1. Integrated Effects
2. Controls Window
3. Nested, hierarchical Timeline
4. Keying
5. Particles
6. PixelChooser
7. 3D DVE
8. Transitions
9. Effects Settings/Library Browser
10. RAM Preview
11. Keyframer

1. Integrated Effects
Many effects products have excellent features. The question for busy content creators is always whether those features are accessible enough in the crush of deadline-driven production. This is an area in which Boris FX excels. It offers 2D and 3D compositing, and effects exactly where non-linear video editors need them: inside their video editing applications.

The idea is very simple: creating effects on the video timeline makes sense, since that is their eventual destination. All the native media is accessible, with no need for exporting footage for treatment, only to reimport it later. Integrated effects save steps, and that means saving time.

There are two versions of FX, distinguished by their supported host applications. Boris FX supports Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Canopus (Rex/Raptor/Storm Edit), DPS Velocity, FASTstudio.DV, IMC Incite, in-sync Speed Razor, Ulead Media Studio Pro, and United Media On-Line Express.

Boris FX Professional supports all Boris FX hosts and adds support for Avid Xpress, Avid Xpress DV, Avid Media Composer, Avid Symphony, Discreet edit*, Fast purple, Fast silver, Media 100i, Media 100 iFINISH, Panasonic DVEdit, Panasonic newsbyte, and Sony ES-3.

No other effects solution plugs directly into more host NLE applications. And none offers the full range of features below.

2. Controls Window
There are many powerful effects applications on the market, but most of them come with a steep learning curve. Among the most challenging tasks is often simply finding where all the tools are hidden. With Boris FX, the most commonly used controls are in plain view, in the Controls window. Tabs provide easy organization of a wide variety of animation possibilties. XYZ position, scale, opacity, trails, and tumble/spin/rotate are on the first tab. Others include controls for borders, shadows, masking, and compositing.

The specific tabs available change, depending on the type of layer being worked on (3D Plane or other shape, filter tracks, etc.) The point of all of the tabs is the same: to simultaneously demystify the effects toolset, and to unleash its power by making the tools easily accessible.

3. Nested, hierarchical Timeline
Animations can easily be created by stacking unlimited layers. Each individual layer can in fact be imagined as a container, which includes separate compartments for a shape (3D Plane, Sphere, etc.), its media (video, graphic, etc.), as well as upstream and downstream masks. Any layer can be nested inside any portion of another layer, simply by dragging and dropping it. One layer can serve as another's mask, a keyed video track be nested on the face of cube, filters can act as adjustment layers depending on their position in the timeline hierarchy, and so on.

In order to keep these unlimited, infinitely nested layers organized, Boris FX also features 3D containers, which can collapse as many layers as desired into a single track. This single track behaves like any other, of course, so that a container with multiple layers can still be nested inside another, or can serve as a mask, be composited over other tracks using Apply Modes, or can serve as a vehicle to simultaneously control all the tracks nested inside.

So in addition to providing a neatly organized timeline, containers provide a flexible and convenient way to control parent-child relationships between layers.

4. Keying
Boris FX includes 13 keying filters for creating and adjusting alpha mattes. These are exceptionally robust filters which produce more satisfying results with less effort than other compositing solutions, with unmatched flexibility. Any of these filters can be combined, allowing keys to be quickly and easily pulled from even the most difficult footage, including DV.

In addition to Chroma, Luma and Linear Color keys, several Boris keying filters deserve special mention. Alpha Process, Composite Choker, Clean Up Alpha, and Matte Choker offer options for fine-tuning mattes. (Unlike other keying solutions, Boris allows users to view the matte channel, taking the guesswork out of these kinds of adjustments.) The Make Alpha filter creates a new alpha channel from one of the existing channels in the image.

Along with the exceptionally high quality renders, these additional capabilities are some of the reasons why even users with real-time keying hardware find Boris beneficial.

5. Particles
Both 2D Particles and 2D Particles Advanced disperse the particles in 2D space and provide an assortment of explosion and velocity parameters to control their movement. 2D Particles Advanced offers more options for adjusting the effect, allowing you to choose the size, shape, density, and opacity of the particles, and to create customized particle shapes and scatter wipes. They also offer the option of bouncing off the walls of the video frame, with full control over gravity strength and direction.

