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All right, everyone.
Hey, let's get ready to rumble!
If you're at an NAB, there's probably a
couple of big news stories.
One of those is of course the all new Smoke that we
announced on Sunday.
It's been getting a huge amount of buzz and attention.
We've had packed theaters all day.
And we can stand up there all day and talk about
how great it is.
But I think what's really interesting is seeing kind of
what the industry thinks about it a little bit, and also
talking about--
one of the reasons we redesigned Smoke was to try to
meet the needs of editors.
I think it's been a tumultuous year, to say the least, for
folks in the professional video market.
And I think there've been a lot of changes that we
certainly looked at and talked to people about when we
decided to re-architect Smoke, and try to create this new
solution for connected editing and effect.
So I decided to ask some folks from the industry to come up.
So we have the creative genius behind Biscardi Creative
Media, Walter Biscardi, also known from Creative Cow.
I think you're the most prolific poster
there or one of them?
Yeah, it's something like that.
I don't know.
20,000 Whatever.
I have a lot of time on my hands, apparently.
Wow.
He's actually texting from his pocket right now.
I am.
Wait, I'm going to start tweeting right from here.
We also have Evan Schechtman, the CTO of
Radical Media New York.
Evan's been helping us out quite a bit.
But Evan brings a great industry perspective on
everything from the editorial process to
the finishing process.
All right, everybody, wave. Wave. There we go.
Thanks, everybody.
You're going to live tweet.
Yeah, we're going to tweet right from here.
How cool is that?
And we also have Marc-Andre Ferguson, who is the Smoke
industry manager.
But more than that, Marc-Andre is working for Autodesk,
because of what he brings to us.
We want to understand the market.
And we have great technology and great engineers.
But Marc-Andre is actually the leader of the Final Cut Pro
user group in Montreal.
So for us, it's extremely valuable to have Marc-Andre
working with us to help validate and make sure that
the solutions we're putting out there really do meet the
needs of the market and of the professional editor.
We also win all this stuff at the SuperMeet.
Yeah, so--
Exactly.
--welcome, gentlemen.
I just want to start out--
I have a feeling I could ask one question and then I'll
probably walk away for 30 minutes.
But--
What?
--I wanted to start--
Yeah, we did that yesterday.
Walter, since you're our special guest here, tell us
what do you think of what we've announced with Smoke?
You've seen it.
You've got an--
Yeah, I've seen it.
--up-close look.
Well, basically, it's everything that I told
Marc-Andre that I wanted to see about nine months ago.
Seriously, nine months ago, he gave me Smoke 2012.
I opened it once.
I closed it.
I opened it again.
I closed it.
He kept pushing me.
He's like, try to use it, try to use it.
And I said look, here's the problem.
It's too confusing.
I'm going to have to train somebody how to use it.
And it's $15,000.
And I'm not going to tell somebody else to go out and
buy $15,000 software that one, they need to learn and then
two, they have to keep using it or you're going to forget
how to use it.
So I said give me a simple editor's interface that I
understand.
Fix some of this node stuff, so it flows along a little
easier and makes a little more sense to my After Effects
brain and my Final Cut Pro and Avid brain.
And last Thursday, he called me up and goes
here's the new Smoke.
And I literally got up and down.
I was running around like a little girl.
I grab a laptop.
I'm running down the hallway to show my editors.
I'm like Smoke!
Smoke!
Smoke!
It was that exciting.
And it was really everything that I've wanted to see in a
non-linear editor.
Evan?
Well, I was going to ask Evan--
now, to set the record straight, your facility
purchased Smoke in the previous incarnation.
Yes.
But we, of course, gave you a preview of the new Smoke as
well, and let you use it in some production testing.
Absolutely.
As much as we liked 2012, and it was really important to the
end of the editing pipeline, it was definitely going to be
an uphill battle of getting people trained or finding
freelancers from the market.
So as much as the budget was actually there for a low
number of seats, it was going to be pretty tough to get it
into the flow, because--
and Walt, you really put it best. By the way, when Walter
and I agree on something, that's usually just--
That's really good.
--trustworthy unto itself.
If you remember last year, we didn't agree on much.
No.
Yeah.
We were frenemies.
Now we're actually friends, brought together--
We were always friendly.
We didn't agree.
But we were always friendly.
That's true.
Yes.
I'm going to sit like this.
So the barrier of entry, at different parts of the
process, have been completely eliminated.
And it's funny, in a vacuum, Walter and I
used the same word.
