Using Boris Continuum Complete on 10.0c Win7 64bit

[Magnus Helander]

Update to this post, 26 May 2011:

I upgraded to Vegas Pro 10d 64bit today.

First thing I did was to drag a random Boris Continuum effect and drop
it as a video track FX, something which nuked Vegas 10c consistently.
With 10d everything went well. I added a few more Boris effects and ...
nothing happened.

Thank you great folks at SCS, it appears we're back in business.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vegas 10 enabled OFX plug-ins and suddenly the full Boris Continuum Complete suite of effects were available.

I'm running Vegas 10.0c on an i7 dual monitor Win7/64 machine with Decklink card.
The experience so far is mixed.. first the good part:

I find the effects amazing and easy to configure using the many provided presets to start from.

There's 3D extruded text, a perfect Chromakeyer with all the bells and whistles, the cartoon filter is really fun, Damaged TV is seriously broken, there's an Image stabilizer, Type-On text, EPS importer, Motion tracking... the list goes on.

….the bad part: massive crashing - when adding and removing effects BCC nukes Vegas totally. It seems that adding BCC FX to an event is OK, but adding on track level is more risky. Once the effect is added to the effect chain everything is fine, but the nuke happens when Vegas loads and initialize the effects.

I've read that the 10.0b release fixed a lot of OFX issues, it seems to me that there are still some left.

Most BCC filters/FX work just fine, and if I just add FX to an event by dragging from the FX panel usually nothing happens. The killer seems to be adding FX to track level using the FX-icon on the track.

There is so much great stuff that works in BCC that I can live with some FX nuking Vegas until the next release which hopefully fixes some of it - I keep sending those crashreports.

If anyone here has BCC running stable on Win7/64 pls share your experiences,

Full details on
Continuum Complete: Sony Vegas Pro Filters and Transitions Plugin

Thanks
Magnus

[Gerald Webb]

Interesting, I haven't tried BCC in Vegas, but in After Effects Cs4 it is really stable, but in Cs5 it is a crashathon, so bad I'm back to Cs4 full time.
Maybe it's a 64 bit thing,
Anyone tried BCC in Vegas 32 bit?

[Robert St-Onge]

I am running Win 7 / BCC 7 on Vegas 64 bits.

I have put aside BCC 7 32 bits because the work I was doing was most likely to memory intensive and therefore crashing.

BCC 7 64 bits is not totally stable on some fx but far better in 64 bits from my experience. I never use it at track level so I can't report on that. Do get occasionnal crashes here and there but it seems better now with the latest versions of BCC and Vegas.

I really enjoy BCC 7 and end up using it more and more and hopefully the bugs willl get ironed out on the next updates. But it is truly a great addition to Vegas.

[Gregory Barringer]

I tried BCC trial on Friday and was excited to use it over the weekend. I had so many crashes I uninstalled it.

[Ian Stark]

Similar disappointing experience with the trial. And yet we are led to believe that the tutorial videos for BCC7 on Vegas 10 are made in one take on a machine that never crashes! I have no reason to doubt that, but it woud be nice to know the exact specs of that machine and what other software is being used on it.

[Gerald Webb]

I downloaded the trial a cpl of days ago and have used it for a few hrs now.
The good news, not one crash.
The bad, this is only my opinion on my PC ( i7 920 OC'd to 3.6, 12 gb ram, SSD C drive ) while not a super PC it is not a low end model either.
Its just too clunky, everything takes a few moments to think about it, controls are not very precise, it feels to me like i'm trying to craft a tea pot with a 20 ton excavator.
I love BCC, but I think for now it should stay in AFX where for some reason it works more fluidly.

[Leslie Wand]

agree with ian and gregory....

way too many crashes on an otherwise very stable install of 10c. i didn't have anywhere near such problems with the genarts ofx sapphire, and will buy it when ALL the plugins work!

i'm sure things will sort themselves out in the near future releases, after all, if they don't, it'll be a dead duck.

[Magnus Helander]

if it does not crash on a i7 920 at 3.6 it seems to me that vegas is in a hurry for the filter to initialize, my observation was that the nuke happens when loading the FX, not when it's actually loaded.
Maybe I should try to get the liquid cooler installed and crank up the cpu-speed, my previous attempts at overclocking resulted in a very instable system. And sluggish behavior on an i7@3.6 is... not ok.

The chromakeyer is really good and stable, best I've come across since Serious Magic's vector-keyer Ultra - which disappeared into Adobe CS, so for me that's my moneys worth with BCC, but boris and SCS have to sort out the stability issues.

