NLE Advice?

[Hans von Sonntag]

smoke for editing?!?

Do it all day. And much, much more.

There where days when an Avid editing suite was 100k and more and could only edit, no usable vfx. 15 years ago with the advent FCP this changed. Right now a edit suite can be build for about 10k, the NLE application itself is just about 1k - 3k. While this a great trend towards filmmaking for the masses I don't understand why shooting with a 100k camera kit and editing as cheap as possible on a laptop with less then ideal software/hardware tools makes much sense.

Smoke on Mac costs as much as a Zeiss UltraPrime but opens a new horizon of postproduction quality that may be for some desirable. At least it compliments the standard set by Red very well.

This said all mentioned NLEs are doing the creative editing job well but none of them is a good finishing solution.

Hans

 

[Uli Plank]

I second what Hans wrote about cost of the editing system and Smoke.

But if you need to go cheap:

Apple won't be at NAB…

PPro works very well for us with the Rocket, and at the recent pace of their updates I have no doubt we'll soon see the few missing features coming, like separate sound syncing or Color Science 2.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I second what Hans wrote about cost of the editing system and Smoke.

But if you need to go cheap:

Apple won't be at NAB…

PPro works very well for us with the Rocket, and at the recent pace of their updates I have no doubt we'll soon see the few missing features coming, like separate sound syncing or Color Science 2.

Uli,

separate sound synching works very well for met at least TC based. Do I miss something here?

And yes, Premier Pro is working very well with R3Ds. We use it as a very versatile media hub to select takes and often doing a rough edit. With Smoke's and Premier Pro's ability to work with FCP XML conforming is as easy as it gets. But you need FCP as an XML translator (Smoke only reads FCP generated XMLs) and, of course, for ProRes rendering. Smoke loves ProRes 4444.

But Premier Pro is also very good for creative editing and basic finishing. But for that you need a high quality codec. Actually Premier Pro swallows DPX sequences. It's possible to grade your footage outside Premier Pro and reconnect it later using DPX for instance. Then you add text, etc.... But like colour timing for VFX you have to leave the NLE.

The beauty of a system like Smoke is that you don't need to go back and forth between applications which introduces many headaches such as book keeping the 1,000 VFX shots versions and likely gamma shifts. With the very most shots you can stay within Smoke, create world class chromakey compositings, rotoscope with Paint, add text in 2D and 3D, create great looks with the Colour Warper, add vignettes with the Axis garbage matte tool, use Sapphire Sparks and whatnot. All this is editable just like in any other NLE. Even Smoke's sound tools are better than those your find in the classic NLEs. Besides LUT support it has a gamma correction tool in it's IO module that effectively corrects the infamous QT gamma shifts if one needs to export to QT. And last but not least saving and backing up a project for later resurrection is a mouse click.

Obviously everyone can see that I highly recommend Smoke on Mac for the serious filmmaker. The learning curve is steep but the results will pay back manifold the invested energy. Smoke on the Mac is a new product so the community is relatively small but there are already a bunch of very comprehensive tutorials that makes the beginner's life much easier than it was a year ago.

Hans

 

[Stephen Gentle]

Final Cut will probably have a 64 bit version fairly soon.

I know people are skeptical because there hasn't been a release in a while, but if you look at the release cycles in the past it's only just now coming to an end.

 

[Albert Astorga Zepeda]

You sound so sure about NAB... I say NO

You sound so sure about NAB... I say NO

Or, you can see what Apple comes up with by NAB. Seems to me like these apps always leapfrog each other. Adobe and Avid finally wake up and get their game on while Apple gets distracted. Question is, will Apple bounce back and get on top again? Hard game to play if you don't want to keep jumping around NLEs. Good luck in your hunt! :cheers2:

You must have a very good source because if I remember correctly apple does not participate in NAB anymore.
Adobe products are here now and support R3D files Now. no need to wait or hope that FCS 4 supports it. that is IF it comes out this year. Some say it will for sure but. it will again, be a mediocre or half update due to some dependability on Lion. and we all know that lion will not be ready this year. well maybe.
So I sugest get what you know it works and most important can test for yourself NOW and do not wait for apple to see IF they deliver. my gut tells me they will not. based on my observations of the actions apple has taken against the pro user lately.

 

[H. Farberg]

There's a lot of "probably"s and "maybe"s concerning Apple continued support of FCP. I become skeptical when the creator of FCP (and Premiere Pro), Randy Ubillos, goes on stage and demos iMovie for iPhone instead of FCP...

 

[Albert Astorga Zepeda]

Same here

Same here

There's a lot of "probably"s and "maybe"s concerning Apple continued support of FCP. I become skeptical when the creator of FCP (and Premiere Pro), Randy Ubillos, goes on stage and demos iMovie for iPhone instead of FCP...

