I have both, and find they have more power than I have time to exploit! Unilke the LTD versions you have, the regular versions don't have a stand-alone renderer; you'll need to render within Vegas unless you have the $$$ to shuck out for Boris RED.

I haven't used the stabilization, but I believe for it, as well as any similar "dynamic" filter, you'll find it much easier to work outside of Vegas using the FX Keyframer, as the Boris plug-in for Vegas only can show you a single (static) frame. This is a limitation of the Vegas interface to third-party plug-ins, not of Boris. Save the .bfx file, then open it within Vegas once you've selected that same clip. Hope this helps rather than confuses.

Regards,
Paul

There is a simple workaround for the problem of Vegas serving up only a single frame. Apply the Boris Red (or Boris FX) plugin to a clip. It can be any clip because we will actually ignore it. Then within Boris change the reference from "V1" (the default NLE clip) to an external one. This will let you make use of all the motion dependent filters that need multiple frames. Exit Boris and render your video in Vegas. This allows you to use all the Boris features without the Boris renderer because Vegas will do the output work instead.

This scenario works with Boris Red and presumably with FX or Gaffiti as well.

>Then within Boris change the reference from "V1" (the default NLE clip) to an external one. This will let you make use of all the motion dependent filters that need multiple frames. Exit Boris and render your video in Vegas.<

Can you explain this a little more? I'm experimenting with FX right now but am finding the interface really clunky, especially after Vegas. By far the biggest drawback is the single frame preview, which seems to make motion tracking etc. largely unusable.

Boris supports various media files upon which it can apply its filters. Examples of these media files are: still images, video clips, gradients, solid colors, natural media, and up to two videos passed from an NLE.

When you apply the Boris plugin to a clip in Vegas and then enter Boris, you will see the Vegas clip referenced as "V1" in the Boris compositing window. If you are applying the Boris plugin as a transition in Vegas, then you will see both a "V1" and "V2" reference in Boris. Again, you can easily see the "V1" indicator as a small icon on the right-most group of symbols for a media entry in the compositing window. If you right-click on the little "V1" symbol you can change the media to anything else as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Since Vegas only passes a single frame to Boris when it hands over "V1", you can not apply advanced Boris filters like stabilization, corner pinning, and motion tracking. The workaround is to right-click on "V1" in Boris, select "movie file" and point to the same footage that Vegas passed to Boris. Of course you can point to anything you want.

Here is a specific example in the event that I am not explaning this well. Say you are in Vegas and in your timeline you have a clip called "NAB - 017". You then apply a Boris plugin to this clip and enter Boris by clicking the colorful logo in the Vegas plugin dialog box. When Boris fills the screen, look in the compositing window (usually in the lower left corner) and look at the line of information that represents your video clip. You will notice a yellow symbol (along with a bunch of others) that says "V1". This is called the media icon. Now right-click on that to change the media in that line by selecting "movie clip". A dialog window will pop up prompting you for the location and file name of your media. Put in the required information so you are pointing to "NAB - 017". You now have access to the entire clip and not just one frame of it as was passed by Vegas.

Note that with this procedure you get the whole raw clip that will not reflect any cropping, editing, color correction or other changes that you may be applying in Vegas. In that situation (which is most of the time) I merely double-click on that clip while in Vegas to get the set of markers in place that define the length of the clip and then render just that portion to a file that I might call "NAB - 017 TEMP". I do everything exactly the same in Vegas and Boris that I previously described except that I will have Boris refer to "NAB - 017 TEMP" instead of the raw "NAB - 017" clip.

I hope I have succeeded in explaining this workaround and that it helps someone. I have found this actually quite easy to do and it is how I usually work with the Boris software unless I am creating a new effect that requires lots of compositing. In that case I work entirely within Boris.


Edit: fixed spelling errors