Autodesk 2007 Offerings

Autodesk have updated their high end range and added a few additional bits and pieces reports creative cow. Smoke 2007, Fire 2007, Flame 2007 and Flint 2007 all provide improved performance and functionality as well as greater cross platform integration (FCP/Avid).


Smoke

• Improved performance in Burn, Clip History, Archiving, and file I/O.
• Architectural changes to increase robustness and better performance to accelerate project turnaround time.
• Increased ability to create effects in the DVE and Timeline
• New Rotoscoping tools to control edge softness and add motion blur to multiple shapes selectively.
• Redesigned clip library.
• Increased archiving options.
• Storage options including firewire drives (hmmm could this be important for FCP)
• AAF support for Avid conforms
• Improved FCP support fro XML rebuilding timelines with most transitions and effects in tact.
• Improved 3d support.
• Varicam variable frame rate in tact.

Flame

• Improved performance in Batch, Burn, Clip History, Archiving, and file I/O.
• Architectural changes to increase robustness and better performance to accelerate project turnaround time.
• New Rotoscoping tools to control edge softness and add motion blur to multiple shapes selectively.
• Redesigned clip library.
• Increased archiving options.
• Layer-based Paint offers new brush effects and attributes with very responsive, high-quality paint tool.
• Paint on any layer while simultaneously viewing the final composition for fast and accurate results.
• Add and animate cameras within a source node independently of the main scene camera for sophisticated compositions and effects.
• New Motion Estimation technology.
• Improved 3d support.
• Storage options including firewire drives.

Also, the new Backdraft Conform provides a way for auto-conforms to happen on the network utilising another workstation and work in the background while editor/creatives can crack on with the important stuff. I will try to wrangle a demo at Discreet to see how the workflow actually happens in practice as the details on the Discreet site is relatively sparse. But the gist is: finish your fcp offline and fire off an xml to the smoke which will conform the media in the background.

Finally, Autodesk Wiretap 2007 enables remote project management and third-party file exchange by allowing platform independent access to media and metadata in the Autodesk Stone file system. You can now take advantage of Infiniband networking with throughput of 400 MB per second. I will write about Infiniband in the not too distant future, but for now I will just say that it is a new networking standard similar to Ethernet, but LOADS faster which has been developed by Inetl.

In a nutshell you can write a little software to let your other workstations access the media and project information so you can run tasks which would normally need a Suite. The site doesn’t give specifics, but I imagine you could do things like input, output, encode, conform networking media. They do give examples of third party companies like Telestream, Inc., Fairlight ESP Pty., Maximum Throughput, Inc., and Creative Technologies.