So at the end of the day when your spot is being reviewed, and changes are needed, Smoke can handle that with ease. The processing of effects is very fast on Smoke with its combination of CPU and GPU rendering. Adjustments to even the most complex of effects will render in the single digits of minutes. And this processing is done at uncompressed quality.
Here is an example of a spot that was edited from import to export in an 8 hr day. The visual look and graphic design were created day of and all inside Smoke. Only the red 13 was provided as an element from our graphics package. Versioning was also done for cut downs and day/time.
With Smoke you are finishing, not just editing. Quality postproduction leads to a quality on-air product. And viewers respond to quality, in fact, they expect it. WTHR-TV is the leading station in Indianapolis. They have always believed that post production was one of the keys to becoming a successful station. Super Bowl XLVI was recently hosted by Indianapolis, and WTHR was “Your Home of the Super Bowl”. Nothing brings more eyes to television than the big game, and as much as the game is hyped, so are the commercials. WTHR carved out 60 seconds of time for itself, to promote the news image of the station. A minute spot in the Super Bowl, even at the local level is big money. The promo you place there must be a big as the event itself and look as professional as the national spots that surround it. Smoke’s tools gave them everything they needed to produce the spot that they wanted to produce.
Smoke works really well in a broadcast environment. I have been working on Smoke since 2003 at WTHR, editing promos and commercials everyday. And if you already working on MacPros with Final Cut or Avid, there is no reason you can’t add Smoke to that same system work in the traditional XML/AAF conform workflow and use Smoke as a finishing tool to boost the production value of your spots through finishing. Smoke is very deep software with lots to offer. Every other week or so, I will be highlighting the tools inside Smoke and sharing some of my editing and creation workflows here at ProVideo Coalition on the Autodesk blog. You can also find me on the The-Area.com forums discussing Smoke for mac.
Click here to See Part I