We were giddy.
Because for 10 years, year over year, when we talked to
the different NLE manufacturers, we kept saying
OK, well what's beyond on the track-based workflow?
What's beyond the track-based workflow?
And each year, not that I'm not knocking it, because we
get great features from them, we got features that suited
them and their future pipeline.
And I felt like as time went on, we had less and less of a
voice that had any effect on the product.
And so, we were already on board with 2012.
And I got a snapshot of 2013, and knew immediately the
impact that would have, not to mention two seats turns into
buying eight seats.
So one of the things we've been talking about are some of
the changes in the industry.
And I think that there's a certain pressure that the guy
sitting in the editor's chair feels as technology goes crazy
around them.
People are shooting more.
Clients are expecting more.
Now, everyone's going to expect 4K after NAB this year.
So can you guys talk a little bit about that?
What is the life of the editor today in terms of having to
deliver effects--
I mean, the editor's not the editor anymore.
The editor's the compositor, the graphic designer, the
sound designer.
He's the everything man.
And I didn't realize--
I was always pushing for--
I always wanted a nice suite of tools.
That was one of things I really missed.
When they went Final Cut X, I said oh, I like
the suite of tools.
I can jump from one thing to the other.
The Super App'll never work.
And then I saw this.
I went OK.
This is interesting because it is a Super
App and it is snappy.
And by the way, it's running on an iMac--
which that blew me away, first of all, that you could do all
this with an iMac.
And what I love about the whole thing is that it always
comes back to the timeline.
The whole thing is designed around the timeline, which is
something that us as an editor of Final Cut Pro, Avid, Adobe,
whatever you've used, it makes sense.
You see the timeline.
You go OK, I can work with this.
I want to do color grading.
Now, the whole interface just switches to a color grader.
I want to do effects.
It switches to the effects panel.
But it always comes back to the timeline.
So, to me, it's something that an editor who's used anything
can pick up in about 20 minutes to a day.
Something like that.
I mean, if you know Final Cut Pro or you know Avid Media
Composer, or you know Premiere, you can jump into
Smoke really, really quickly.
Because it was designed to be as familiar as possible to
non-linear editors, so you wouldn't have the learning
curve of learning how to edit with our software, but
actually jump into its effects capabilities faster.
That was the whole point of the redesign.
We wanted to make it as familiar as possible.
How long did this take for you guys to actually do this?
I'd say several years.
Several years.
Ever since we started shipping Smoke on the Mac, which was in
December 2009, the first version came out, we're all
happy that we were leveraging the power of our tools and
putting it into hands of Final Cut editors, Media Composer
editors, and After Effects artists.
And we saw that there was still this learning curve.
There was still this mystique around this tool that people
thought it was very interesting, it was very
powerful, but not enough people for us took the lead
and went into investing in a big Smoke solution.
So we wanted to bring it to their level without
compromising its power.
So that's very important.
We made smoke under the hood actually better than what he
used to be, but gave it a e-friendlier and more easy to
use interface.
I think you said it best. Evan, you tried it yesterday
or Sunday, it was like the sexy girl at a party that
you're always scared to walk up to
because she's super cool.
Because the Smoke artist, like they would walk in, and
they're like the fighter jet pilots.
That's right.
You know, and we're like the guy flying the little Cessna.
We're like ooh, man, I wish I could be the Smoke guy, 'cause
they're so cool.
Look at what they do.
Then we found that the hot chick is into editors.
And now--
Exactly.
--it's a wonderful marriage.
I think that a lot of editors in our facilities, content
creators, artists, whatever you want to call them--
I think they get suite fatigue--
I'm not even kidding-- in that these suites of software-- and
it's happening, again, right across the hall--
they keep expanding out with more and more
and more in the package.
And I think that they cannot put all their thought equity
in one place.
And so I don't think that people-- they're like the jack
of all trades but master of none when it comes to suites.
And to jump into a niche sound product to take care of
something that obviously you're going to go to a bigger
desk to do in some situations, I just didn't see anyone
getting the aggregate value out of suites anymore.
Yes, they would leverage different pieces of it.
All right, DVD authoring, sure, for whoever
does Blu-ray authoring.
We do.
Yes, and some of the core-- yeah, of course, it's still a
deliverable.
So those are the parts of the process that people were
leveraging.
