I use both Boris and AE, despite the fact Boris' learning curve seems a little bit more difficult. I never had a problem with Boris, though (just once ;). I use it as a standalone applc. or even within Vegas timeline. I can only remember once that a transition wasn't working as I rendered the effect within Vegas. I fixed that rendering the transition within Boris and then adding the video in Vegas timeline. Boris is a great applic.
Cheers.

I use Boris Red with Vegas 5.

I don't like it (the interface) either, but I have pretty much just accepted it as the cost of doing business. Fortunately it has tons of presets. I guess if I didn't have a day job I could become pretty proficient with Red... :)

Red is extremely powerful; just tough to learn.

Hey, it's easier than Autocad or Pro E if that makes you feel any better... :)

I think maybe one of the things that makes it tough to come to grips with is by default Red parameters will always animate to the default positions and values if you change some value at some point in the timeline whereas After Effects only animates values when you turn on the "stop watch". Although the last upgrade came with about 1000 pages of printed manual they still leave out important stuff, for example the controls for 3d shatter; do they tell you how to simply start and stop that effect? NO! It could be the documentation by Boris simply lags because it' so complex NOBODY completely understands it! All kidding aside I think the basic layout of it is easier to grasp than say AE. Now 3d programs...those are complicated!

I love BorisRED! I find it to be a great FX package.
I just really, really, really wish it integrated into Vegas like it integrates into all other editing software I use (Avid and Speed Razor). If it were a seemless plug in to Vegas, I'd never look anywhere else (though, I admit, I'm becoming more interested in AE...).

mjr

I am also on the Boris Red bandwagon--it does a number of extremely cool things.

Example: I created a nice-looking baseball by wrapping a Mercator map of a baseball pattern around a sphere, made it slowly revolve about its y-axis, and made extruded text revolve in the opposite direction about the y-axis. It kinda resembles a rotating baseball version of Saturn. Then, using the container function, I made my rotating Saturn-like baseball slowly rise from below the bottom of the screen to a fixed position in the upper middle. All of this was done against a cobalt-blue background.

All of that stuff was then exported as a movie file, and the movie file was then imported into Vegas 5 for further use (like many, I have found the "integration" of Boris Red with Vegas to be far too troublesome/irritating to bother with. I'd like to be able to do that but haven't felt motivated enough to put the time in--especially because many who've been there imply that it's not ultimately worth the trouble. However, to be fair there also are some that think Boris Red/Vegas 5 integration is worth learning--a bit more teaching would be welcome from those folks).

So, once in Vegas with the Boris movie clip, I placed a jpeg still of a mountain range w/ clear blue sky on a video track, blue-screened out the sky of the jpeg, juxtaposed the Boris clip and the jpeg on separate tracks, adjusted the still to be same length as the Boris movie clip, added some track composite level adjustments to both, and---voila!

Now the rotating Saturn-baseball rises from behind the mountain range as the sky turns from black to bright blue and the mountain range lightens.

Definitely fun. I don't get the feeling that I've even scratched the surface.

Best regards,

Lee