Continuum 2020.5 (v13.5.0) for Avid AVX - Release Notes

What’s New in Continuum 2020.5 for AVX - Avid Media Composer (Summary of major changes since Continuum 2020):

New Crash Zoom Dissolve Transition:

• High energy, smooth zoom in or out while dissolving to the new layer.

New Spin Blur Dissolve Transition:

• Rapid image rotation or spin/spiral blur while dissolving to the new layer.

Particle Illusion Enhancements:

• New “Emitters_2020.5” Emitter Library
• New Presets
• Force Field Grid
  • New force geometry offering a huge array of new dynamic and organic particle motion behaviors.
• Force Point
  • New circularly symmetric attractor/deflector force type for sculpting and animating particle motion geometry.
• Favorites Tag for Emitters
  • Mark your top emitters as Favorites and then filter to quickly see just the Favorites. (Grid and List views only)
• Faster UI Interactivity
  • Faster scrubbing of widgets, parameters, graph view controls, and CTI - especially for more complex projects
• Numerous UI Improvements
  • Graph View bezier keyframe improvements
  • Emitter controls retain their twirl/untwirl state when re-opened
  • Selecting library emitter restarts preview playback
  • Ctrl/Cmd+Click on Keyframes to delete them
  • Alt/Option+Click on Keyframes to toggle between linear and bezier interpolation
  • Wider range for all width and height parameters
  • Mouse wheel, trackpad scrolling, and pinching to zoom the Emitter Preview window
  • UI indicator to show when a frame is still processing.
  • Numerous other UI tweaks
• Mocha Parameter Tracking Refinement
  • Disabled point layers now default to hidden/disabled inside the Mocha UI for simpler tracking experience

Title Studio Enhancements:

• Integrated Cast Shadow shader
• 4k / HighDPI monitor support on Windows
• Native Composite controls with Apply Modes, Opacity, and Brightness available back in the native host’s UI. You can now apply directly to the clip instead of applying to a filler track.
• Seven new bundled C4D models and new presets illustrating their use
• Improved support for macOS 10.15 (Catalina)
• UI tweaks

Mocha 2020.5 Enhancements:

• Track planes that can move behind the camera
• Area Brush - adjust brush size by holding down cmd/ctrl and dragging mouse to rescale brush size
• Area Brush - fill gaps feature with configurable fill size
• Magnetic edge snapping improvements - snap multiple points at a time
• Faster rendering of motion blur masks
• OCIO color management improvements
• Improved support for macOS 10.15 (Catalina)
• UI tweaks

Remover Enhancements:

• Mocha Parameter Tracking for Spot Clone mode
• Source / Destination Widgets for Spot Clone Mode
• Relative Offset Widget for Shape Clone Mode
• Absolute vs. Relative Offset option for Spot Clone mode
• Clone Color / Clone Detail frequency separation tuning controls

FX Browser Enhancements:

• 4k / HighDPI monitor support on Windows

Prism and Prism Dissolve Performance:

• Render up to 2x faster.

Other Enhancements:

• Additional 4k / HighDPI / Retina monitor improvements:
  • Primatte Toolbar
  • License and Prefs panes
  • License Activation Tool
• Particle Illusion Dissolve - two new presets
• Particle Illusion Dissolve - Added Region Animation group
• Cast Shadow - Added Apply Modes menus (to Built in Light and Comp Light groups)
• Light Leaks Dissolve - Added Color group
• Saturation Peak Added to all dissolve transitions Color group
• Prism Amount control added to Prism and Prism Dissolve
• Layer Deformer - add multiple materials option to map media to each face independently
• Vignette - Improved Softness control with more intuitive behavior for large values and ability to control the shape of the fall-off ramp
• Preference /Environment Variable to allow floating server render-only machines to be configured to ONLY consume render-only licenses and never full GUI licenses

Other Fixes and Polish in Continuum 2020.5:

