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My company is finally going to get rid of its boat anchor, I mean Quantel eQ, and I am torn between recommending Smoke or the DS. While I know that this forum is about Smoke I still wanted to see if I could get some pros and cons for each if anyone is using/has used both. We do a fair amount of HD mostly originating from Panasonic DVCPRO/HD camera as well as 2K film transfers and deliver finsihed projects in HD and SD. Any suggestions and experiences you can share will be greatly apprieciated. Thanks.
I’m expert DS user and have working knowledge of Smoke.
I think the general consensus is that Smoke is better in all the ways flame is great. Superior keying, composting, color correction.
DS excels at editing, media management, conform and oddly enough the title tool is excellent.
Both these systems perform well.
As someone who has been on smoke and flame for years, and DS for awhile now in addition to those I have to say that, for finishing, I wouldn’t choose anything other than a smoke now. The only thing I might want more is a box with both smoke and flame on it. While I like that Avid has tried to put such a complete toolset into DS, it has always felt very clunky and disorganized to me.
It works absolutely terrible with Avid Unity, and isn’t much more help when conforming an Avid Media Composer, or Xpress timeline than anything else out there. The most you’ll get to carry over is timewarps…assuming you pray alot before you bring in your Avid timeline. If the editing gods don’t take pity on you you’ll end up no better off than us poor saps on smoke importing CMX edls.
The one bright spot for DS however, is the effects tree. It’s node-based like flame. It still drives me nuts that I don’t have a node-based tree in smoke, but if Autodesk did that I suppose they wouldn’t sell many flames anymore. In any case, I don’t think the effects tree feature makes up for so many of DS’s shortcomings.
No mesh-based 3D image warping, cruddy color correction, and an attrocious interface that vainly tries to mimic the Avid Media Composer interface.
If your needs are general, I meant finishing, composing, graphics… SMOKE.
If your needs are just composing and graphics… FLAME
Smoke/Fire is the future.
I have extensive experience on fire,inferno,avid and final cut. For finishing (and creative), smoke is the only way to go,,,forget avid or final cut systems. With the new tool sets (and plug ins) smoke can do at least 95% of what flame/inferno does based on my experiences. I have a double boot system and I am opening inferno less and less frequently.
I currently use Smoke,Eq,and occasionally Ds and symphony, and I can tell you
smoke wins hands down compared with the rest. Smokes editing capabilities as
well as compositing is second to none. Most of Ds compositing is accomplished on the timeline with track or clip effects, or for more complicated comps are done it the batch tree. This is great way to composite if you are used to Fusion or shake. I would not recommend this for first time users (can seem a bit confusing). Discreet
users would be in familiar with this type of composting (ala Batch). However the majority of the industry uses Avid and the intergration between composers and
DS become more seamless with AAF and AFE sequences. This has the edge over
Discreet as well as the media management. XML works well with final cut and
smoke but More of the industry works with AViD, however this may Change (Final
Cut 6). EQ – Still is very young. Still needs to play catch up with the rest. There is
still no vertical editing with layers. You need to accomplish this in Qeffects which is
very weak. Plugin capabilities are very robust. Media mangement is good and also
very fast with HD and 2k editing. If your doing alot of 2k and Hd with out a lot of
Fx heavy shots this platform may be for you.I used DS for 4 years and I´m a new user for smoke. The compositing module of the DS is by far superior than the one found in smoke, anyway, you could composite the same type of shot in both systems, smoke it will only take longer.
The masks in smoke are by far superior than the DS masks, and the DS lacks a true 3D workspace…
Concerning CC module i prefer the one in DS but probably because I was used to it…
Editing on the DS is also easier than in smoke….
The keyer found in smoke is better(a lot better) than the one found in the DS
The biggest problem in DS is performance and stability…. I had to restart the machine at least twice a day, which is very boring when you are in a client facing situation….
The Titling tool of the DS is very good, but again smoke is also good…If I have to decide I would bought a smoke because for me stability is very important, but also because the facility where I work has a flame where the most complex shots are done…
patdawg wrote:As someone who has been on smoke and flame for years, and DS for awhile now in addition to those I have to say that, for finishing, I wouldn’t choose anything other than a smoke now. The only thing I might want more is a box with both smoke and flame on it. While I like that Avid has tried to put such a complete toolset into DS, it has always felt very clunky and disorganized to me.It works absolutely terrible with Avid Unity, and isn’t much more help when conforming an Avid Media Composer, or Xpress timeline than anything else out there. The most you’ll get to carry over is timewarps…assuming you pray alot before you bring in your Avid timeline. If the editing gods don’t take pity on you you’ll end up no better off than us poor saps on smoke importing CMX edls.
The one bright spot for DS however, is the effects tree. It’s node-based like flame. It still drives me nuts that I don’t have a node-based tree in smoke, but if Autodesk did that I suppose they wouldn’t sell many flames anymore. In any case, I don’t think the effects tree feature makes up for so many of DS’s shortcomings.
