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Edit Integrate Review — Boris Continuum Complete 3.0.2

Jun 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon

Plug-in workhorse delivers a full range of standard effects.

Whereas other Boris programs such as Red have dedicated interfaces, Continuum has always been the one without the interface. Essentially it's a series of special effects plug-ins that work within the architecture/interface of the host program, such as Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Autodesk's Combustion. After several Continuum versions and updates, a great part of the set's progression is how tightly the plug-ins work within the host program. And that is really the beauty of the product. While some plug-ins launch into their unique interface, Continuum's interface melds seamlessly with the host software. There are no new methods to learn. Simply install, jump in, and create.

Well, not so fast. Install was actually a little tricky for me this time around. Although I was excited that this new version (currently 3.0.2) includes direct support for Combustion, after install I could not pull up the effects in that program for some reason. I ended up just dragging the effect plug-ins into the Combustion folder, and all was fine. Incidentally, installs into After Effects 6.5 and Premiere Pro 1.5 ran perfectly.

The package now sports more than 150 plug-ins, and they cover a wide range of different effects: distortion, image processing, motion tracking, keying, and compositing. Effects are divided into categories such as color and blur, distortion and perspective, effects, generators, keys and matte, and lights and time. Color and blur include a wide variety of effects, such as ways to alter the gamma, saturation, motion, and sharpness of your footage.

Distortion filters include 2D particles, 3D shatter, mapping onto a cube, page turns, twirls, and displacement. The effects batch is a real grab bag that includes filters to convert your movie to a cartoon, burnt film, film damage, scratches and dust, glow, pixel noise, multi shadow, and film grain, among many others.

The generator filters can create fire, clouds, rays, rain, sparks, snow, stars, wood, and many more elements. The lights and time filters can create light zooms, sweeps, glints, streaks, glitter, spotlights, as well as trails, blurs, and displacement over time. The keying and matte effects offer up a wide array of chroma key, wire removal, light wrap, and glow mattes, along with other effects.

You'll find that once you dive in and start playing with the parameters, you can create just about any effect you can imagine by combining different filters. Of course, one of the package's nicer features is that there are plenty of presets that ship with it, so each filter typically has a bunch of pre-made effect settings that you can activate with a single click.

I thought the Premiere Pro integration was particularly well done. After the effects are installed, you can use them right from the effects section of the program. Same for Combustion — the filters really settle right in to the interface.

Boris has refined and improved several of the features for this new version, including a new integrated motion-tracking engine that's available in most of the filters. The blurs have been improved as well, with new radial and spiral blurs as well as a more realistic motion blur. There are a number of new ways to add glows in the plug-ins. Aside from the lighting effects, you can do glows based on alpha edges as well as colorize glows.

The film effects are neat; you can now match the grain of a type of film and dirty up your video with lots of ways to emulate stock and film age. A new optical flow uses motion vectors to analyze footage and create new intermediate frames for smoother keyframes. Also new are lots of built-in wipes that can be dropped on your footage without keyframing.

While the addition of new filters keeps things intriguing, the package on the whole is a mix of the standard effects we have seen for years. And that may be fine, because if there were ever what I would call a full or complete package of standard effects, then Continuum Complete would be it. But don't expect to be blown away with effects you have not seen before.

One thing that needs to be advanced is the support for OpenGL. While a handful of the lighting filters support OpenGL, most of the other 150 do not. Even the various particle effect filters need to be rendered and don't take advantage of video card acceleration. Boris has made gains in its other programs, such as Boris Red GL, but Continuum feels a little left behind. A major engine rewrite that allowed many, if not all the effects, to function by taking advantage of OpenGL-accelerated rendering would make this package remarkably appealing.

As it stands now, Continuum Complete is a great suite of a lot of effects. In fact, you can get a preview of each and every one of them at borisfx.com. Further, the integration of the host programs is smooth and effortless. It's really refreshing to work with them in Premiere and now Combustion. Just don't think that the package is going to create previously unseen, dazzling effects. The program is more workhorse than revolutionary. If you need bread-and-butter effects, and lots of them, Boris Continuum Complete is a wise choice.

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BOTTOM LINE

Company: Boris
Boston; (617) 451-9900
www.borisfx.com

Product: Continuum Complete 3.0.2

Assets: Features a complete set of standard effects.

Caveats: No really new or dazzling effects, most lighting filters do not support OpenGL.

Demographic: Effects artists who want a full range of plug-ins with the added conevnience of remaining in the host software's native environment.
Price: $795, $499
(Premiere Pro upgrade),
$249 (upgrade from previous version)

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