• Licensing - Fix a rare licensing issue on machines where some disks are only visible to admin users.
• Licensing - Mac Dongle licensing failure.
• Licensing - Protect against rare loss of license with multiple machines running with certain cloned drive configurations.
• Remover - Improved cloning of alpha regions (reduced edge artifacts)
• Remover - If method is set to one of the Auto-Fill options, don’t change method to Clone Shape after launching Mocha in the PixelChooser
• Remover, Corner Pin Studio, and Witness Protection - Turn off PixelChooser overlay widgets if the effect is in a mode that completely disables the PixelChooser.
• Dissolve Transitions: better match between 8/16/float bitdepth results when using Color boost params such as Brightness and Contrast
• Layer Deformer - Curl Deformer reverse direction does not work
• 3D Objects - error loading native extrusion style or material presets in 3D Objects filters other than Title Studio
• OpenCL Preferences setting - Integrated Glow still uses the GPU even when the Enable OpenCL pref was turned off
• Integrated Glow group (in Particle Illusion, Reframer, Beauty Studio, Light Leaks) - glow radius did not auto-scale with clip resolution causing presets to look different on HD vs 4k if they used the glow feature prominently. Old projects with integrated glow might need to tweak the glow radius when reopened in the new version. (This does NOT affect Fast Film Glow or Fast Film Glow Dissolve).
• Logging - Improved license diagnostic logging.
• Logging - Cross Glitch - remove false errors in log.
• Particle Illusion - Keyframe interpolation type not displayed correctly in pop-up
• Particle Illusion - Moving bezier handle on position key can result in invalid values and unusable position path
• Particle Illusion - Cut/Paste emitter from one layer to another can crash
• Particle Illusion - Inconsistent menu text look and size in some parts of the UI
• Particle Illusion - Dragging a point on a line emitter causes all points on the line to become repositioned
• Particle Illusion - Only one internal PI layer will render back in the host
• Particle Illusion - Can’t change project duration in standalone mode
• Particle Illusion - Selecting library emitter should restart preview playback
• Particle Illusion - Selecting parameter value does not select object in stage HUD
• Particle Illusion - Spacebar does not always initialize playback
• Particle Illusion - Closing Project Settings dialog by clicking “Apply” causes blue CTI to disappear
• Particle Illusion - Deflector thickness HUD doesn’t match effect when angle adjusted
• Particle Illusion - Crash when spinning closed a particle type setting with value text selected
• Particle Illusion - “Single Particle” types now always drawn on top as intended.
• Particle Illusion - Respect particle render order options
• Particle Illusion - Saving emitters to the library now accurately creates the emitter thumbnail from the current Stage view
• Particle Illusion - Randomness variation issue where some particle properties were not as randomly distributed as intended.
• Particle Illusion - Particle birth on same frame with alpha gradient
• Particle Illusion - Rendering glitches in the host for animated Forces with multiple emitters.
• Particle Illusion - Mini timeline shows keys from one parameter while graph window shows another
• Particle Illusion - Adding an emitter to library does not update List or Grid views
• Particle Illusion- Undo of disabling “Intense” param does not restore “Preserve Color”
• Particle Illusion - When focus is a numeric entry field, the arrow keys should increase / decrease numeric value in the field
• Particle Illusion - Deflectors and forces should adhere to the “add new objects (emitters) at frame 0” rule in the preferences panel
• Particle Illusion - Improved mouse focus handling when clicking on param name versus param value
• Particle Illusion - Pasting an emitter into a new document crashes
• Title Studio - Crash when choosing V1 as Environment Map Track map
• Title Studio - Reflect Scene option not rendering correctly
• Title Studio - Crash or hang when enabling Shadow light
• Title Studio - First time you replace a c4d file you get an error message though the file does import
• Title Studio - Toggling Visibility on C4D layers causes Crash.
• Title Studio - Crash when adjusting the edge contract param
• Title Studio - Fix User Marks stability/display
• Title Studio - Some shaders did not work when applied to C4D objects
• Title Studio - Text for the last icon in various styles are cut off
• Title Studio - Catalina - Comp window empty
• Title Studio - Material bump Textures render incorrectly when Text Tool is selected
• Title Studio - 3D Model fails to render when shader is applied to model part
• Title Studio - Curl Deformer only effects part of multi-object C4D models
• Title Studio - Shaders applied to scene level will disable any shader applied to a Container Converted 3d Model
• Title Studio - Setting track type to motion path causes title studio errors
• Title Studio - Improve accuracy of warning dialog when saving a project fails because the destination folder does not have Write permissions
• Title Studio - Polygon count shows 0 if certain actions are undone
• Title Studio - Blur shader renders differently at lower preview resolution
• Title Studio - Track Compositing parameters create incorrect render with image processing shaders
• Title Studio - Blur shaders wrap around to opposite edge.
• Title Studio - Attempts to save new project might fail with odd error message on first attempt
• Title Studio - updated Typography Banner.bsp preset to fix a minor defect in banner shape
• Title Studio - Sometimes extruded outline text will not display correctly, with some characters being filled and some outline only

