Boris FX Export Issues

Boris Red is great, but “I learnt the hard way” not use Boris standalone.  From now on I will only use it as a plugin to an NLE, performing the import/export via that instead.  In Red 4, it was possible in Windows to e.g. import DNxHD or Cineform and then export QuickTime>Cineform.  However in Red 5.2 at least, it seems that QuickTime import and export capabilities have been removed.

In more detail:

  • Naively, I tried using Boris Red 5.0 in standalone mode, to import a file, apply an enhancement effect then export to an intermediate file (that I could import back to my NLE).  But it failed.  Different variations on my export attempts failed in different ways, sometimes crashing, sometimes an error message, sometimes a weird image in the result
  • So I updated to Red 5.2, hoping that the problem might be fixed in that version.  However the problem remained, and now there was a further obstacle – Red version 5.2 for Windows removed the ability to export to QuickTime.  At first I thought it was perhaps a case of QuickTime version incompatibility. But no, it appears that this export feature has been deliberately removed from Red, following issues between Red and QuickTime in their newly-shared 64-bit world…
  • In desperation I tried Uncompressed.  Cumbersome in the least and, in the case of external USB2 drives, slow.  However even that attempt failed, with a Boris crash.
  • Finally I gave up and simply applied Red as a plugin to my most flexible available NLE, namely Sony Vegas.

Web-Research:

  • http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/15/859544 October 2009
    • Boris RED trips over 50fps progressive. Any tips?
      • (My own post in CreativeCow, where I naively assumed my problems were due to using a nonstandard format, but actually it was the same issue of vertical stripes in the output unless I exported as QuickTime)
  • http://blog.davidesp.com/archives/493 (January 2012)
    • (My blog entry, again encounterin the “stripes” problem)
  • http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/15/862786#862791 (February 2012)
    • Q:
      • Any thoughts on getting render output formats other than Targa Sequence or AVI in AvidFX 6?
      • (I would like) QuickTime, with a list of compressors as long as my arm. RED 5 (32) has it, and that’s what I continue to use. Sadly, my Avid doesn’t import AVI files, nor can I render a file with an alpha channel. And I hate the idea of doing a Targa sequence.
    • A:
      • We’re looking into this and, per your request, we’ll do what we can to add more output options as soon as possible. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

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