Adobe Speedgrade Suggestions and Expectations thread

[jake blackstone]

I know the current mac version of smoke can live up with less hardware than ages ago, but I would probably need extra space coz of compatibility with other formats would add the cost converting material to higher end formats, that needs higher end srorage..

Not sure what you mean by that. Smoke on a Mac does everything, that PPro does codec-wise. It can read and write Prores, MFX etc. and it can soft import it all as well. So, there are no extra hardware requirements for Smoke...
As far as Autodesk buying other software and incorporating it into their suites, yes. They do that too. But unlike Adobe, they don't just rename it and keep it pretty much unchanged, Autodesk incorporates the technology behind it into existing applications. For example Fire, which was strictly editing application was incorporated into Smoke and Flame and now both application have that capability built in. Another indication of different philosophy used by Autodesk is the gradual disappearance of many old applications, that became redundant- Fire, Flint, Inferno etc. They were all slowly replaces by just two applications-Smoke and Flame. And, hopefully, very soon, there will be just one application. Right now Smoke and Flame virtually the same. (I'm not talking about Flame Premium or Smoke Advanced flavors). If you take Smoke class at FXPHD, you'd see, that they teach classes on Flame or Smoke interchangeably.
But I'd like to add a little to this discussion.
Over last few months I had been using Baselight plugin for FCP. And I LOVE it. You have a real Baselight running inside FCP. It supports MC Color. And no conforming, no rendering needed, if you pass the project back and forth between FCP and real Baselight, or for this matter-NUKE! I repeat, no rendering, just passing XML metadata. Nothing gets baked in. That is just so cool and powerful. If only FCP supported R3D, that would be the killer app for finishing. May be Filmlight can do this with Avid? Now, that would be a killer app...

 

[M Most]

As far as Autodesk buying other software and incorporating it into their suites, yes. They do that too. But unlike Adobe, they don't just rename it and keep it pretty much unchanged, Autodesk incorporates the technology behind it into existing applications..

I wouldn't say they did that - exactly - with Lustre, which was essentially a purchased product (they bought the technology from Colorfront, but as I recall they did not purchase the Colossus application from 5D). I haven't seen any of the Lustre functionality added into the Flame codebase, although I would say that a number of Flame items eventually made it into Lustre (tracking, keying, etc). So in that case it seems to me that Lustre was not used to cross pollinate the other products, but the existing technology was used in part to build Lustre. Same thing, to a degree, though.

 

[jake blackstone]

I wouldn't say they did that - exactly - with Lustre, which was essentially a purchased product (they bought the technology from Colorfront, but as I recall they did not purchase the Colossus application from 5D). I haven't seen any of the Lustre functionality added into the Flame codebase, although I would say that a number of Flame items eventually made it into Lustre (tracking, keying, etc). So in that case it seems to me that Lustre was not used to cross pollinate the other products, but the existing technology was used in part to build Lustre. Same thing, to a degree, though.

So far, on Lustre, I agree.
Autodesk have this wonderful and proven technology in Lustre and yet, for some reason, they continue to use CC and CW. I think, originally this was strictly a marketing decision, as to not create an in-house competitor to Lustre. But, as I already had mentioned, I keep hearing this talk of incorporating Lustre into Smoke and eventually into Flame. I think, that the simple fact, that Autodesk stopped selling Lustre as a stand alone product points in the same direction. If that happens, that would clearly demonstrate my original point of technology cross pollination in Autodesk applications. Personally, I think it's inevitable. Having different applications for different tasks is just not productive. And Autodesk products are at the top of productivity heap.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

my background came from smoke operators around me always asking for uncompressed TIFF sequences of the material.. I didn't use the new mac version. I'm sure its amazing. just didn't see any claim about their native camera codec support except for R3D.. what about other camera files? will I convert?
I used northlight and baselight workflow before it were all dpx based.. didn't try the fcp plug-in,, what you said is very interesting, I will definitely try to give it a look..
Adobe doesn't just change the name of the applications.. they also incorporate the technology behind, believe me on this, imagine Flash..
of course its more productive when you have everything in the same application.. I totally agree with that.. sometimes you just find very specific features that is only available in an outsider.. like roto brush for example, I think this is unique to AE.. is it?