BCC AVX - 9.0.2 Release Notes

Tags: Continuum Complete

Boris Continuum Complete AVX 9.0.2 was released on 8/19/2014 and is an update to:

 

Feature Enhancements in BCC AVX 9.0.2 :

  • 16 bit rendering (with an internal float render pipeline) for all effects in the 3D Objects category.
  • Hardware antialiasing for enhanced edge quality in the 3D Objects category.
  • 3D Objects filters now support preserving intermediate alpha channels in multi-effect stacks.
  • Chroma Key Studio workflow improvements
    • Custom Spline Masking allows drawing masks while the underlying key is disabled to permit easier drawing.
    • View Current Matte - quick way to view the mate with any combination of matte processing passes applied.
    • View Matte Noise - handy preview of the matte "status" which quickly identifies any incomplete areas of the key or print through problems in the foreground.
    • Ability to disable the Chroma Key and/or Spill Suppression passes independently for simplified setup.
  • FX Browser UI enhancements
    • Improved workspace management including more accurate saving/restoring of workspace configurations.
    • Enhanced thumbnail previews of transitions and other time sensitive filters - thumbnails now preview towards the effect midpoints for more representative results.
    • Improved timeline navigation.
    • Improved window handling on Retina displays.
  • Pan and Zoom - Action/Title Safe Guides improvements.
    • Separate controls for enabling action and title safe guides independently.
    • Option for 4:3 guides in 16:9 projects.
    • Improved look with more subtle colors and drop shadows for better visibility.
  • Improved Motion Tracker Data Import (including Mocha data).
    • Tracker Time Offset control allows trimming clips after they have been previously tracked without the need to retrack.
    • New "Use External Data" indicator simplifies workflows involving externally imported data such as from Mocha or from previous BCC tracker runs.
  • Safe Levels preference settings for customized workflows:
    • Save Levels Default - set your preferred default levels
    • Save Levels Global Override - force a project to render with safe levels set a particular way.
  • Integrated Beat Reactor added to Stage Light and Laser Beam.
  • New Smoke Radius control in Laser Beam.
  • Improved default settings for Film Glow and Fast Film Glow.
  • New presets added to many filters.
  • Composite On Source and Gamma Adjustment added to Stage Light.
  • Built in Motion Blur added to Corner Pin.
  • Tracker Time Offset added to Corner Pin.
  • Colored Background option added to Swish Pan.
  • Brightness Peak and Control Peak added to Lens Transition.
  • Help Documentation refinements.
  • Numerous bug fixes.

 

Bug Fixes In BCC AVX 9.0.2 :