/m

[John Rofrano]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

...And yet we are led to believe that the tutorial videos for BCC7 on Vegas 10 are made in one take on a machine that never crashes! I have no reason to doubt that, but it woud be nice to know the exact specs of that machine and what other software is being used on it.

If you are referring to the Boris TV Continuum Complete for Sony Vegas Pro Training Videos that I did, then that's my machine. ;-) The specs are on the PC equipment page of my web site. It's a rather old quad core running Windows Home Premium 7 64-bit but it is the quad core extreme that cost $1,000 back in the day with an Intel BX2 motherboard which I've found to be very stable. I use an NVDIA 9800 GT graphics card with the latest drivers. I also have the Adobe Creative Suite (CS5) suite on that machine but I keep it rather clean. Since I also develop plug-ins for VASST I do have a complete development environment too (Visual Studio 2008).

All of those training videos were done in one take but some of them did involve crashes in which case I started over from scratch. So while I can't say that it never crashed, it did work for the 15 - 20 minutes it took to run through the tutorial. I've found that Vegas Pro 10c is much more stable with BCC 7.0.4 than previous versions were.

I also gave an hour webinar last Thursday for BorisFX and Vegas Pro 10c crashed once during the webinar. Boris has told me that Sony has fixed a couple of issues that are causing the crashes with OFX plug-ins and it will be part of the next update so I can't wait to get my hands on Vegas Pro 10d when it comes out because I just love using the BCC7 plug-ins. I hardly use After Effects anymore. BCC7 allows me to do a lot of that stuff right in Vegas Pro.

~jr

[Ian Stark]

Hi John, yes it was your excellent tutorials I was talking about. Funnily enough we share an almost identical spec and, like you, I keep mine pretty clean.

Many thanks for sharing that information - look forward to 10d! I really hope it sorts out the frequent OFX crashes (for Boris's sake - I wonder if they are regretting the decision? I hope not).

I'm hoping that we will be able to run another install of the trial under 10d - if not then I suspect a lot of people will walk away from BCC after such poor experiences with the trial under 10c and below.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by John Rofrano

If you are referring to the Boris TV Continuum Complete for Sony Vegas Pro Training Videos that I did, then that's my machine. ;-)

I have tried to watch several of those tutorials. I tried during different times of the day. I tried two separate browsers (Opera and IE). Unfortunately, all I get is the "turning wheel" icon indicating the video is supposedly loading from the web. And I wait and wait and wait until I get tired of it and close the browser window. And since I am not the only person who is not willing to spend big money on some software I known nothing about, I think BorisFX needs to rethink its marketing strategy and make those tutorials start and play instantly.

And yes, I know they offer a "free" evaluation download, but they want my email address, my name, my actaul address, even my phone number! That is not free. I already get enough spam, I do not need any from someone whose software I may evaluate. And I do not need any sales calls on my phone, nor any junk mail.

My point is: No tutorials (none that actually download in reasonable time) + no no-strings-attached evaluation = no purchase.

Heck, the web site does not even indicate if these are OFX plugins or native Vegas plugins. I might be more patient with OFX plugins because they should be usable with any video editor that supports OFX, not just Vegas. And it does not say whether it is 32-bit, 64-bit, or both (there is a wiki page on the site that seems to imply it is a 64-bit plugin, but who can trust wiki pages).

So, sorry, I am not spending $600 (or any amount) on something I cannot get any real information about (marketing hype does not qualify as real information in my book).

[John Rofrano]

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

I have tried to watch several of those tutorials. I tried during different times of the day. I tried two separate browsers (Opera and IE). Unfortunately, all I get is the "turning wheel" icon indicating the video is supposedly loading from the web. And I wait and wait and wait until I get tired of it and close the browser window. And since I am not the only person who is not willing to spend big money on some software I known nothing about, I think BorisFX needs to rethink its marketing strategy and make those tutorials start and play instantly.

Most of the Boris TV tutorials are hosted on YouTube. If you can't play a video from YouTube, how is that Boris' fault? Here are direct YouTube links:

Extruded Spline and Extruded EPS in Sony Vegas Pro
Camera Moves with BCC 3D Objects in Sony Vegas Pro
Match Move in Sony Vegas Pro
Corner Pinning in Sony Vegas Pro
Transformations and Animations in Sony Vegas Pro 10
Mastering Materials in Sony Vegas Pro 10
BCC Extruded Text in Sony Vegas Pro 10

BTW, I use Chrome and Firefox and have no problem viewing them either on YouTube or on the Boris TV web site. Perhaps this is an Opera and IE problem? (I don't use either of those so I don't know) All of them play instantly for me after a small number of frames are buffered.

