I briefly overheard 2 guys talking at NAB, the conversation was something like this: "Yes, so it does everything After Effects does, but it performs everything in real time, no more rendering! It's a real game changer."

They were walking in another direction, so I missed the rest of the conversation. What performs like After Effects, but in real time?

They might have been talking about AEs new global caching which takes advantage of every single frame you have rendered... but as of now I dont know of any compositing software that requires no rendering. I don't think any graphics cards out now are powerful enough for on the fly playback of Ae/Motion/Scratch style applications...

I'm guessing it's this, just announced at NAB: Smoke - Professional Video Editing Software for Mac - Autodesk (http://usa.autodesk.com/smoke-for-mac/)

the effect software was a $15,000 program which apparently is included in the new NLE, still costs $3500 but for the pro facility probably a great deal. I understand Smoke runs rings around AE....a little out of my league, but worth looking at....