Continuum 2020.5 (v13.5.0) (BCC 13.5.0) for Avid AVX was released on 5/2/2020.

Continuum 2020.5 (v13.5.0) for Avid AVX supports the following host applications:

Macintosh:

• Avid Media Composer 8.x, 2018.x, 2019.x (up to avid versions released at time of Continuum release) and running macOS 10.12, 10.13, 10.14, 10.15 (as appropriate for the host version in use):

Windows:

• Avid Media Composer 8.x, 2018.x, 2019.x (up to avid versions released at time of Continuum release) and running Windows 7 Professional (64-bit), Windows 8 Professional or Enterprise (64-bit), and Windows 10 (as appropriate for the host version in use).

Training:

Numerous resources are available for helping you get the most out of Boris Continuum Complete.

• Help documents for individual BCC effects are accessible directly from each plug-in’s UI.  The entire BCC Help Documention library is also available on the BorisFX website, including access to a downloadable version for browsing Offline BCC Help Documentation.
• BorisTV video tutorials cover a huge range of topics from introductions to the Fundamentals, to deep training Webinar Replays, to in-depth looks at  key effects and techniques.

Continuum 2020.5 (v13.5.0) for AVX - Avid - Compatibility Notes:

While in general your previously saved projects should render identically in the newer version, bug fixes and quality improvements can sometimes change the look of older projects. While every effort is made to ensure project compatibility, the following notable areas may see some change to the look of previously saved projects.

• Dissolve Transitions: A fix for better match between 8/16/float bitdepth results when using the optional Color boost transition parameters such as Brightness and Contrast means that the look of some previous projects will have changed slightly in 8 and 16bit projects.
• Integrated Glow group (in Particle Illusion, Reframer, Beauty Studio, Light Leaks). Previously the glow radius did not auto-scale with clip resolution causing presets to look different on HD vs 4k if they used the glow feature prominently. Old projects with integrated glow might need to tweak the glow radius when reopened in the new version to adjust for this change. (This does NOT affect Fast Film Glow or Fast Film Glow Dissolve).
• Particle Illusion and Particle Illusion Dissolve: Fixes to random property granularity may change the details of individual particles in some projects, although the overall look and feel should remain the same.

Continuum 2020.5 (v13.5.0) for AVX - Avid - Known Issues and Limitations:

• mocha PixelChooser - mocha track data is not saved with presets.  To clone mocha tracking data from one effect instance or machine or host to another, you can use the File->Export Project and File->Merge Project options from within the mocha UI or you can copy/paste track data from the clipboard when moving from one mocha UI instance to another. [CO-4250]
• Custom UI views such as the Title Studio UI, FX Browser, License Dialog, or Preferences Dialog don’t fully adapt to High-DPI displays on windows which can cause some fonts to render too small and be difficult to read. [CO-3269]
• Title Studio - Snap to guide - snapping is offset by 2 pixels. [CO-5071]
• Particle Illusion - custom GUI scroll bars do not react to Wacom tablet clicks. [CO-5788]
• Moving Mocha from one monitor to another and relaunching it can cause UI refresh problems with mixed monitor resolutions [CO-5829]
• Particle Illusion: “File->New” does not clear out project filename, so “Save” can overwrite last project saved if the filename is not changed. [CO-7723]