But all the different niche pieces of it, I didn't see as
really adding an immense amount of value to it, because
there's just no way that one person has enough time to be
expert on all of it, whereas here, when you fold it all
inward, that person can really sit in one environment and
become the master of the rooms within the environment.
I think it's more likely that we're going to see people
being able to raise the bar personally, because thought
equity's in one spot.
So I have a question for you guys, because one of the
things that's interesting about Smoke, I think, as far
as making it unique, is it does
bring everything together.
I think you can choose to edit in Smoke, or you could work
with something like Final Cut and then bring it in.
And I'm curious if you guys have a philosophy of how you
see it fitting in your facility.
Because I suspect it might be a little
different for both of you--
That's cats and dogs.
--based on your workflow.
Yeah, we're like different there.
Go ahead.
Why don't you start?
Well, for us--
And then I'll tell them how you're wrong.
That's right.
Thank you.
I'm used to that.
It's healthy.
We forgot the drinking game paradigm.
It's very healthy.
So right now, it's one flavor of Final Cut.
It's Final Cut Slow, or Final Cut VII or Final Cut X in our
environment.
And it depends on the size of the job right now, because
Final Cut X is an unfinished piece of business.
But for us, you're not going to take all of the time and
workflow that has been developed over a decade.
The assistants understand the flow.
The engineers get involved in workflow and ingest. The
producers understand that flow.
We're not going to change that overnight, right?
I use the metaphor of turning an aircraft carrier.
It doesn't turn on a dime.
It takes some time.
And transition, on any product, takes time, which is
why I'm really glad you guys are releasing it in June, as a
free public beta, because the same thing with Cut X--
although it's released, and a lot of people would call it
beta, it's turning that ship.
And so for us, those tools--
we have more people on board who understand how to organize
material, superimpose greater value on that material with
meta-tagging or labeling of stuff in bins.
They tell their stories quickly in that tool, but
importantly for us, is using XML, very deep XML.
And in Smoke, it's native.
So there's no third-party step going between the storytelling
tool and ingest of the project into Smoke.
And then you could change your hat, and then put the coat of
polish and finish.
So for us, it's some flavor of Final Cut Pro, protecting that
story and the work that we've done, and then bringing it
over to Smoke for a finish.
And for us, the most important thing right out the bat was to
make sure that it still worked in my infrastructure.
Because I didn't want to get this $3,495 tool and suddenly
have to upgrade my storage, and upgrade my computers, and
upgrade everything.
And video cards.
And video card and everything, so it works with all of my
native infrastructure, including my ethernet-based
SANs from Small Tree.
I mean if you guys follow me, you know, I use ethernet-based
storage, which only runs about 100 megabytes a second.
And one of the neat things that Smoke now does, it allows
you to choose your render format.
And you can choose ProRes instead of rendering the DPX
for everything.
And that was huge for me because I don't want to make a
tremendous new investment.
Now I know a lot of you have heard that I'm going to be
buying some Avids as well.
And Smoke is going to fit right into that workflow.
We're going to be starting up some reality series.
And what I see happening in the near term, probably before
the end of the year--
I have five full-time employees--
I think what's going to happen is those five full-time
employees are all going to have their own Smoke
workstation.
And when they're doing a job, they're going to go Smoke
end-to-end.
When we're doing a reality series, I'm going to have a
bunch of iMacs with Media Composer on them.
And they're going to go ahead and cut the story and get the
story told and then we're going to move them into the
Smoke to finish.
So we're basically going to have a Smoke end-to-end and
then an Avid-to-Smoke workflow.
So can you guys tell me a little bit
about your media workflows?
It doesn't have to be specific to Smoke, but what we've been
talking and showing a lot is Smoke working at a variety of
configurations.
But if you look at what AJA's doing with their Thunderbolt
technology, the quad is a good example of capturing or 4K
acquisition or looking at what Marc-Andre's been demoing over
on the RED booth showing Smoke.
What are your clients asking you to deliver?
Is it all HD?
Are they asking for higher?
Are you acquiring high res?
I deliver two beta SP tapes a month.
That's not true.
That is absolutely 100% true.
Seriously.
Beta SP now.
I'll believe that.
I wish I was delivering 3/4--
They still work.
--be even funnier.
I still have one in my closet.
If you want to buy it, I have one in my closet.
Do you really?
Yes.
I want a quad machine so bad.
It's 17 years old.
But it still works.
One of the beauties of it-- we do this series called "This
American Land." And we have stringers
all over the country.
And they shoot every single format under the sun.
