AE Pro 6 or BorisFX 7/Graffitti 3 bundle?

BrianStanding wrote on 11/19/2003, 12:35 PM
OK, here's my dliemna. I own old, registered copies of both After Effects (Production Bundle v. 4.1) and Boris FX (v. 3.55). As near as I can tell, I qualify for both Adobe's upgrade pricing to AE Pro 6 and to Boris' upgrade pricing to Boris FX 7 & Graffiti 3. By a curious (or not-so-curious) coincidence, the price for either upgrade is exactly the same: $300.

I plan on downloading the demos of each, but I'm still interested in what this forum thinks is a better deal, and why. Please don't tell me "go buy Red or Commotion," because that's simply out of my budget. I work almost exclusively in documentary video, so my primary interest is in title sequences, chroma keying, and image enhancement. I may play with some 2D/3D animation, and limited compositing, but probably not a lot of 82-layer 3D eye candy with specular highlights!

Thanks in advance.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/19/2003, 1:52 PM
IF you own Vegas, the price for a NEW copy of Boris FX and Gradditti is $250. So, you'd save $50 if you buy new (it's on their store).

BrianStanding wrote on 11/19/2003, 1:58 PM
HappyFriar,

Thanks for the tip.

However, I think that's $249 for EITHER FX7 OR Graffitti 3.
The Boris FX upgrade price is $299 for BOTH FX7 & G3.

Or are you looking at a different page?

Here's the link I'm looking at:
http://stores.yahoo.com/artel-software/premvegusspe.html
BrianStanding wrote on 11/24/2003, 8:07 AM
A quick update: after looking at the BFX7 & G3 demos, my decision may be a lot easier.

The Boris demos were buggy and slow, with a cluttered, difficult interface. I never got any of the Boris FX settings to work properly with Vegas, resulting in an endless series of crashes of both applications and Vegas.

I found out later that Boris is not compatible with the Open Gl acceleration of my ATI Radeon VE card. According to the Adobe site, however, AE6 is.

I haven't yet downloaded the AE6 tryout (130 megs is a bit much for my dial-up connection), but at this point, the limited use I'd have for Boris doesn't seem worth the aggravation of getting it to work properly. Maybe I'll just stick with Vegas and AE4.1 until Satish's Wax 2.0 comes out.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 11/24/2003, 8:38 AM
Brian, after reading your original post I downloaded the Graffitti demo. Not being the brighest light on the Christmas tree, I found that being intuitive was *not* one of the program's strengths.

Be that as it may, I'm curious as to why you're interested in AE and Boris FX. Being a documentarian, do you have much need for "special effects"?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/24/2003, 12:00 PM
Oopes. I thought it was for each copy seperatly. :)
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/24/2003, 12:02 PM
The Radeon VE isn't as up to date as the others. Probley a Radeon 9200 or 9600 would be a good upgrade choice (9600 supports more stuff then 9200)
beerandchips wrote on 11/24/2003, 12:57 PM
If it were me (and it's not, but you asked). I would get After Effects. I chose Commotion Pro over AE two years ago and have been kicking myself every since. (Commotion doesn't have audio scratch track)
BrianStanding wrote on 11/24/2003, 3:04 PM
"Be that as it may, I'm curious as to why you're interested in AE and Boris FX. Being a documentarian, do you have much need for "special effects"? "

Not a ton of need just yet. However, even in the documentary world, we are seeing more and more use of split-screen, chroma keying, animated graphics, title sequences, etc. Educational markets are finding that slick MTV-ish effects are more likely to hold students' interests than straight talking-head docs. Got to keep up with the Joneses, you know.

See "Manufacturing Consent" (based on the Noam Chomsky book of the same name) or the Guerilla News Network (http://www.guerrillanews.com/) to see what I'm talking about.
BrianStanding wrote on 11/24/2003, 3:07 PM
Marquat:

According to the Boris site, OpenGL acceleration only works with the ATI 9000 and above series. In theory, Boris should work with OpenGL disabled, but with slower previews. In my case, I can't really say if the problems I've been seeing are related to OpenGL or not.
David_Kuznicki wrote on 11/24/2003, 6:19 PM
AE ALL THE WAY! Although I would be very, very hard pressed to recommend AE for audio... I've noticed (at least on my PIII 750 mhz dinosaur) that AE 5.5 will tear through video, but that audio slows down previewing like you would not believe!

David.
stormstereo wrote on 12/4/2003, 10:25 AM
Hey, I've got "Manufacturing Consent". It is just superb. It's a bit old now but perhaps their style of editing and effects is keeping it alive for a lot longer than a more "conventional" style would.

Talking 'bout documentaries. One that'll blow your mind is "Surplus" by Erik Gandini. DO NOT miss it. http://www.atmo.se/zino.aspx?pageID=4&articleID=382

Best/Tommy