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

And yes, I know they offer a "free" evaluation download, but they want my email address, my name, my actaul address, even my phone number! That is not free. I already get enough spam, I do not need any from someone whose software I may evaluate. And I do not need any sales calls on my phone, nor any junk mail.

It would be very hard for them to email you a trial license key if they don't have your email address. You don't have to give them any other information. Lots of software sites operate this way.

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

Heck, the web site does not even indicate if these are OFX plugins or native Vegas plugins. I might be more patient with OFX plugins because they should be usable with any video editor that supports OFX, not just Vegas. And it does not say whether it is 32-bit, 64-bit, or both (there is a wiki page on the site that seems to imply it is a 64-bit plugin, but who can trust wiki pages).

The plug-ins are OFX and they definitely support both 64-bit and 32-bit Vegas. There are two downloads, one for 64-bit and one for 32-bit. You must have Vegas Pro 10 because earlier versions don't support OFX.

~jr

[Adam Stanislav]

I can watch YouTube just fine. Those tutorials were definitely not on YT. They were on their own web site.

A free trial license key? What an absurd concept! If they do not know how to make a limited-time trial, they do not know much about computer programming. You do not need a trial license key to try Vegas, for example. And all of Vegas tutorials play in Opera, let alone IE. (I mean the official tutorials on Sony Creative Software web site.) As do those of Digital Juice, etc.

IE is Internet Explorer, the web browser that comes standard with Microsoft Windows, so if they want to sell to Windows users, it is common sense their tutorials should play in IE.

Thanks for letting me know it is OFX and supports 64 bits.

Anywhere, it is their loss, not mine. If they want my money, they need to be much better marketers. I do not miss their software because I have not seen what it can do. I am not going to go out of my way to find out about every plug-in on the market. I sure tried to learn about their software from their own web site, so yes, it is their fault. It is up to them to convince me I absolutely must have their product, especially considering how much they are charging for it.

Don't get me wrong, I could not care less. Maybe they are just not actively trying to sell their products. It's their bottom line, so they should just do whatever suits them.

[John Rofrano]

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

I can watch YouTube just fine. Those tutorials were definitely not on YT. They were on their own web site.

I'm sorry but those tutorials have always been on YouTube. Only two were hosted on the Boris web site because YouTube messed up the audio for some unknown reason. I delivered these videos to Boris so I should know how they were delivered. If you go to the Boris TV web page you will see the YouTube logo in the lower left corner of the video. This is how it's always been.

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

A free trial license key? What an absurd concept! If they do not know how to make a limited-time trial, they do not know much about computer programming. You do not need a trial license key to try Vegas, for example.

Actually it is a very common concept. Controlling access to program functions via a license key is a very common practice. Software developers should not have to make special versions of the program when they have a licensing system that takes care of that for them. That would be absurd to maintain.

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

IE is Internet Explorer, the web browser that comes standard with Microsoft Windows, so if they want to sell to Windows users, it is common sense their tutorials should play in IE.

As far as I know, IE works with YouTube and the videos are on YouTube. I don't know why you had a problem.

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

Thanks for letting me know it is OFX and supports 64 bits.

You're welcome.

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

Anywhere, it is their loss, not mine. If they want my money, they need to be much better marketers. I do not miss their software because I have not seen what it can do. I am not going to go out of my way to find out about every plug-in on the market. I sure tried to learn about their software from their own web site, so yes, it is their fault. It is up to them to convince me I absolutely must have their product, especially considering how much they are charging for it.

I just gave you the direct links to Boris TV on YouTube. If you don't want to watch them, they you are going out of your way to be uninformed and that's unfortunate. I appreciate your frustration but I can't change that. I can only try to help those who want to be helped.

~jr

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by John Rofrano

I just gave you the direct links to Boris TV on YouTube. If you don't want to watch them, they you are going out of your way to be uninformed and that's unfortunate. I appreciate your frustration but I can't change that. I can only try to help those who want to be helped.

I was not asking for help, John. I simply described my experience. Maybe I just happened to click on the tutorials that were not on YT (I kept trying the same tutorials) but the ones I clicked on did not load. I really do not care whether some tactic is "common" (though it is not, I am quite familiar with the practices of the computer industry) also does not change the fact that this particular practice turns potential customers off.

Going out of my way to be uninformed? Give me a break! I was simply curious about this plug-in when this thread started (mostly puzzled by its Tatar name), so I took a look on their web site. It failed to give me the information I was looking for and I lost interest. End of story.