post production feature
At NAB this year Autodesk unveiled a completely redesigned version of its all-in-one video editing and visual effects software for the Mac - Smoke 2013. Designed with professional editors in mind and priced at $3495 (formerly $14,995), it streamlines the professional video workflow through a seamless integration of editing and high-end visual effects tools. Marc Hamaker, Autodesk’s senior product marketing manager, reports.
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Smoke 2013: user feedback steers development
release trial of the software at NAB - giving professional editors everywhere a chance to leverage a fully functioning version of Smoke 2013 and provide us with their thoughts and opinions along the way. Today, we continue to engage them in open conversations via forums and social media outlets to learn more about how they work and what they ultimately want to see in Smoke. We’re taking all of this feedback into account to deliver a product that we believe can really change everything.
T Workflow complexity
There is a huge opportunity for content creators today. A report by comScore revealed that the number of online video streams jumped 44% to 43.5 billion in December 2011 alone. As the number of screens waiting for content continues to grow, advances in camera technology are bringing cinema-grade production capabilities into the reach of video production at all levels. Creative tools and technology for post are also becoming more accessible. Editors across the advertising, broadcast and corporate video industries have unprecedented access to new tools
o kick off the launch of Smoke 2013, we embraced an innovative new approach to development. Going straight to the community, we announced a free pre-
and techniques that let them deliver amazing results - even amidst increasingly tight schedules and shrinking budgets. Professional editors are going beyond the creative cut, and routinely their workflows involve sophisticated compositing, colour grading, 3D titles and motion graphics. Clients have come to expect these offerings as part of the process. All of this has led to more
complexity for editors than ever before. As they surround their NLE with various tools for specific creative tasks, editors have to contend with different UI conventions, moving or managing media and a variety of creative workflows unique to each product or plugin. Round-tripping has become customary, as media, shots and timelines are juggled between applications. While this opens up new creative options for editors, it can also increase time spent on non-creative tasks - tasks that are hard to bill for - tasks that can waste a significant amount of time and money. Here Autodesk saw a void in the market and an opportunity for Smoke.
Reimagining Smoke
Our research told us that the professional video market wanted a comprehensive, high-quality effects- centric workflow integrated within an editorial workflow. At the same time artists have used Autodesk’s high-end effects and finishing products to create
Marc Hamaker, Autodesk’s senior product marketing manager:
“To kick off the launch of Smoke 2013, we embraced an innovative new approach to development. Going straight to the community, we announced a free pre-release trial of the software at NAB - giving
professional editors everywhere a chance to leverage a fully functioning version of Smoke 2013 and provide us with their thoughts and opinions along the way. Today, we continue to engage them in open conversations via forums and social media outlets to learn more about how they work and what they
ultimately want to see in Smoke.”
some of the most amazing films, commercials and TV shows over the last 20 years. Smoke shares a common heritage with those products, so we knew it could help fill that void. But, for this to happen, Smoke would need to undergo a redesign to better meet the needs of professional video editors. In previous versions of Smoke the UI
was designed to fit a specific workflow optimised for client supervised conform and finishing tasks. While highly optimal for the trained Smoke artist, the interface proved foreign to most editors. Keeping this top of mind for our redesign, we enlisted a group of editors with no prior experience using Smoke and placed them in front of a previous version of Smoke to analyse real-world usability; it was truly humbling. As we watched talented editors and artists struggle to import footage, perform basic editing tasks and navigate the UI, one thing became clear - the previous version of Smoke, while powerful, clearly wasn’t for everyone. Expanding our horizons and testing
a new development approach, we partnered with industry influencers and gathered feedback on what their ideal ‘super solution’ might look like. We also talked to professional editors about common bottlenecks in their workflows. One piece of feedback we received was ‘help me stop working for free’, which turned into an overarching theme for Smoke 2013.
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