[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Steve,

Am I correct in guessing from the header of your post that you’re using RED 3? I’m not sure if there is a lot that we can do if this is indeed the case as that version of the software must be over 4 years behind at this stage. I’d be interested in hearing what the combination of host version and plugin version your are using here.

Is there anything that might have been changed on the system recently that may have contributed to this error message?

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Alex,

If I understand this correctly, you purchased MC 6 which includes Avid FX 6 (essentially Boris RED 5) as bundled software – this is a 64 bit set up. You are using MC 5.5 though, which is 32 bit and want to use Avid FX 5.8 (or Boris RED 4.) I’m going to pass this onto one of the guys in our sales team to see what they can do for you.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Marcus,

You are right and actually I am in total support of this. We’ve done some of this in the past and to help that cause, I’ll record a mini tutorial of this paint feature and post it for everyone.

Thanks for mentioning this.

Peter,

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Carlos,

Animating a paint stroke is fairly easy – here’s how to do it:

• To make a dash or dot that follows the paint path:
• Set the time marker (CTI) to the start of the timeline
• Create the stroke
• Make the Paint track / layer the current selection – you should see two tabs in the control window Paint Tab and Transform Tab
• In the paint tab, set the Strokes End to a very small value – start with a value of 2
• Set the animation type to Linear
• Set the Stroke Begin to 0
• Set the animation type to Linear
• Move to the end of the timeline
• Set the Strokes Begin to 98
• Set the Strokes End to 100
• Now as you playback the timeline, you should see the stroke moving per your animation

• If you want to create a continuous line paint-on and do not want to see a dash or dot (which is what I have described above) then only make adjustments to the Stroke End parameter and leave the Stroke Begin parameter set to 0 with no animation.

To make the drop shadow, move the paint track onto the face of standard shape track, then turn off the eyeball on the media sub-track. You can then enable the drop shadow option for that track.

Feel free to send me your email address and I’ll send you a RED 5 project that shows you how to do this. You can contact me at peterm@borisfx.com.

I hope this helps,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Tom,

Okay – I have FCP on my system (Lion) and have the Swish Pan transition between a pair of clips and it’s delivering the expected result, which is a smooth blurred transition between the shots.

Here’s what I would like you to try:

• uninstall BCC FxPlug from the system using the BCC FxPlug uninstaller
• download the most recent version of BCC FxPlug (7.0.4)
• run the new installer
• try to use the Swish Pan Transition

Thanks,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Tom,

You need to go into the Boris RED custom UI, then click on the Swish Pan filter in the timeline, then look in the control panel and you should see the option that I mentioned.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Michael,

The last two attributes in the light 1 parameter list (Width and Alpha Channel Tolerance) are visible in the UI but in reality they are phantom parameters at this stage and are not applicable at this time in this host. They control, or will control, the appearance of shadows that are cast from one letter onto another letter – Width is used to soften the shadow and Alpha Channel Tolerance is used to define the threshold for the shadow.

There is a plan to hook these options up, but currently they have no effect.

Regarding other parameters not being available in the UI (greyed out) when they should be available (ungreyed) – if you have a reproducible case then we can reproduce this in our labs, investigate the cause of the problem and (hopefully) fix the issue if it’s on our end. Please feel free to send the steps to reproduce the problem and we would be happy to take a look. You will need to send the steps to support@borisfx.com. PLease include your system information in the report so that we can set up a similar system for our tests.

I hope this helps.

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Glad to hear that you figured that one out Michael. Thanks for sharing the solution with everyone – I’m sure others will also encounter this issue.

Thanks,

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Tom,

There’s a switch in the control panel to instruct the filters to use the incoming media. It’s labelled “Use Layer to Reveal Track (Set in Timeline)” and you can find this in the control panel when you select the Swish Pan filter in the timeline.

This switch needs to be enabled in order for the Swish Pan to operate as you expect it to. It might be that this switch has for some reason become disabled and I think if you enable it then the transition will once again be smooth.

I hope this helps.

Peter.

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi Guys.

You can set the default interpolation to any of the available options by going to Window>Show Keyframe Palette.

With Version 5, you have the ability to modify keyframes in a graph editor. This is a much more convenient way of interacting with animation keyframes than the old way of drilling down through the timeline to find the animation curves.

To smooth the bezier interpolation between keyframes, you can drag the handles in the graph editor.

I hope this helps.

Peter.