I said to myself. "should not he be coding for FCS". no wonder they are behind. the focus is on the consumer products and iToys. I guess because that is were the money is. Compared to the few pros buying Pro apps.

 

[Oliver Peters]

Avid MC5 is NOT a 64-bit app. It will, however, work with 64-bit Mac OS and Windows just fine. I highly doubt we'll see a 64-bit version of FCP this year. The tea leaves point to an update for FCP/FCS this year, but probably something interim before it becomes 64-bit. Maybe next year for a 64-bit FCP.

Premiere Pro CS5 is 64-bit and works well with r3d files. In my own testing, Avid MC5 is still a better editor, with better performance and reliability. The exception is that MC5 is limited to 1920x1080 sizes. You could theoretically use Avid MC5 for creative cutting and marry that with CS5 (Premiere Pro + After Effects) for finishing if you need 2K or 4K deliverables.

The downside, is that CS5 doesn't offer a good color grading solution. Color Finesse (within AE) is powerful, but the workflow is based on single clips, not the entire timeline. This leaves you with the color correction mode in MC5 (still better than CS5 solutions), or Color (also better) or adding BMD DaVinci Resolve to the mix.

In the end, the best all-in-one "desktop" solutions within a reasonable price-range - and that will exceed HD sizes - are Avid DS (software version) or Smoke for Mac OSX.

- Oliver

 

[Oliver Peters]

I said to myself. "should not he be coding for FCS".

I think there's a general misunderstanding of Ubilos' current role. He's Apple's chief video architect. Not the person directly in charge of either iMovie or FCP. His job is to develop technologies, strategies and features that affect the way video is handled by all Apple products. As such, there are things that you see in iMovie or editing on the iPhone that may well work themselves into a future version of FCP.

- Oliver

 

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

my recent experience has been to move away from FCP too, which breaks my heart, to Adobe CS5, which is great! nearly identical to FCP, but integrates awesome, of course, with AE, PS, SB and all the others in their collections ( I use the master collection, though the production premium is great too ).

I cannot caution enough against Vegas. I did 2 full projects on that last year and REALLY hated it. That is not me saying "It was completely awful and useless", thats me saying "Shame on Sony for such an incomplete and clunky thing".

Just my 2 cents.

Jeff

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

avid ds is pc only, right?
smoke in combo with MC/fcp and resolve seems to be the best bang for the buck.
i hardly use a program from the fcs besides final cut pro and its sound library for offline editing.
i really did get pissed on the last fcp project when going out of fcp.
fcp to protools was a nightmare, fcp to a finishing app was okey-ish.
at the end we switched to avid for longform narrative editing.
musicvids and shorts are edited on fcp when there is no onlining planned.

 

[Tom.Wong]

Do it all day. And much, much more.

There where days when an Avid editing suite was 100k and more and could only edit, no usable vfx. 15 years ago with the advent FCP this changed. Right now a edit suite can be build for about 10k, the NLE application itself is just about 1k - 3k. While this a great trend towards filmmaking for the masses I don't understand why shooting with a 100k camera kit and editing as cheap as possible on a laptop with less then ideal software/hardware tools makes much sense.

Smoke on Mac costs as much as a Zeiss UltraPrime but opens a new horizon of postproduction quality that may be for some desirable. At least it compliments the standard set by Red very well.

This said all mentioned NLEs are doing the creative editing job well but none of them is a good finishing solution.

Hans

Never had the pleasure of working on a Smoke, so I didn't even know it had editing capabilities. I always thought it was a compositing and finishing tool only. Not something where you could do everything in. Absolutely makes sense now. If you can edit and finish properly all in the same system, why not? Saves time, headaches, and in the end money, even though the initial investment is a lot higher. But I think back on topic, for Chris, Smoke would be overkill for home use.

Right now I use a combo of FCP/Premiere, on varying projects depending what I need. Building a Resolve this week for finishing. I wanted to switch back to Avid, as I used to be a Avid editor. But it conflicts with my existing hardware. My decklink card will work for FCP, Adobe, and Da Vinci, while avid still needs a mxo or mojo to give me a proper interface with my dreamcolor. That was pretty much the deal breaker for me, maybe I'll re-consider when I get a cubix and if I have an extra slot. Generally freelance wise, people still widely use FCP, and probably wouldn't know what to do if I had to hand over a Premiere project when everything was all said and done. so in the end, I think you need a combo of NLE's these days, rather than just staying on one, if you plan to make a business with the NLE. If it's all for your own personal stuff, than you can stick with one or the other, it makes no difference.

