More important though, are different ways of handling the same problems that result from focusing on the needs of editors. For example, every software-based effects application, and many hardware-based ones as well, can significantly speed up workflow if the layers are set to a lower resolution display. The problem in a compositing app comes at render time if you don't remember to reset all the layers back to full resolution, a boo-boo that all too often doesn't manifest itself until after the render is completed and maybe one or two layers of your video look like a hairball the cat barfed up.

Not an issue in Boris - the assumption is that, because you're working with full-frame video inside an editing application, the host application knows best when it comes to rendering quality. Whatever resolution your host app is set to, all the layers of your Boris effect will render at that resolution.

Work in resolutions as low as you need to in Boris, even wireframe (especially handy with 3D shapes, of course), and know that they'll render at full quality back in the host application, regardless of how you left the settings in Boris.

Unless your host app is in draft mode, of course. My point is only that Boris does some of your thinking for you, which is what software should be doing.

A big reason we editors want to lower working resolutions is to speed previews. While some video cards like Gallea and SDI ICE can offer AE previews to your television monitor (the latter only through an SDI connection, either to the monitor itself or through a deck with SDI), BorisFX offers a realtime RAM preview to your external monitor regardless of your video card. This is crucial for editors whose eventual output will be seen on a television monitor, to be able to immediately evaluate things like the cleanliness of keys or the smoothness of motion blurs. And unlike a second application that requires additional RAM in order to be open at the same time as your editing app, Boris uses the the editing application's own RAM: you can have them both open without double RAM taxation.

Because it's a plug-in to your editing application, Boris can also offer a level of integration with it that no outside application can. Not only can Boris bring up to 8 layers of video direct from the timeline in applications like Avid Xpress and Avid Media Composer, others like Discreet's edit* are so well integrated that moving the CTI in Boris also moves the CTI in the edit* timeline. Media 100's version 6 allows the preview of unrendered Boris effects from the Media 100 timeline, a remarkably helpful way to be sure that effects fit where they should in the finished program. And of course, you can render all of your Boris effects at the same time that the other effects in your editing timeline are rendered, rather than two separate passes, such as one set of renders in AE and one in your editing application.

Finally, Boris RED also offers the standalone application called Keyframer, which can be freely copied onto as many computers as you can get your hands on, to create and save effects settings that can then be imported into and rendered by your host application. Whether or not you actually do it, and I truly hope you do, you're supposed to be paying for every copy of AE that you use on multiple workstations - or anything else, including fonts, that doesn't give you explicit permission to make copies for use on more than one computer. Keyframer encourages you to install it everywhere you can.

And because RED works so well in other people's RAM, you don't even need to load Keyframer onto a second workstation - it can be just about any computer at all. On my home iMac, for example, I use the RED Keyframer in as little as 10 MB of RAM, and happily create effects as complex as I can imagine. (Admittedly, not often all that complex. But that's my limitation, not Keyframer's.) I rename each track with the media that I'll eventually apply to it in back at my workstation so that when I load in the saved setting, I'm good to go. I've also used Keyframer on a steam-powered portable that only has a TOTAL of 40 MB of RAM installed, and Keyframer still works dandily.

So even if you could do everything in AE that you can in RED - and you can't - you couldn't do it for free on every other computer you own, and in 10 MB of RAM. Not that there aren't things you can do in AE that you can't in RED, of course, which is why, if you're happily compositing there, keep on doing so. But if you're an editor looking to expand the effects power of your editing application well beyond anything you've experienced before, jump all over this thang.

Okay, I'm impressed. So what does RED stand for?
It's actually not an acronym or an abbreviation. RED is just its name, in all caps, kind of like k.d. lang is all lower case and Eurythmics don't have a "The" in front of their name. Before you complain that it's a little precious, be glad it's not an unpronounceable symbol. There may be also be something of a playful post-Cold War wink from a guy named Boris in the name, too, but as far as I know, it's just plain RED.

That said, you can have some fun making up games pretending that RED is an acronym, like maybe one where you all take a shot when somebody repeats a previous choice for one of the letters. ("Really" and "Excellent" show up a lot, so you may want to pace your drinking accordingly.) My favorite game to play, though, is Strip RED.

Say, what are the rules for Strip RED?
I can't really say online, but I can tell you that Strip RED does in fact offer Real Time Previews. If you ask nicely.

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