why inferno over smoke

[newone]

I have both inferno 2007 and smoke 2007. I am mostly finishing film trailers. It seems that most places use inferno/flame over smoke for their film finishing. I have tried both extensivly and I love the inferno for compositing/effects graphics...but over all I can finish a trailer ....do the effects..... and make the producers changes much faster in the smoke...WHAT AM I MISSING???
Thanks

[emo]

My answer - batch tool -it has the modular keyer and custom 1d and 3dluts,resize,motion anaylzer,timewarps,optics,color warper,3d tracking,warper etc.... built right in, which you can apply soft effects in the timeline. Most of these are not accessible in smoke. You will find yourself
using these tools quite often in trailer finishing environment. There are times you may even need to import 3d geometry and need to warp it using deform lattice. However you don't have the capabilites smoke has with a multilayer vertical editor. Most of this has to be timed in action.

[paul_round]

Also you are not really comparing like with like, while smoke is an editor with some effects capability, Inferno is a compositing package with some editing capability.
Horses for courses.

[newone]

Yes, I agree with all the above,
but with the plugins available, I can do most of what inferno does on smoke (with the excpetion of advanced expressions). But I find the timeline in Batch so limited.. Also,
how do you guys deal with a multilayer edls in flame/inferno. More and more I get checker boarded edls that I can conform in smoke quickly. Is there a trick to handling them in flame/inferno.
And as far as luts, I do all my film work (with the exception of fx/comps)in log.
Sorry to ask so many questions, but a friend is opening his own house and is not sure which platform to go with (I LOVE having both)and he can only afford one right now and I want to give him the best advice possible (thanks to you guys!!)
Thanks again

[paul_round]

I guess that depends o waht you main work will be, I work on 2K comps for film, so smoke wouldn't be much good to me, but I guess if you're banging out lots of versions of a commercial, then smoke would be your preferred tool.

[newone]

Paul,
Why wouldnt smoke be useful for 2k film comps? I have experimented on 4k comps on both platforms and while inferno's interactivity ( and batch) was faster, I was able to use smoke and deliver the same quality comps in DVE in an acceptable time frame.(My cinetal has 3d luts suppled from the place that films it out). There is absolutely no question that if 75% of my work was film comps/specialfx/grfx, the inferno supercedes the smoke. But i am talking about a start up company that specializes in assembling trailers for film out.
Thanks again for all yout replies.....my friend (who is NOT a user) says thanks!!!

[mpixls]

For finishing film trailers, if I had to chose one or the other...Smoke hands down. The editorial capabilities alone make it superior to Inferno/Flame. Smoke has the majority of vfx tools to do what you need to finish film trailers. What Inferno has that Smoke doesn't is generally immaterial to the majority of the needs for creating film trailers. Batch, 3d tracker and such are great, but you can easily get by without them. If I were to start a small shop I would begin with a Smoke, and as time and billing allowed, add an Inferno. Technicolor last I heard had many seats of Smoke for film finishing.

In the end, it's the driver that makes the system perform at peak capability of course!

[newone]

mpixls,
I agree. Ironically enough though. technicolor called me about an opening.. finishing trailers....on the Inferno!!!! Other houses I have talked with mostly use Inferno. That is why I questioned my initial knee-jerk answer to my friends question.

[adolff]

hi all
i find smokes interface is much faster than inferno.
if your projects has more than 75% of compositing work which really requires 3d tracker, camera projection and animating camera then u must opt for inferno.
but other alternative is smoke!
with its killer speed ! i can do most of the things what inferno does in dve.
remaining 3d tracking and camera could be done in bojou, matchmove and 3ds max.
what makes smokes user interface faster is its editing zenith.
so it is as good as flame+avid !
with amazing 2d tracker and stabilizer , master keyer and color warper smoke has no turning back!
again its my personal opinion!
so for commercials and music videos and film trailers smoke delivers on time !
inferno is a great dad !
it comes in extremely difficult compositing solutions !
perhaps inferno is the best vfx system !
but smoke is editing and vfx !
so, for me smoke wins !
feel free to correct me
cheers
adolff

[kuban]

mpixls,
I agree. Ironically enough though. technicolor called me about an opening.. finishing trailers....on the Inferno!!!! Other houses I have talked with mostly use Inferno. That is why I questioned my initial knee-jerk answer to my friends question.

Until linux machines arrived, most of the infernos were running on onyx2 or onyx350, and most of the smokes were running on octanes. So even if the software capabilities of smoke might be even better for trailers, the hardware performance of infernos would win over octanes.

But with the arrival of linux boxes, this problem became obsolete. If you ask my opinion, smoke itself is a good start. But maybe your friend should ask for a flame/smoke combo. That does cost only a little more than a flame only setup. Maybe even start with a smoke only, and add a flame license on the same box later...