6. PixelChooser
A component of many Boris filters, the PixelChooser provides several methods for selectively filtering images. Blurs, color correction and distortions, keys, and other filters may thus be applied to portions of images, instead of to the entire frame.

Region-based selection function as garbage mattes, defining areas of interest and areas affected by filters. PixelChooser selections may also be made from any image channel (including luma, alpha, or any color). Channel-based selections can be taken from levels, threshold, or a range of values. PixelChooser also allows these selections to be made across tracks, so that - for example - the Luminance or HSL Difference of one track may be used to provide the mask for another.

Because any PixelChooser selections may be animated, users have a wide variety of filtering and masking options not offered in any other application.

7. 3D DVE
Boris FX was the first to introduce integrated 3D compositing to the world of nonlinear editing.

At its most basic level, this has meant full control over elements in three dimensions from the very beginning. Any element in Boris can be tumbled and spun and rotated, and animated anywhere in Z space, rendered with subpixel accuracy.

More than that, Boris FX allows the creation and animation of primitive 3D shapes within editing applications. Map independent media sources onto different surfaces within the shape, move and rotate the object in 3D space, apply lighting and shadow effects to the object, even apply effects filters separately to individual sides of 3D objects.

One of the simplest Boris 3D DVE functions is still among the most compelling: because Boris FX is resolution independent, editors can easily import still images of any size, and create pan-and-zoom, documentary style animations directly in their NLEs.

8. Transitions
The 3D animation power of Boris FX offers an exceptional range of options for transition animations in video editing applications. Especially compelling is FX's ability to animate filters in 3 dimensions, allowing for the fast creation of truly unique transitions that go well beyond any traditional conception of DVE.

Included in this is the liberation of transitions from a traditional A/B approach. While starting with two layers of host video, Boris transitions can add unlimited layers of QuickTime video, imported still images, or gradients created using the Boris Gradient Editor.

9. Effects Settings/Library Browser
Once animations or transitions have been created, they can be saved and repurposed at any time. These are saved as Settings, small (as little as 4 K) instruction files containing the details of motion or filter parameters applied to clips, graphic elements and so on. These can be recalled and edited for later use, and easily applied to new kinds of media with a click or two. As a result, there's no need to ever rebuild an effect from scratch.

Additionally, settings files need not include the entire effect. They can include any number of tracks, or nested groups of tracks. Thus any tracks, including a single track, from one effect can be used in another.

Boris FX ships with hundreds of customizable presets of animations for filters, transitions, and many transition animations built on such compositing techniques as displacement maps, color corrections, noise maps and lights. More are posted regularly at BorisFX.com as free downloads.

This many preset effects would be a burden if there weren't an easy, yet effective way to see what they look like. The Boris Library Browser does just that, offering animated previews of both included and user-created effects settings in a variety of resolutions.

When users consider the potential learning curve of any new effects solution, the Boris Browser has offered the easiest possible answer: start here. Take any of the effects you see, customize them for your purposes, and go.

10. RAM Preview
Once loaded from the Keyframe Library or created by users, effects animations can be previewed in real time. While you work, all frames are automatically loaded into a RAM cache, making previews to RAM remarkably fast. Only changed frames need to be reloaded.

RAM previews can take place within a specified range, and at half or quarter rate. Boris FX is the only application that allows previews to be cached to a mixture of RAM and disk for maximum performance.

Boris is also the only application to feature intelligent undo operations for cached frames. Once a change has been made to an effect, the preview cache is cleared, of course. Only Boris, however, restores the cached frames if the change is undone.

11. Keyframer
A standalone utility included with Boris FX, Keyframer features all of the power of Boris FX for creating effects, but lacks the ability to render them. For that, editors save the settings they create in Keyframer, then apply Boris in their editing timelines, opening the saved settings there.

As a result, Keyframer requires relatively few system resources, enabling any modern computer to become part of a workstation-based production workflow.

In the meantime, machines built to edit can continue editing. Effects built in Keyframer are simply applied as needed, and rendered whenever it's convenient, inside an editing application.

Keyframer can be duplicated and distributed free of charge and is fully cross-platform: effects created on a Macintosh can be opened and rendered on a PC, and vice versa. Effects rendering requires a host application with the Boris plug-in installed.