BCC is no longer part of the Avid suite and the new Boris pricing scheme is not attractive.   Sooner or later my BCC 8 will not work with future MC upgrades--already it's not "offically" supported with MC 8.3.   I'm trying to decide if my money and time are better spent learning another program?   I'm seriously leaning toward After Effects and letting Boris expire when it no longer works with MC. 

I'd like to hear from forum members who have either upgraded BCC or jumped ship, the pros and cons of staying with Boris, or what other software they've migrated to?   Thanks!

Terry Snyder:

hear from forum members who have either upgraded BCC or jumped ship

For a long time I was a BCC fan. At the current BCC for Avid upgrade price I am no longer interested.

Upgrading Avid FX to Boris Red 5.5 with free upgrade to Red 6 when released covers me for most AE (not a fan) and most if not all the BCC effects I use most often are in Red.

I am seriously considering Open FX BCC9 as it is half the price of the Avid version and works well in Resolve (both full and free)

My first preference at present would be Fusion (free from Black Magic) with the Fusion connect option (allows it to be used as an effect from the Avid Timeline with genuine background rendering and automatic timeline updating. (pricing and Availability of the connect Module has not yet (to my knowlege been confirmed)   IMO Fusion has superb Pan and Zoom and 2 and 3D Titling that tick all my boxes.

AndrewAction:

AE (not a fan)

Thanks for your insight, Andrew.  Just curious why you are not high on AE?   I never learned it because I already had Boris, but I always thought it was the de facto industry standard for effects...or it used to be. 

When the pricing for the Avid Fusion connect becomes available, I'll definately give it a look.   In your opinion, is the Fusion learning curve easier, harder, or just different from BCC?

AndrewAction:

My first preference at present would be Fusion (free from Black Magic) with the Fusion connect option

.- The free version does not work with Eyeon's (now Blackmagic) Avid Connect.

After Effects or Boris Red are not the same as BCC is. BCC is a plugin, the others are separate APPS.

Fusion is great, but is not a plugin either.

BCC does not even have an interface of its own.

BorisFX still thinks AVID is for rich editors, Holywood studios and big production houses with deep pockets.

So does Genarts.

 

 

Terry Snyder:

Just curious why you are not high on AE?

.- After Effects interface is the worst, the clumsiest of any Composisting app ever, but it became very popular because it was the cheapest (still is) alternatve to, lets say, a Flame, Flint, Shake, Combustion, Nuke or even Fusion.

Fusion was $ 5,000 not long ago.

Actually that applies for most of Adobe's products. Photoshop's interface suck donkey.

 

Terry Snyder:

Just curious why you are not high on AE?

Probably a relic from hating the whole Premiere interface / instability and then opening AE and seeing similar UI and issues.

Old school approach. Shoot quality vision, record great sound and craft them into an interesting story.  Then there is limited requirement for the "latest"effects (for example BCC grunge type)in my world.

AndrewAction:

Probably a relic from hating the whole Premiere interface / instability and then opening AE and seeing similar UI and issues.

.- Premiere is also horrible, but it was bundled with any cheapo video capture card when an Avid Symphony started at $150,000.

Carlos Sardá:

The free version does not work with Eyeon's (now Blackmagic) Avid Connect.

Been making some approaches to see if there could be any sort of Avid BM agreement for the AVX 2 Connect effect

Carlos Sardá:

Fusion is great, but is not a plugin either.

But with the Connect AVX 2 it runs from the timeline similarly to how Avid FX operated

Hi All,

A couple of quick notes. First, Boris RED is actually a plugin, it can be applied to Avid timeline as any other AVX filter. Although it has custom UI window, many animation and compositing tasks are simplified because of its specialized interface and workflow designed for VFX/compositing. The added benefit is that you never need to roundtrip to a separate application to do your titles, graphics or VFX. Continuum (or BCC) is based on a different approach. Still a plugin or set of plugins, it uses Avid native UI to accomplish VFX/Graphics animation and compositing. It may be quicker to use for one/two filter stacks and again, there is no roundtripping. Added benefit of built-in motion tracker (soon to be powered by mocha!) and Pixel Chooser - a built-in masking system will further streamline your workflow. Sorry for a long message, I may not be impartial :-)

P.S. When considring toolset pricing, think about the cost of your own time. How much will a tool save you on project time/cost. Sometimes a free or a cheap tool is not the most economical solution for your business. We are constantly striving to make our tools more affordable at all budget levels. To that end, we recently released BCC Units for Avid, priced in 200-300 dollar range so that you can take avantage of features that you need for the current project without commiting to a larger investment. Plus, there is BCC Lite - free with latest Avid offerings.

Happy New Year!

Terry Snyder:

I'm trying to decide if my money and time are better spent learning another program?   I'm seriously leaning toward After Effects and letting Boris expire when it no longer works with MC. 