  • Sporadic instability when selecting transition presets rapidly in the FX Browser.
  • Modify default value of Blur Delay in Swish Pan to yield more typical default behavior.
  • FX Browser should open by default such that its current timeline indicator would match the current time indicator in the host timeline.
  • Memory leak when repeatedly opening and closing the FX Browser in some filters.
  • Extruded Spline: Custom/Saved Path shifts when in lower resolution.
  • Instability in Grunge and other OGL filters on older graphics cards when increasing softness or blur settings to high values.
  • FX Browser - inaccurate previews of particle filter presets
  • Help Docs - Formatting problem when multiple images in a table had different frame aspect ratios
  • Grunge - noise does not animate smoothly and can yield unexpected results at some settings
  • FX Browser - doesn't allow accurately clicking in its preview timeline to return to clip's exact beginning.
  • Motion Tracker - the 4 sliders in the Preprocess group are disabled when Track On-the-Fly is enabled wheras they should be available for adjustments to fine tune the tracking process.
  • Pan and Zoom - Motion blur not rendering correctly on 3D rotations in some situations.
  • FX Browser - Pixel Chooser presets display wrong filter name in the standalone FX Browser.
  • FX Browser - Pixel Chooser standalone filter - Most presets don’t show up in stand alone Pixel Chooser filter’s FX Browser.
  • FX Browser - Pixel Chooser presets that use geometric regions are displayed as solid white.
  • Damaged TV- When used on alpha footage / Title the original undistorted footage is still visible underneath.
  • Promoting older AVX 1.5 effects to AVX 2.0 crashes MC 8.
  • Grid Wipe - When set to Pct. Done, animation occurs between 0% and 1% instead of 0% and 100% in AVX hosts.
  • Trails Basic - instability when selecting pyramid smoother option.
  • Extruded/Type On Text - Mac - Style Skew X and Y cannot be adjusted by dragging in Edit Text Window.
  • Extruded/Type On Text - Mac - Font sizes in the drop down menu of the Edit Text Window are unselectable.
  • Pan and Zoom- "Interpolation" parameter should be renamed "Scale Interpolation" for clarity of use.
  • Grunge - Blur and Noise performance improvements.
  • Extruded EPS - EPS files are not scaled appropriately in projects larger than SD (e.g. HD, 4K).
  • Grunge - Erosion softness unexpectedly makes texture darker when it is less than 100% opaque
  • Grunge - Softness “pulses” when increasing amount.
  • Laser Beam - the source light often looks cut off abruptly with no way to soften it.
  • Laser Beam - smoke doesn’t fit to ends of beam realistically
  • Film Damage- Dirt opacity changes randomly as other params change.
  • 3D Objects - 3D perspective can be slightly off in some situations.
  • BCC Lens Flare 3D, BCC Lens Flare Dissolve, BCC Lens Flash Spiked - change in Stripe Color does not update (requires forcing refresh by changing another param)
  • Scanlines and 3D Extruded Image Shatter - interlaced AVX projects display stretched looking footage.
  • FX Browser - on macintosh systems with retina display, tabs in the FX Browser UI do not respond to mouse click+drag and cannot be moved.
  • FX Browser - ensure highest quality preview when preview size is at exactly 100%.
  • Every filter should include a Default preset.
  • Fx Browser - instability when typing “Ctrl+1” with the browser open.
  • Extruded Text in AVX - when path option is enabled, text position will change depending on project resolution (yellow-yellow/green-green) .
  • Grunge - Apply and transformation groups should be disabled if 'Use Texture' is disabled
  • Grunge - Several Contextual controls aren’t working properly - displayed when they should be hidden or active when they should be inactive.
  • Contextual control problems with the drop shadow controls in Light Wipe.
  • Particle Emitter 3D - Range for Position Z for emitter should extend further than -1 on all hosts.
  • FX Browser - certain presets render as solid black in the browser.
  • Enabling 3D in Pan & Zoom filter with Crop + Motion Blur can cause odd scaling and a jump in the animation.
  • Integrated FX Browser should completely skip displaying presets that don’t belong to that filter (rather than displaying them as blacked out).
  • Documentation for Grid Wipe, Lens Distortion Wipe, Light Wipe, and Tile Wipe transitions was extended to demonstrate proper usage of these transitions when applied as single sided or when applied to alpha clips.
  • AVX and OFX - Edge Light presets don’t load either in the normal menu or in the FX Browser.
  • Lens Flare 3D - obscuration map doesn’t work for alpha in 8/16bit color depth.
  • BCC Scanlines, Damaged TV, and LED - PixelChooser creates transparency in the layer it is applied to where it should be revealing unaffected Source.
  • Laser Beam and Stage Light should have options to composite over the source image.
  • FX Browser - Corner Pin- presets don't look correct in the browser.
  • Film Grain - Green and Blue Amount controls have an effect even when contextually disabled.
  • Fx Browser - Lens Correction presets shift the pan setting incorrectly if you apply the filter in reduced resolution.
  • Stage Light - Point lights don’t show any color.
  • FX Browser - Animation timing is off when previewing animated presets
  • Misalignment - FX Browser not displaying correct render previews for some presets.
  • Jitter - several had incorrect settings for Position Y value.
  • Several help docs fail to load in AVX
  • Standalone FX Browser - Avid Media Composer - video clips are swapped when previewing Transitions.
  • Brightness and Contrast - presets fail to load in some hosts.
  • Ripple Dissolve produces very hard edged circle if Radius Peak is lowered much below the Inside Radius value.
  • FX Browser - sporadic freeze when trying to save a workspace on windows.
  • FX Browser - Win - The dialog to set the current folder in the FX Browser is not modal leading to potential instability.
  • Clicking Help for BCC Rays Streaky launches BCC Rays help file (& vice versa).
  • Mosaic - Scramble parameter does not scramble the mosaic tiles.
  • FX Browser - Win AVX - sporadic hang when applying and then canceling animated presets from the browser.
  • FX Browser - Win - Animated preset apply dialog is not modal in the FX Browser leading to potential instability
  • Cylinder - Faces are half as wide as they should be and doubled.
  • Rectangular Wipe incorrectly has Gradient turned on by default.
  • Laser Beam - Controls don’t line up accurately in non-square PAR comps.
  • Stage Light - Light doesn’t look right in non-square PAR
  • Grunge - Chromatic Aberration feature, when blur in Vignette feature is enabled, renders white pixels over blur region
  • Grunge/ Lens Flare 3D - Orbs - scale random doesn’t work.
  • Lens Flare 3D/Grunge Orbs- Depth blur random and Depth Blur are not connected at all.
  • LED filter renders black strip along the top and right of the comp if less than 50 percent of a dot is visible causing a jump in animation.
  • Grunge - Spot light- cone feather doesn’t follow cone size.
  • FX Browser - Particle Emitter 3D animated presets with moving emitter locations and Prerun enabled look very different in the browser than in the host.
  • FX Browser - Particle Emitter 3D - some presets appear brighter in the browser than in the host.
  • Pixel Chooser presets don’t load in the conventional preset menus in many filters - no change occurs.