So doing the native resolution editing, it's going to be
really big for us that's going to cut down some time.
Because right now, like on Avid, we have to conform
everything over to make it nice and
smooth all the way through.
But we'll probably move that series into the Smoke.
That will be our full-time editors working on that.
And then that's all delivered to HDCam.
We're not going into the film and the 2K yet.
I believe you are, right?
Yeah.
You're delivering to that?
Yeah, yup.
Well, it depends on the commercial work
or music video work.
We did the Sting concert, his 60th birthday concert.
And that was RED Epic 5K HDR, but delivering in 1080.
And the thing that was amazing for us is obviously being able
to shoot that large, but deliver a 1080.
There were shots of Lady Gaga that we blew up 300 percent,
and no one can tell.
So it turns a six-camera job into an infinite number of
camera job that way.
But even stuff like that--
And I think our work is similar in that way that if
you're doing documentary storytelling, then you have
the principal stuff you're shooting on.
And our environment, a lot of video--
documentary storytelling-- is like EX3, all right, Sony EX--
as primary camera.
Second shooter is usually a Canon 5D Mark II or possibly
even the new Blackmagic camera as like a Bcam.
That could be fun.
That could be really fun.
There's GoPro in there, when we suction cup it to somebody
or something.
And then there's all the legacy footage, which comes
from everything from 3/4-- which is
the work of the devil--
VHS, DV or whatever it is to tell the story.
And so that's where I keep making this joke that ProRes
is the Esperanto of the post-production world.
So a lot of legacy stuff comes in as ProRes, but we do want
to keep a lot of the EX and the RED.
We want to keep that native.
And so really there is a mix.
And every NLE pretty much has Kodak coexistence and Frame
Rate coexistence and Frame Size coexistence.
And that's no different in Smoke.
And so that continues just to support the kind of mess that
exists in our timeline.
And it supports it natively there as well.
And the interesting aspect also of Smoke is that it's
totally resolution independent.
So we've got a client like Glyph, for example, that makes
these video walls for museums, for exhibits, and these
totally immersive experiences.
And they build all of this in Smoke, based on several layers
of HD or weird resolutions from all sorts of cameras.
And they blend seamlessly.
It makes this interesting format that you feed to video
play out servers.
So obviously, working in Smoke for that is interesting.
Resolution independence is key.
Key.
So tell me a little bit, what do you guys--
I think all three of you are very well established.
You guys have facilities that you either own or owned and
transitioned into--
I sold.
I'm a sell-out.
Yeah, he is.
You're a sell-out.
I've heard that about you.
Nice problem to have.
And Marc-Andre, you've got industry experience.
You're working for Autodesk now.
But what do you recommend the folks that are kind of
starting up trying to get into this game?
I know, Evan, you've spoken about it a lot but--
Yes.
What's the path?
You mean, from a freelance point of view?
Or just getting into the industry?
I think, more for if you're trying to be that
professional-level editor.
You want to move beyond kind of the prosumer level.
Like, what's a path?
This is not really a Smoke question.
I just think it's an interesting discussion to have
with you guys.
Well, I mean for me, I started out in news.
I started out at CNN.
And then from CNN, I went on-- believe it or not-- to the
largest casino in the world, Foxwoods Resort Casino in
Connecticut of all places.
And that's where I learned that I could design a facility
and manage a facility.
And then I came back down here and started my own place.
And everybody always asks me that.
How do I get in the business?
How do I get in the business?
And one of the best ways is just to be annoying.
If you keep pestering me, eventually I'm going to say
sure, come on and do an internship.
But today, everybody's got access to cameras.
Everybody's got access to some sort of editing tool on an
iMac or a Windows machine.
Just start cutting.
I mean, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube that's amazing.
What I'm always looking for is storytelling.
We do all documentary work.
And if you send me a reel with a lot of motion graphics on
it, I'm not really going to look at it that much.
I'm looking for somebody who can just tell a
story, cut a story.
And that was the one thing that actually was missing in
this tool that this is now going to let us do with 2013.
But if you want to get in the industry, you--
to me, anyway-- just keep cutting.
Watch movies.
Why do you like that cut?
Why do you like the pacing of that film?
Just start cutting anything and everything.
And when you think you've got something to show somebody
like Evan or me or anybody, just start emailing and
pestering the heck out of people and say
hey, I've got a link.
It's up on YouTube.
Go look at it.
It actually unfortunately does work, the pestering.
Now that I've just welcomed--
I just changed my email address 20 minutes ago.
