feature post production
We asked ourselves, how do we
reinvent Smoke in a way that retains the speed and creative power of the application, while also making it easier for people coming from a background using NLEs to learn and use?
Getting it right
The answer: embrace a new development strategy; rebuild Smoke from the ground-up, but do it in a public forum with input from the professional community. We had all of the research and the
roadmap; we just wanted to further validate the new Smoke out in the open. While a novel approach for a company like Autodesk, a fully functional pre-trial release seemed like the most logical fit - allowing community feedback to guide development in near real time. Taking such an approach would also
allow us to involve and engage new and powerful creative communities that have evolved over the last few years. Such communities are often tapped by professionals as a resource - ultimately shaping their opinions and buying decisions. Leveraging their insight throughout the redesign process could really help Smoke change the game for the pro-video industry. At NAB we went live with the new
Smoke and announced that we’d be offering a free pre-release trial until the product ships. During the show, editors from broadcast, advertising and corporate video backgrounds seemed excited about the new version. A lot of them said Smoke 2013 seemed like the product they'd been waiting for. They expressed enthusiasm over the brand new UI, which combines track- based editorial with industry-standard editing conventions and proven Autodesk creative tools. The addition of ConnectFX enables
node-based compositing inside the timeline, making high-end effects
62 l ibe l september/october 2012 l
www.ibeweb.com
While we’ve always listened to our customers and integrated their needs into new products, the bottom line is that putting Smoke out in the open and allowing users to guide its development before it ships is driving a stronger product. The feedback we receive from the pre-trial release will continue to steer our development beyond Smoke 2013.
tools accessible and easy to access while editing. Editors also commented on the new system requirements, which allow you to run Smoke 2013 on the most recent generation of Apple iMac and MacBook Pro systems. The community not only seemed
thrilled about the new features and system requirements for Smoke 2013, but also that Autodesk would be involving them in the development process to really take the time to ‘get it right’. In June we launched the free,
downloadable pre-trial release of the software for public use. Since announcing Smoke 2013 at NAB and launching the pre-release trial, we’ve had more than 15,000 people sign up. We’ve been gathering feedback everywhere - forums on our AREA community and industry leading sites for professionals, as well as Twitter and Facebook. It’s become an all- hands-on-deck project for our marketing, development and support teams. We’re constantly scanning social media and community forums for comments, issues or feedback, and documenting as well as responding to them. As we move through the summer
we're continuing these efforts. We’re developing a small group of active, but new-to-Smoke users - people from NLE and desktop compositing workflows that are using Smoke every day on projects that parallel their paying job. This is becoming a fantastic source of information - a real-time focus group that we can tap into. Through our new approach, we’re
quickly discovering what people like in Smoke 2013 and identifying issues faster than ever before. We find bugs, but at the same time we’ve been able to adjust and modify UI elements, enhance features and tweak workflows based on pre-trial user feedback. For example, based largely on user feedback, we made changes to the underlying clip and project data
model in the first pre-release. As a result of the feedback we received, we were able to implement changes before the second pre-release. Another result of working in the
public forum to develop the new Smoke is the realisation that we needed to extend the Smoke pre- release trial by three months to give our development team extra time to get it right. For professional editors interested in Smoke this is great news, as they’ll have several extra months to use the working software before deciding to purchase.
Autodesk Smoke is changing. Everything.
This version of Smoke represents a significant change to the way Autodesk has developed its editing and effects products and the way we engage users. Smoke 2013 isn't merely a new version or iterative release; it’s not experimental technology we're hoping to find a market for. It's a radical redesign of a proven product that we believe fills a void for video professionals. Comprising powerful, time-saving
features, the new Smoke is designed to help anyone producing high-quality video content overcome the challenges of workflow complexity while facing lowered budgets, higher client expectations and tight project deadlines. While we’ve always listened to our
customers and integrated their needs into new products, the bottom line is that putting Smoke out in the open and allowing users to guide its development before it ships is driving a stronger product. The feedback we receive from the pre-trial release will continue to steer our development beyond Smoke 2013. If you’d to be a part of this process,
you can visit
www.autodesk.com/ smoke-trial to download the trial and give us your feedback.
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