New enhancements, especially the added filters and improved interface, make Boris Red 4.1 worth the upgrade.
Boris RED 4 is the only integrated 3D compositing, titling, and effects application to deliver unparalleled performance at an affordable price to over twenty nonlinear editing applications. Designed specifically for editors, Red offers an unprecedented range of features and adds a standalone engine for rendering. Red integrates advanced 2D and 3D compositing, sophisticated titling, paint, rotoscoping, a full suite of tools to create and extrude vector objects, robust 3D creation and animation, and the industry-leading software DVE technology in a single application. Expand the capabilities of your editing system with just one application. Save time and money using one interface, in one system.
Boris RED Key Features
- 164 video filters
- 16 bit color depth
- Raster Paint Engine
- Subtitle import feature
- OpenGL accelerated effects creation and playback
- Advanced 2D and 3D compositing with unlimited layers
- High quality keying, masking, mattes and Apply Modes
- Motion tracking, corner pinning and image stabilization
- Intersect any 3D shape including planes, spheres or extruded text
- Vector paint and rotoscoping with precise controls
- Over 110 filters including Wire Remover, Film Grain and Match
- Superior 2D and 3D titling
- Vector text for razor-sharp display at any scale
Valuable new features, redesigned user interface, and productivity enhancements--as well as Boris Continuum Complete 4 (BCC 4) filters--speed up production workflow and offer more creative flexibility over previous versions. Supports Intel-based Macs.
Seasoned Red users will notice the tool's new interface right away.
Of the new enhancements, top features include Sticky Windows and customizable buttons. You can now resize any window without losing visibility of critical information in any of the other windows. Duration, Keyframe, and Time have been rearranged on the timeline and are also available in the Composite window, which can be very useful when you're using Red in a multiple-monitor configuration. You can choose your own button highlight colors and even rearrange them to suit your work style.
On previous versions, the Controls window automatically updated according to which features the user chose--subsequently hiding many of the feature tabs. To access the hidden tabs, you had to drag tabs back and forth or stretch the window. In version 4.1, the feature tabs automatically appear in multiple rows, so all of the tabs are always visible.
The keyframe interpolation parameters previously located in Preferences have a new home in the Options palette. The new arrangement improves productivity by making it easier to change parameters while viewing the results in the Composite window at the same time. The Options palette includes controls for Vector Trace, Spline Tools, Grids and Guides, Keyframe, Timecode, and Keyframe Generator.
Red includes BCC (Boris Continuum Complete Plug-ins)
Another enhancement to the Project window provides thumbnails of all imported media. You can sort by name, length (duration), type, and size. You'll find the thumbnails very handy when working with large groups of images--you have much better control over placing items into your timeline. One of the more outstanding features of Red over some of its competitors is that users have the ability to directly import footage into the timeline, either with shortcut buttons or by right-clicking in a blank space in the timeline and choosing New Media. You're able to select and import only one item at a time using this method. If you wish to import multiple items at one time into a project, it's still necessary to use the File>Import option. This places the footage into the Project window and then you can drag the footage into the timeline as needed.
The new paint clone and image-based brushes provide additional creative options. Cloning from alternate tracks isn't immediately intuitive, but it works well once you get the hang of it. You can also use an individual layer in a Photoshop file as input to the brush stroke. Painting with moving footage yields some very interesting results.
The ability to use motion tracking to guide the clone tool practically automates certain rotoscoping functions. In addition, the new paint tool (when used along with lighting effects) can create effects similar to the animated glowing lines often seen flowing through commercials and music videos. Each paint track generates a separate subtrack for each new color, clone, spray, or roller paint stroke. This gives you plenty of design options by providing control of the start and ending time of individual strokes within a single paint track. You even can simulate 3D ribbon effects with the roller. With Red 4.1's path tools, it's easy to create a true animated 3D ribbon that actually follows a path.
New filters
- Earlier versions of Red had too few filters. Boris has addressed that concern in Red 4.1 with the addition of several new effects, including select Boris Continuum Complete (BCC) and Final Effects Complete (FEC) filters (there are 164 new filters in all). Red 4.1 includes new color and blur filters such as Color Chocker, Color Palette, and RGB Blend. Other effects filters include Turbulence, Film Process, Misalignment, Drizzle, Glass, and Hair.
- The Motion Key filter lets you isolate a moving object such as the car, remove it from the foreground, and fill in the pixels with the background image.
- Red 4.1 also includes two new optical flow-based filters: Motion Key and Optical Stabilizer. To test the Optical Stabilizer, I used a clip from an old Boris Red demo CD--handheld camera footage of a guy running wildly through a parking lot. While you can adjust the parameters for smoothing, cropping, edge handling, and even keyframable scaling of the image being stabilized, the default settings yield impressive results.
- Anyone working with interlaced footage will really appreciate the Degrain and Deinterlace filters. I could apply them with ease and found them both to be effective and fast. The Degrain and Deinterlace filters contain a number of useful parameters that allow easy tweaking to get professional results. Other new filters include wipes and light effects.
- The Motion Key filter lets you isolate a moving object, remove it from the foreground, and fill in the pixels with the background image. Like all plugins, the degree of success may vary somewhat depending on the footage. Generating production-quality results requires some tweaking. Optical Stabilizer works without the need for or the limitations of traditional tracking tools.
System Requirements
Macintosh
OS X 10.2.6 or higher.
512MB system memory required, 1GB or more recommended
750MB of free hard drive space for a full installation
Supported graphics card with 32MB VRAM required, 128MB or more recommended
Approved host software: View approved software.
Previous version of Boris RED
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