Also I could never cut on vegas, the GUI gives me a headache. I have a friend that tells me it's the most intuitive thing, I look at it and have no idea with to do with myself...

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Thanks for all the advice! I'm pretty sure it would either be PP or AMC for me. 64 bit is important. Since I shoved 48 gigs of Ram in the new 12 core, I'd like to use as much of that as possible to speed things up. I dig the way PP allows you to access R3d metadata for clip adjustment and if it can work with a RR to allow me to view footage at full debayer then it's kind of a no brainer. I really would love to be able to maintain a full Online workflow.

mmmm, coffee.

CB

 

[Tom.Wong]

Premiere isn't just about ram and processor, the ram is actually more important for stuff like after effects, and any other program that does ram caching and previews. So if you do a lot of AE work, the ram will save the day.

Premiere the 12 cores will help, also you'll need a rocket, and a powerful GPU, like a gtx 285, quadro 4000, or quadro 4800, and a fast scratch disk to really see some performance out of the r3d. processor and rocket for actual debayering and playback, GPU for stacking effects.

Composer works different, you'll get rocket support only in the ingest/transcoding in AMA, but it won't help with playing down the timeline working with the r3d's. So technically you can get a lot more performance out of Premiere, but the Composer methodology is to give a proper and easy online offline workflow, and the option to work natively with r3d if you really wanted but generally without gpu and rocket acceleration, people find it too slow.

Hopefully adobe will offer multi gpu support in the future.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

How come there are no suggestions for a FCP edit (super easy to use) followed by a Scratch finish (for deBayering and color work)? We were wild about that combination on our last film.

Stephen

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

...Building a Resolve this week for finishing...

This is what I did before I changed to Smoke: editing with FCP (ProRes proxies), exporting the timeline to SpeedGrade, graded off the R3Ds and then reconnect the colour timed rushes back in FCP, added text and reconnected VFX shots. So far, so good - besides gamma shifts and other shortcomings.

The fun part begun when the client wanted new versions. Then I had to re-conform the timeline in SpeedGrade which naturally is a pain. Re-rendering VFX when necessary and re-conforming sound was also often required. A little edit here and there lead to many, many hours overtime.

IMHO, applications like Resolve, SpeedGrade or Scratch are great colour manipulation and/or conforming tools (Scratch), have some VFX strenghts or special skills like stereo-3D (SpeedGrade) but are surely no real finishing tools because any versioning means going back to the NLE.

Hans

 

[Tom.Wong]

great point, but my budget only stretches so far

but the nice thing about resolve is you can replace shots with ease, "re edit" if you have to, and plug in the new vfx as you need. and just output the final. So there will be little need to go back to the NLE. I don't do vfx work anyway, trying to get better at keying and a little compositing but that's not my field of expertise. So in the end a Smoke will probably be a waste for me, as for other people if they don't do the whole combo of, editing, vfx, and grading.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

How come there are no suggestions for a FCP edit (super easy to use) followed by a Scratch finish (for deBayering and color work)? We were wild about that combination on our last film.

Stephen

Stephen, IMHO it depends very much what kind of projects you do. If do a feature film that has ONE final version, where NO ONE changes hers/his mind AFTER finishing you are very well off your above described workflow.

But in my reality I sadly don't have that. I have clients that only want to see a finished version, who change their mind any time and, to be honest, I often change my mind after finishing as well. I love the flexibility of Smoke on Mac. In commercial land Scratch is rarely used but Flame and Smoke all the time.

Luck you,

Hans

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Makes sense, Hans. . .

Thanks for the insight.

Stephen

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

great point, but my budget only stretches so far

but the nice thing about resolve is you can replace shots with ease, "re edit" if you have to, and plug in the new vfx as you need. and just output the final. So there will be little need to go back to the NLE. I don't do vfx work anyway, trying to get better at keying and a little compositing but that's not my field of expertise. So in the end a Smoke will probably be a waste for me, as for other people if they don't do the whole combo of, editing, vfx, and grading.

Oh, yes. Budget is always a concern. If I hadn't the productions and Smoke would be still on Linux I would still go the "hard" way.

I didn't know hat Resolve has proper editing capabilities for a "re-edit".

Replacing shots is possible with all grading software packages I know (obviously I haven't worked with Resolve yet), NLE capabilities including sound are not their strength and a comprehensive text tool is not common either. For that at least I always had to leave SpeedGrade. It actually is possible to import sequences with a matte, so adding Text on a second layer is possible but cumbersome and in the likely case that the client changes the mind a pain to change.

However, it all depends on what kind of tasks you have to accomplish. And, BTW, I still use SpeedGrade for colour timing and rushes. It's a great grading tool.

Hans