 

What's New in BCC AVX 9 (Recap of major changes since BCC 8):

  •  FX Browser™ - our best-in-class new graphical preset browser. Preview your preset library over moving host video, not just static frames, with two different workflows. The Integrated FX Browser™ is available inside every effect and allows intuitive preview of all presets for that effect. The Standalone FX Browser™ is applied as a separate standalone effect and allows browsing presets from EVERY effect in the full BCC library.
  • 10 new effects and 25 new transitions for a total of 35 new filters:

Effects:

2-Strip Color Fast Film Process Magic Sharp
Chroma Key Studio Grunge Pan & Zoom - now 3D
Edge Grunge Laser Beam Vignette
Fast Film Glow Lens Correction  

Transitions:

Blobs Wipe Lens Distortion Wipe Ripple Dissolve
Blur Dissolve Lens Flare Dissolve Tile Wipe
Checker Wipe Lens Flare Round Tritone Dissolve
Composite Dissolve Lens Flare Spiked Twister
Damaged TV Dissolve Lens Flash Vector Blur Dissolve
Fast Film Glow Dissolve Light Wipe Vignette Wipe
Film Glow Dissolve Rays Dissolve Water Waves Dissolve
Flutter Cut Ribbon Wipe  
Grid Wipe Rings Wipe  
  • Pan and Zoom enhancements:
    • 3D moves
    • Cropping
    • Vignette
    • Improved action/title safe guides
  • Animation Tuning heads up display overlays in all transitions for intuitive tweaking of transition timing directly in your Composition/Preview pane.
  • 16 bit rendering (and internal float rendering pipeline) for effects in the 3D Objects category.
  • Hardware antialiasing for enhanced edge quality in the 3D Objects category.
  • 3D Objects filters now support preserving intermediate alpha channels in multi-effect stacks.
  • Improved Motion Tracker External Data Import workflows (including Mocha data).
  • Safe Levels workflow preferences.
  • Improved default settings for Film Glow and Fast Film Glow.
  • New HTML-based help system offering richer and more dynamic learning guides.
  • GPU acceleration of important filters such as Film Glow and Film Process.
  • Major performance improvements in some OpenGL filters such as Damanged TV, Scanlines, and Glint.
  • New Gradient feature in many BCC Wipe transitions.
  • Integrated Beat Reactor added to Stage Light.
  • Built in Motion Blur added to Corner Pin.
  • New presets added across a wide range of effects.
  • Numerous bug fixes.

 

Registration:
Make sure to register your product in order to receive the latest technical and upgrade information.

 

Training:

 Numerous resources are available for helping you get the most out of Boris Continuum Complete.

  • Help documents for individual BCC effects are accessible directly from each plug-in’s UI.  The entire BCC Help Documention library is also available on the BorisFX website, including access to a downloadable version for browsing offline BCC Help Documentation.
  • BorisTV video tutorials cover a huge range of topics from introductions to the Fundamentals, to deep training Webinar Replays, to in-depth looks at  key effects and techniques.

 

BCC AVX 9 supports the following Avid host applications:

Macintosh:

  • Avid Media Composer 6, 6.5, 7, and 8 running Macintosh OS™ X 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9.
  • Avid Symphony 6, 6.5, 7, and 8 running Macintosh OS™ X 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9.

Windows:

  • Avid Media Composer Media Composer 6, 6.5, 7, and 8 running Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) or Windows 8 Professional or Enterprise (64-bit).
  • Avid Symphony 6, 6.5, 7, and 8 running Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) or Windows 8 Professional or Enterprise (64-bit).
  • Avid NewsCutter 10, 10.5, 11, and 12 running Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) or Windows 8 Professional or Enterprise (64-bit).

 

BCC AVX 9.x Compatibility Notes :

While in general your previously saved projects should render identically in the newer version, bug fixes and quality improvements can sometimes change the look of older projects. While every effort is made to ensure project compatibility, the following notable areas may see some change to the look of previously saved projects.