No mesh-based 3D image warping, cruddy color correction, and an attrocious interface that vainly tries to mimic the Avid Media Composer interface.
I don’t have a Unity, but we have a Terrablock we share between a DS and two MC, and is sweet to conform from the MCs on the DS, they just export me an AFE, and it comes with titles, DVEs, plugins if we have the same, timewarps, only some wipes some times did not come very well, and if in the MC was captured 1:1 or the source is DV, then I don’t even have to recapture.
Absolutely LOVE the DS tree, it is so powerful, and one think that I love more than the FLame node compositing, all the effects are RGBA, you don’t need another branch to process you mattes.
Color correction on the DS is very lame if you don’t have the right plugins, and tracking… well… it just track things that are not that difficult to track, and is very slow.
The paint module, is far superior in the DS that the Flame paint, and I don’t know if Smoke have a paint module, but I suspect it is the same one that the Flame have, if have one.
On the DS paint module all is editable, because is vectorial, but respond as a raster one when you paint with your stylus, you can load EPS, illustrator files, and keep the color information, not only the shapes.
I have 7 years using DS, 3 months using a brand new Flame, I can talk hours about what do I love and hate about DS, I don’t know if I can say that DS or Smoke are one better than the other, they are different in my opinion. All comes to what do you need the box for.
Quote:The biggest problem in DS is performance and stability…. I had to restart the machine at least twice a day, which is very boring when you are in a client facing situation….You must had a problem with your DS, usually I turn it ON Mondays morning, and do not restart it or turn it OFF until Friday, if I do so, sometimes if ON for weeks without even exiting the program… long time that I do not remember a big crash, and I do very complex stuff on the DS.
I agree with Victor. If your DS is not stable there is a problem with the set up. I am a beta tester of the DS and I have always found it stable. Support e-mailed me once because I sent them a cab file, and they noticed my DS had not been restarted in over 1 month. That is stable.
As for the rest of this thread, what is better? it really depends on the work you do. We do only TV commercials SD and HD, and offlines are done on Adrenaline or Xpress Pro. There was one comment that all that comes across is timewarps. Very untrue. Many things come accross. Titles, DVE, dissolves, timewarps, and most other avid effects. Plug-ins have problems and so do animattes, but it is much nicer than using EDLs. The fact that you can conform quite easy, digitize at uncompressed 10bit storage, do your CC, and create effects in the effects tree, makes this very powerful. Sure, there isn’t true 3D, and many other little things that are missing, but if you don’t use them anyway, that it’s no big deal.
I don’t have any expreience with smoke, so I can’t compare, but I do know that there is no node based compositing, and that would not work for us at all. We do a lot of effects work in our DS suites. Most people only think of DS as a conform/online tool, and never experience what it can do. We used to have a DS artist that would turn down jobs saying they aren’t possible in DS, only to find our new artist we brought in has done the exact same thing on DS.
This isn’t meant to persuade you away from smoke, becasue I’m sure it is a great product, but so is DS, its just that most people don’t realize that. Give it some serious research before passing it over. You may be surprised.
That’s just my .02 canadian cents.
Ryan
Want to know what is possible in the DS when it comes to compositing and the effects tree? Take a look here, it is 90% DS, some After Effects when it comes to crazy things with fonts.
All comes to your needs, I will not change my DS for a Smoke, I’ve changed it for a Flame, although, was not a change, was more like an addition. But it just me.. I know people that like much better Smoke, I guess it is what are you use every day and make you comfortable.
PS.. can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong with my signature? Why it does not comes with the links correctly? Thanks
the original question was: which system do I recommend, Smoke or DS:
Given that there are now only two people “developing” the DS product for Avid and they can’t get their phone calls to Tewksbury (Avid’s HQ) returned, I’d say the safest bet would be to go with the Smoke. The DS is a dead (worst case) or dying (best case) product for Avid and while I’m sure they’ll continue to honor service contracts for the forseeable future, the lack of substantive development for the product makes it a lame duck.
I have nine years of experience on the DS, dating back to when it was pre-Avid ownership (I miss you SoftImage), and all I can do is mourn the loss/death of a truly unique product. Avid has taken all the teeth out of that box (seemingly out of spite) and it’s little more than a shadow of what it used to be (both operationally speaking and in terms of it’s potential).
Smoke, while flawed in many ways, represents the best “value for the dollar” today if for no other reason than the fact that it’s still being refined/tweaked by it’s developers and, if you believe the hype coming out of Autodesk/Discreet, they seem to be almost reinvigorated about that box and it’s future.
I would love to tell you that you are wrong, but I can’t because I don’t have the crystal ball. Some changes are coming in AVID with the DS development, the head of the project has changed, we have to see what happens. I would be a shame if you are right, since the DS is a very strong machine.
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