What can Boris Red do that Vegas and NewBlue can’t?

[Steve Rhoden]

Well Angelo, go for After Effects instead if you can afford it.
It will be money well spent.
Boris is good yes and has its place, but it can never be
considered as a replacement for After Effects at any level.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-832-4956

[Angelo Mike]

I’ve been looking through the After Effects website, and I’m not even sure how to buy it. They offer Creative Cloud membership, which lets you store your projects, I guess. But the site is ridiculously opaque as far as how to buy After Effects and whether Creative Cloud is something that’s optional or required. All I see are membership plans for Creative Cloud.

Way to tell me to keep my money, Adobe.

[Steve Rhoden]

I bought After Effects CS6 and im staying with that.
This new Creative Cloud approach is absolute rubbish,
and i say it with no apology, and i know why i say it.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-832-4956

[John Rofrano]

[Angelo Mike] “If I’m going to spend the money, shouldn’t I just go for something that does motion graphics as well, like After Effects?”

Boris RED and After Effects are both motion graphics packages. In fact, After Effects can’t do 3D titles like Boris RED can so IMHO, RED is a better deal. You can also purchase After Effects plug-ins and most of them work with Boris RED too so Boris RED = After Effects. What RED doesn’t have is the script language that AE has.

[Angelo Mike] “I’ve been looking through the After Effects website, and I’m not even sure how to buy it. They offer Creative Cloud membership, which lets you store your projects, I guess. But the site is ridiculously opaque as far as how to buy After Effects and whether Creative Cloud is something that’s optional or required.”

You can’t buy After Effects anymore. All you can do is “rent” it on a monthly basis for $20/mo ($240/yr). Unless you use other Adobe products, the Creative Cloud is a non-starter and I would avoid it because if you stop paying, your project files are useless and if a client comes back and needs a change you have to pay Adobe again to be able to use AE for a month so that you can make the change. It’s a loosing proposition that I would avoid.

Also if you use After Effects you will need to render your video to get it out of Vegas Pro and into After Effects then render it again to get it back out of After Effects and into Vegas Pro. This gets very tedious after a couple of edits. If you buy Boris RED, it is a plug-in to Vegas Pro with no rendering required. Just drop it on an event and go. The best part is you “own it” and can open your project files and use them any time you want without paying more money.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Angelo Mike]

I don’t quite get it. I talked to a representative for Adobe online, and he said that I can buy After Effects as stand alone software. Amazon even has it for $600.

He did try to get me to subscribe to the Creative Cloud several times, and in retrospect, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if he didn’t tell me that I must subscribe to the Creative Cloud in order to use After Effects, since it just means that I’ll have to subscribe at some point if I want to keep using it.

John, if Boris Red does motion graphics as well, where can I find examples of it? I’ve never found any examples from filmmakers or anything on Boris Red’s website showing it. At most I found things like color match, compositing, and plugins that turn existing footage of yours into all kinds of light shows and gradient maps (that I don’t ever plan on using).

After Effects has, well, just about everything, it seems. But if you’re saying I have to subscribe to the Creative Cloud, I think that’s nonsense, and I won’t buy it.

[Angelo Mike]

I checked, and you do have to get the Creative Cloud subscription. But it’s not required for CS6, so I plan on getting that.

[John Rofrano]

I beleive you can still buy After Effects CS6 which is the old version. How long that will last I don’t know but it’s the old version. They just released After Effects CC which is the new version and only available through a Creative Cloud subscription. So you don’t need a Creative Cloud subscription to use After Effects CS6. I have the Adobe CS6 Production Suite and I currently have no plans to upgrade to Creative Cloud. I am currently looking for alternatives because I don’t believe in the subscription model and will not be held hostage by Adobe for a monthly fee that they can raise at will and put you out of business.

I agree After Effects is very powerful for motion graphics but RED has cameras and 3D containers so it should be possible to do similar things. What kind of motion graphics are you looking to create? Can you point to an example and I’ll tell you if I think it can be done in RED. In fact, I have Boris RED so I’ll try and re-create the motion graphics and we’ll see if it can do what you want.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Just understand that CS6 is a dead product. It’s not getting updated. So you are going to invest all of your time into learning a new product that you can never update without buying a subscription to the Creative Cloud. That makes little sense to me. If you had been an After Effects user and decided to buy the last version of CS6 to protect your investment over the years that might make sense, but to invest in AE now, you had better get comfortable with Creative Cloud because that’s your only path forward.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Angelo Mike]

I know it can’t be updated, but it seems better than using Boris for special effects, and it’s better than nothing (should be Adobe’s new slogan). CS6 seems to offer more than I’ll ever need, anyways.

[Neal Barlow]

I use After Effects all the time. You can render out as John said and then render back, or you can use EDL to get you time line into AE without rendering. It all depends on what you want to do. I personally wouldn’t give up AE, although I have not bowed to the almighty cloud yet. I think the one thing to also consider is fan base and support. I haven’t seen a lot for Boris although I know it has a ton of bells and whistles, and what it has going for it as it has been stated is that it is a direct plug-in for Vegas, but I see very little tutorials and examples. After Effects seems to have a ton, including what used to be a great kept secret, but now is pretty hug – Video Copilot. I don’t think RED is as slick as AE, but I am also a Photoshop guy too so I am biased by habit I suppose. Even though CC is the current level, CS6 will give you a ton of what you will ever need. While you won’t get the Cinema 4D lite integration that CC boasts, you can get C4D in other ways should you ever need to (if ever). Again, it all comes down to what your need is and what you are comfortable with. For me, its After Effects.

Hope that helps.

Neal Barlow
To The Skies – Productions
The Cult Classic Returns in ZOMBIES DURING THIRD PERIOD: AGAIN