch in each clip and the library and such.

It's also kind of odd that the autosave is so poor, a few times we lost like a half days work since there is no "save button".... I guess you can duplicate your timeline and continue but I think the early release will do as little or less good for autodesk as the pre mature FCPX did for apple.

When final cut first came back in the days it felt like a perfect solution from the first release, avid guys did not like it but everyone else jumped right on it. I think the big reason for that was the fact that the software was very thought trough and mature on the first release. As first impressions last...

To me the this release should only been let out to smoke, inferno, flame users that has understandings for their way of working, new users will not even find the batch nodes before all the bugs and lag makes them jump back to nuke or FCP. Thats my though at least.

[shashbugu]

I agree.
To make it work you need to convert to a uncompressed format. Working native with r3d or proress is just not working... do not know if I should write "just yet".

As in flame you can link to original source over network and such. but the thing with the FFI, smokte etc is that when riding with heavy source files even the gui get sluggish. It's something they should have optimized long ago but for some reason they have not done it. On this smoke it gets even mor obvious.

Example, having a big comp and then fiddle with some curves in the curve editor, the actuall interface gets lag. This is to me not acceptable even for a pre release 2013.

And since it's there it seems like they gone down the same route as always so I think they need to rethink how this is going to work.

The also need a good way to swap between proxies, linked clips and full res stuff. now it is kind of a mess.

But I really like the layout and the batch in each clip and the library and such.

It's also kind of odd that the autosave is so poor, a few times we lost like a half days work since there is no "save button".... I guess you can duplicate your timeline and continue but I think the early release will do as little or less good for autodesk as the pre mature FCPX did for apple.

When final cut first came back in the days it felt like a perfect solution from the first release, avid guys did not like it but everyone else jumped right on it. I think the big reason for that was the fact that the software was very thought trough and mature on the first release. As first impressions last...

To me the this release should only been let out to smoke, inferno, flame users that has understandings for their way of working, new users will not even find the batch nodes before all the bugs and lag makes them jump back to nuke or FCP. Thats my though at least.

Well sais, I agree with you. For an Autodesk product it is surprisingly very buggy, i'm not sure why they strongly felt the need to release a beta at this time. Reminds me of the Foundry's storm, it had great promise solid interface and features, but the constant bugs and crashing rendered the software unusable.
It is inevitable Autodesk will fix these bugs and join the GPU accelerated video world.

[Michael Jensen]

In the smoke setup utility they call it an alpha release. "smoke_2013.1.alpha6_PreRelease1"

[Paulo Kobayashi]

The interface lag is the worst for me too. I just don't have patience to the constant freezing/lag, even when using 1080p footage.
I was VERY hopeful and watched all the training videos before the release, but 2 days trying to use and I gave up. I'm now waiting for a new beta release.

[Eric Santiago]

Speaking of interface, you would think Autodesk would have implemented the Hotbox/Marking Menus from Maya into this app.
Just a wish list thing.

[Sandro Klopfstein]

I was very excited about smoke 2013 but after watching fxphd's fastforward smoke tutorials I'm not as convinced anymore. while I expect most of the current performance issues to disappear in time for the official release, I think the interface and workflow really isn't as user-friendly as autodesk would like us to believe. sometimes even to the point of being super annoying. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. and if there's no significant improvement I'll just stick with avid/nuke/aftereffect.

[Ben Rojas]

I have no doubt, that performance will be optimized and features will be enabled. What I don't understand is the wisdom of releasing the beta version (actually it feels more like an alpha) so early for public testing. At this point Smoke 2013 is only good for getting familiar with the new interface. I happen to think, that the first impression is most important. Current state of Smoke 2013 isn't helping...

Absolutely agree. As a long time Smoke user, i'm baffled and left scratching my head in wonderment. For the first time since "Edit", AD has the chance to truly get in the NLE game, which they've been wanting a piece of since Smoke's inception. Rather than flourish in the edit arena, Smoke became the goto finishing tool, which quite frankly has cannibalized AD's other offerings... To which I have no complaints ;O) When I switched to Smoke on Mac, while not the performance of the advanced sys, I knew then that in my world, I'd never spend 100+ for the advance sys on Linux.

Fast forward to today and w/everything that's happen in the industry, specifically post, 2010's 50K (15K software + 2K license + sys build) for Smoke Mac wasn't going to fly anymore and AD knew it. It's as if the death of FCP lit a fire under AD's butt and they've thrown every resource at 2013. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the delay is Smoke being ported to PC. It only makes sense as the uncertainty of the Mac Pro line, hell, of Mac and Pros in general, leaves AD in a scary position. I for one would pay a little more to have Smoke on PC. I'm not a Windows fan, but I'm not to keen on Apple these days (other than iPhone, iPad, which I can't live w/o!) Who knows, maybe we'll see Smoke screaming on that new HPZ820 at IBC this year