To me it would depend on what you're going to be doing.  If you're doing a lot of glows, blurs, lens flares and that kind of thing, I'd choose BCC for the ease of use within the MC interface.  AE is overkill for that type of thing, and the exporting/importing more cumbersome than just adding an effect using BCC.

If you're going a lot of motion graphics or titling, or compositing a lot of layers in interesting ways, I'd choose AE because it's better at that kind of thing.

Also keep in mind that the Avid DNxHR codec currently does not have a quicktime component.  That means until Avid decides to implement QT support you will not have an easy pathway from Avid to AE anymore.  This would make a plugin like BCC or RED even more worthwhile for those small things (transitions, flares, etc). 

With no native ProRes support for 2K/4K/UHD, and no quicktime support for DNxHR, there is a giant wall between MC and most other pieces of software.  Keep this in mind for your future purchases.  Most of the workflows for SD and HD do not work.

For what it's worth: I upgraded to RED 5.5.  I haven't honestly had a reason to use it, but I enjoy the green-dot performance, which lends itself to much easier experimentation.

Daniel Frome:

Also keep in mind that the Avid DNxHR codec currently does not have a quicktime component.  That means until Avid decides to implement QT support you will not have an easy pathway from Avid to AE anymore.

That is quite untrue.  I've just exported from Avid 8.3 to AE using Quicktime.  I've then exported that from AE to Lightworks, again using QT.  It imports and plays, as you'd expect it to.

You're right that at the moment there isn't a way to get DNxHR media natively exported and imported into AE or any other application for that matter.  But none of the existing export functionality has been crippled, and should you need to export 2K or above for effects work, alternatives are available.  I would be inclined to go for image sequences of one sort or another in that case.

Where DNxHR is a problem at the moment is for round tripping to colorgrading applications like Resolve.  In that case image sequences just may not be practical.  And frankly, when it comes to a choice between Resolve and any internal Avid grading tool, Bpris included, I know which I'd prefer.

jwrl:

You're right that at the moment there isn't a way to get DNxHR media natively exported and imported into AE or any other application for that matter. 

That is exactly what I'm saying, so how is that untrue? 

DNxHR doesn't have a quicktime component, so if you are working in 2K/4K/UHD, you have problem.  The only native codec at 2K/4K/UHD is DNxHR.  Not even ProRes (yet, I hope).  The brand new codec designed to usher new workflows in MC... is the most workflow-crippling codec to date for Avid, because it doesn't have a quicktime component.

1) You cannot QT export anything DNxHR on the timeline without a transcode to a different codec (good luck keeping your levels perfectly in tact, I bet you'll need a few work-arounds to keep them perfect)

2) You cannot send QT DNxHR to Squeeze without first transcoding to a different codec

3) On the reverse, you cannot render anything into DNxHR from AE.  That means if you have previous experience making AE graphics as DNxHD w/ alpha files, which import flawlessly into MC ... you're going to have a frustrating time when you realize there is no equivalent workflow in the MC world of 2K/4K/UHD.

I hope these issues are fixed in future releases (I can't imagine that they won't), but in the interim these are pretty important limitations to be aware of -- especially if forum op is asking about whether he should consider using After Effects instead of Boris.  I'm letting him know that the ease of creating or importing material between AE and MC are really taken down a notch when dealing with 2K/4K/UHD codec/container support in MC 8.3 (if you plan on staying within the limits of SD/HD, you are fine).  Pretty accurate I'd say.

 

I've migrated all motion graphics over to AE and bought the RED 5.5 upgrade so I can do quick compositing within the Avid timeline.  I too disliked the AE interface but, to be honest, I get it now and understand it and like it.  Rendering of complex composites is also very very fast compared to RED and layered plugins on the timeline more than making up for the round tripping if involved.  Staility of AE is greatly improved now too.  BUT, when I stop my cloud subscription I lose my AE and the ability to rebuild FX - this I dont like!

Daniel Frome:

You cannot QT export anything DNxHR

Surely that is a good thing

Daniel Frome:

You cannot send QT DNxHR to Squeeze without first trans-coding to a different codec

Squeeze is codec based so if DNxHR codecs are available time for Squeeze to step up. 

Daniel Frome:

On the reverse, you cannot render anything into DNxHR from AE  

Yet

Daniel Frome:

if you have previous experience making AE graphics as DNxHD w/ alpha files, which import flawlessly into MC ... you're going to have a frustrating time when you realize there is no equivalent workflow in the MC world of 2K/4K/UHD.

DPX? Tiff?. Sequential graphic transfers have been an industry standard workflow for longer than AE has existed. 

Sorry IMO good riddance to, we know better than all of you about gamma levels and no we wont make a 64bit QT for Window's, QuickTime.