I actually tell-- we do a lot of tours with film schools.
And I tell the people right when they walk in that they
have an unprecedented level of access to software that did
not exist five years ago or ten years ago.
Just to run down the list, there's a version of DaVinci
Resolve available for free.
This is a beta starting in June
that's immediately available.
Every Adobe app is available for free download with an
email address.
We know that email addresses are so hard to get.
Final Cut Pro X, just roll your clock back.
You know this is going out over the interwebs.
Nicely done, my friend.
Just trash your preference file.
They want it to spread like a disease.
So Pro Tools, it's the same thing.
Avid, it's the same thing.
If you want it bad enough, there is absolutely nothing
standing in your way of downloading it, locking
yourself in a room--
if you're that disciplined--
and putting yourself through the motions of reading the
manual or the tutorial, which is terribly boring, and then
going out and--
shoot your friend's band.
Shoot a wedding.
Shoot a party.
Shoot something.
Because as soon as you do a tutorial, you need to follow
it up as quickly as possible with exercising it, or you
will forget it.
So the problem is for people who run facilities, from a
technical perspective--
and Walter's absolutely right, that
creativity is still king--
that I have an elevated expectation of what someone
will know when they knock on the door.
Especially like "I want to do visual storytelling," well,
then, my question will be do you know Smoke?
Do you know After Effects?
Do you understand how to make an editor sing when it comes
to the vertical stacking and effects
workflow of those tools?
If not, shame on you.
Because there's absolutely no reason.
The barrier of entry is gone.
It no longer exists whatsoever.
And cost really isn't it, anymore.
I studied film in film school.
And I immediately started to study--
Studied what?
Film?
Yeah.
I did Super 8 film.
I cut up black and whites.
You actually cut it-- spliced?
Oh, that's cool.
You know what?
I loved that.
Because it was extremely organic.
And it's one thing that I always missed in software for
a long time.
That and the fact that computers were not fast enough
for me for several, several years.
I remember the first G4 was the first one that actually
could move layers around in real time for me.
And then I look at a tool like Smoke.
And I look at the power of computers.
Just like Evan was saying, you've got extremely powerful
computers that are actually affordable now.
If you haven't tried the new iMacs, give it a whirl.
They're really, really fast. And they're more affordable.
Cameras are more affordable than ever.
And just go out and make things.
I mean, I also get film students are or production
students that ask what they do?
And I said did you study art history?
That's usually my first question.
Because they learn a software.
They don't know how to do compositing, in the art sense,
that there are rules of three and stuff like that.
Learn that, then learn the software, and then use it.
That's the only way that you can get in the business,
because computer animation schools churn out dozens and
dozens of students every year.
But all they have is the reel that they made at the school.
Just do something for fun.
That is actually worth more in experience than anything.
And I hate to say it, but we are out of time.
Really?
That was fast.
Wow, it went
really fast. Wow.
Unless my phone is wrong.
We didn't even get to do our dance number.
I know Tim speaks really fast.
Should we just do it real quick?
No.
That would be so ugly.
Are we going to have a hug?
The last time I tried to lift you, that just went bad.
Embarrassing.
That was bad, really bad.
So you guys can stick around for a few minutes if some
folks want to--
Sure.
--ask some questions and come on up.
Sure, why not?
One of the things, a highlight of tonight at the SuperMeet--
I think it's going to be the best demo of the night.
You're doing your thing?
Evan and Marc-Andre.
Oh, Marc-Andre's doing it.
No, they're both going to be up there together.
Oh, they're both going to be up there together.
Yes, we are.
Final Cut Pro X and Smoke making sweet, sweet love.
In front of 10,000 people.
Man, you're going to--
[OOMPH]
rock it.
10,000 people.
10,000 people.
No pressure.
Yeah, that's how big it is this year.
It's huge.
And Walter's going to base his buying decisions on how well
your demo goes.
So I just want to--
Oh, OK, No pressure.
All right.
Well, thanks guys.
This is fantastic.
Thanks for having us.
I encourage you all to check out Smoke.
Autodesk.com/smoke-trial.
In June, you'll be able to get a full-working copy.
We're going to get Walter a copy, so he can come back and
get on Creative Cow and tell us what he thinks of it, when
he puts it into his facility.
Yeah!
Yeah.
I can't wait.
We're just glad you're all hanging out.
So let's cue up some videos.
And we'll be back.
Thanks guys.
You too.