[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Max,

Let me preface by stating that RED is a compositor, and operates much like other desktop compositing systems such as Adobe After Effects or Autodesk Combustion. In the compositing environment, you can vertically stack multiple layers of media in a horizontal timeline. For the most part, everything can be animated, using keyframes to control the animation at key points in time.

To import media into RED, you drag media (either still images or clips of images) into the project window or directly into the timeline. To make a transition between two clips, you should stack the clips one above the other in the timeline, then animate the parameter of choice on the top layer. For instance, you might animate the opacity parameter from 100 to 0 to reveal the clip beneath the animated clip in the timeline. Or you might animate the spin parameter to generate the reveal effect.

There are many free templates in the Library Browser that ships with RED – and several categories of transition effects – you can apply one of these effects to a timeline and deconstruct it to see how the effect was created. Or you can purchase a DVD either from our on-line store or from Amazon or some other on-line outlet.

I hope this helps.

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for passing along that file – I used it to reproduce the issue that you describe, which is that rendering this file to anything longer than a 10 second clip is not possible, as the application becomes unstable. We’re investigating the issue right now.

Thanks,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Steve,

If you could please send me the comp that illustrates this issue then I can take a look at it to see if it’s happening here.

You can send that to me at peterm@borisfx.com

Thanks,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Sergio,

Here’s how to use paint to generate the sword effect:

• launch RED
• click below the tracks in the timeline so that you have nothing selected
• click on the paint brush icon in the button array on the timeline – this action creates a new paint layer
• generate a paint stroke on the canvas
• click below the tracks in the timeline so that you have nothing selected
• click on the diamond shape icon in the button array on the timeline – this action creates a new 3d plane shape
• twirl down the shape by clicking on the triangle
• twirl down the face so that you can see the face sub-tracks
• drag the paint layer onto the face – it should be nested in the face track
• click on the eyeball of the media sub-track to disable the media projection – you should only see the paint over whatever is on video track 2 (bricks by default when standalone)
• select the paint layer in the timeline
• select from the pulldown menu – filters>effectshttp://www.borisfx.com/tutorials

I hope this helps.

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Adam,

Well the updater for RED 3 is actually RED 4 and the patch updater for RED 4 is freely available on our web site and can be downloaded here:

http://www.borisfx.com/updates/

We don’t have any on-line patches available for the RED 3 application as it is considered unsupported due to the fact we can only support the current product release – are you having trouble with anything specific in RED 3 that you need a patch for? What exact version of RED 3 are you using?

I hope this helps.

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hahah … good one. 🙂 Now of course if it’s a B roll that you need there are transition filters in the pack that will do this too.

Cheers,

P.

[Peter Mcauley]

I’d suggest creating a paint stroke, placing that on a shape track with the media sub-layer disabled and you can then layer that over any other media element that you like. Another suggestion is to create a simple line spline shape, then disable the fill and add a stroke to the shape. You can add the glow filter on top of the paint stroke to generate the aura of a neon light bulb (aka laser sword.)

If you would like to see an example just drop me a line at peterm@borisfx.com and I’ll send you a project.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Anthony,

You might want to give the following filters a shot:

BCC Directional Blur
BCC Radial Blur
BCC Spiral Blur
BCC Glow
BCC Colorize Glow
BCC Scatterize
BCC 2D Particles
BCC 3D Image Shatter

All of these filters are available in RED 4 and in BCC 5 and can be used to generate a unique transition / morph from one shot to the next.

I hope this helps,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

Actually BCC 5 includes a plug-in titled BCC Scanlines that does exactly that. And there’s another filter in the package titled BCC Damaged TV that could also be of interest to you.

You can download the trial version for free from http://www.borisfx.com/downloads.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Mark,

Well that didn’t take too long – wee reproduced the issue and although we do not have a workaround as a plug-in, the workaround that we can offer is to do the work in RED standalone mode, export a movie file, then reimport this back into AE.

Meanwhile, we’ll do what we can to fix the issue for a (hopefully not too distant) future update.

Thanks,

Peter.