  • In all wipe-style transitions which contain Border options, the opacity of the border elements fades automatically at the start/end of transitions (except in manual mode) to fix potential jumps in the renders at the start and end of the transitions when border offsets were non-zero.
  • The largely unnecessary Hold In / Hold Out parameters were removed from the Animation Tuning group in all transitions which could cause changes in the transition timing in the unlikely event these parameters had been changed from their defaults.
  • As part of the major performance optimizations implemented in Damaged TV for BCC9, some details such as the randomization patterns can render differently although the overall feel of the effect should remain the same.
  • BCC9 fixes a bug introduced in BCC8.2 that affected the perceived rate of progress of the underlying dissolve in BCC Lens Transition. Projects saved in BCC8.2 maybe appear to render somewhat differently now that the dissolve rate has been fixed.
  • BCC9 fixes a gamma shift in some externally loaded images on Mac systems (such as those loaded by Pan and Zoom, or the particle files in Particle Emitter 3D, Organics Strands, or Particle Array) which caused the images to appear slightly too dark as compared to the same image when imported on Windows. These images now render identically on Mac and Windows but Mac projects saved with these filters prior to BCC9 may display slight brightness boosts in such images.
  • The Pixel Chooser and Motion Tracker were removed from Swish Pan since they did not make sense in the context of a transition. In the unlikely event that these controls were used in previously saved projects, the pixel chooser and motion tracker settings would be ignored in new renders.

BCC AVX 9.0.2 - Known Issues and Limitations :

  • 28732 - BCC Extruded Text and BCC Type On Text use a custom text entry window and some of the changes that can be made through in this window are not reflected in the preview within the text window on Mac OS (although they will be apparent in the effect when previewed/rendered back in the host). The following text attributes do not preview within the text window:
    • Justification (when Word Wrap is not enabled)
    • Top Down Text
    • Right to Left Reading
    • Negative Line Leading
    • Italics (for fonts that don't include an italic typeface)
    • Superscript and Subscript
  • 26068 - In BCC Particle Emitter 3D, changing the Blend Mode in the Spawn group can unexpectedly affect the main particle compositing.
  • 27591 - As part of the new Motion Tracker workflow, if you change the tracker search width, target width, color space, or accuracy after an initial tracking pass, you must now reset the tracker data with the reset button in the tracker banner before starting a second tracker pass. (This extra step is not necessary if the tracker point picker location has changed.)
  • 25867 - In BCC Type On Text the Line Leading in the text entry preview window does not accurately match up with the leading in the rendered result, and the leading may need to be adjusted to generate the desired final render.
  • 27313 - The Beat Reactor propagation options generate unexpected results in Organic Strands. Use non-propagation modes which work as expected as a temporary workaround.
  • 27736 - When using a host image layer as the particle type in Particle Emitter 3D, the particles can appear squished/stretched in projects with non-square pixel aspect ratios.
  • 26750 - The Beat Reactor audio graph becomes less accurate as the Frequency Resolution is increased to high values. Use lower values near the default setting of 32 as a workaround.
  • 26845 - BCC LED shows occasional mis-colored dots on Quadro FX 3500 cards.
  • 25671 - When stacking multiple effects on a track and then rearranging the order of those effects, parameter errors may occur such as button parameters functioning as simple checkboxes instead of true buttons. We are working with Avid to resolve this issue.
  • 27292 - Effect stacks will occasionally display an error stating "Connect failed to connect" when preview at less than full resolution. This error does not affect final render and can be worked around by switching to full green/green preview resolution. We are working with Avid to resolve this issue.
  • 29533 - The apply modes Boost Expo 1, 2, and 50/50 mix do not give the expected result in Grunge.
  • 29777 - In Grunge the Edge Offset control in the Chromatic Aberration group is not working as designed.
  • 30571 + 30572 - Fast Film Process can show instability or render with black frames on some NVidia cards with the 340.52 driver.  Reverting to an earlier driver such as 333.11 may provide a temporary workaround.
  • 30613 - Flicker Fixer - When using the Key/Mask controls the intensity of the flicker correction is only half as strong as it should be, even in regions that should be fully corrected.
  • 30351 - Pan and Zoom - Preview Mode rectangle widgets don’t match the final result exactly when using 3D Mode with non-square PAR comps.  Settings which tend to produce more exaggerated 3D perspective will increase the relative amount of difference between the preview widget and the final result.
  • 30395 - Combining 3D Objects filters with other OpenGL accelerated BCC filters such as Lens Flare 3D or Grunge can occasionally cause render errors or instability due to lack of hardware resources depending on host resource use, graphics card capabilities, and BCC 4K preference settings.
  • 30632 - Some OpenGL accelerated filters such as Lens Flare 3D will always render as if Safe Levels is enabled even when Safe Levels is turned off.
  • 30638 - Lens Flare 3D - enabling the Geometrics in Pre-Apply mode causes the image to be squished horizontally when in Green/Green mode or in final render.
  • 30653 - Mac only - 3D Objects filters can show an unexpected brightness shift in 16bit when using the Trasforms->Opacity control to reduce the object opacity on Mac.  As a temporary workaround you can use the Effect Layer Opacity control in the General Controls group instead of the Opacity control in the Transforms group to achieve a similar result.

 


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