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Combustion 2 is the latest effort from Discreet to put the power of highend compositing into the hands of desktop media artists. It allows resolution-- independent compositing, animation, effects, and vector painting for video, film, and the Web. Even at only its second version, the product has developed into a rich set of tools and includes some dazzling effects not found elsewhere.
Discreet describes the interface as an "Artists' User Interface." The first thing new users might notice is how the composed scene is front and center throughout the creation process. It may seem like a natural choice, but some compositing programs bury the user in a sea of sub-menus. Or worse, things get more cluttered with windows as a project progresses.
Combustion 2 does away with Windows and Microsoft Office layouts, and the result is a double-edged sword. Things might not be where you would instinctively expect them in typical Windows programs.
Although the pull-down menus somewhat follow convention and there's generous support for right-click context commands, chances are you'll be starting at zero when you launch into Combustion's learning curve. The upside is when you get a handle on the interface, which really does not take all that long, and things start to make beautiful sense. Rarely do you jump into a sub-screen; the lower third of the interface instinctively changes according to what is happening above. In addition, lots of built-in realtime commands mean that when you, say, add a blue tint to a scene for a cold feel, the footage snaps immediately to the new look without having to render.
The interface is not entirely different from those of most compositing programs; the timeline and option boxes are all there. What is different is how efficient and concise the program feels. I was able to work at 1024x768 and never once felt like menu options were crowded or hard to reach.
The program allows for multi-format productions, meaning that if I want to slide a QuickTime movie in right after an AVI file in the timeline, that's just fine. Combustion works in true 3D space and offers multiple viewpoints, so you can always wheel around your...