v2024.5 Boris FX Continuum Unit: Key and Blend

Seamless composites made easy

Instantly clean-up green screen & composite with Academy Award-nominated Primatte technology and integrated Mocha tracking and masking.

Compositing and clean-up made easy.

Highlights include:

• 25 effects
• 100s of drag & drop presets
• Primatte Studio 3D keyer
• Academy Award-nominated chroma keying tech
• Spill remover & light wraps
• Math compositing
• Easy to use onscreen widgets
• Mocha tracking & masking
• FX Editor with custom interface
• More!

The Continuum Key & Blend Unit offers multi-host support with a single license.

Features

• Spill Remover: Instantly get rid of pesky light spill on green screen
• Light Wrap Spill: Wrap a background image onto the spill region
• Primatte Studio: Academy Award-nominated chroma key tech
• On-screen control widgets
• Professionally designed factory installed presets
• Integrated FX Browser
• Integrated PixelChooser matte and masking system
• Support for Adobe host native mask shapes
• Integrated Mocha masking and planar tracking system
• Integrated Beat Reactor for audio generated VFX
• Hardware acceleration (OpenGL/OpenCL)
• Multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) support

Effects

Primatte Studio

Easily chroma key and composite using the same Academy Award-nominated compositing tech (Phototron’s Primatte) as major blockbusters like the Lord of the Rings series, Harry Potter films, and Spider-Man. The new Primatte Studio is the ultimate blue/green screen toolset. Exclusive features include:

• Automatic green/blue screen analysis
• Manual transparency tuning
• Adjust lighting to correct unevenly lit screens
• Foreground object detection to deliver a perfect key with a single color sample
• Integrated Academy Award-winning Mocha masking and planar tracking system

Alpha Process

The BCC Alpha Process filter blurs the alpha channel of an image, performs levels and gamma correction on the output of the blur, and composites the output alpha with the initial alpha using the chosen apply mode. The filter also allows you to soften the matte by blurring the alpha channel after it is processed.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.

BCC Edge Composite

NEW IN CONTINUUM 2021, the BCC Edge Composite filter automatically generates an edge matte from an existing Alpha channel and allows you to color correct or blur only the edge of the foreground.

Boost Blend

The BCC Boost Blend filter is a compositing filter that blends two independent layers in a composition and adjusts contrast in the blended pixels.

Unlike most transfer modes, Boost Blend adjusts the mix only where the source and blend layers are different. Boost Blend is especially useful when you composite an image over itself and do not want the transfer mode to affect areas where the blended pixels are identical to the source pixels.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.

Composite Choker

The BCC Composite Choker filter allows the user to contract or expand the edges of a matte to bring them closer to or farther from the foreground. Two Choke controls allow you to smoothly adjust the matte, while Region Parameter controls allow you to define a specific region of interest with which to apply the filter.

Chroma Key

The BCC Chroma Key filter is used for compositing camera footage shot using a blue, green, or red screen as a backdrop over a new background video or a still image from a separate file.

Chroma Key Studio

The BCC Chroma Key Studio filter is an all-in-one keying suite. It combines screen enhancement, auto-garbage matte and masking. Additionally, users are able to take advantage of advanced features in one filter:

• chroma key
• matte cleanup
• matte choker
• foreground color correction
• light wrap

Composite

The BCC Composite filter offers a wide variety of options for compositing one layer over another.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.

Composite Choker

The BCC Composite Choker filter allows the user to contract or expand the edges of a matte to bring them closer to or farther from the foreground. Two Choke controls allow you to smoothly adjust the matte, while Region Parameter controls allow you  to define a specific reagin of interest with which to apply the filter.

Color Paste

NEW IN CONTINUUM 2021, the BCC Color Paste filter takes the luminance values of the foreground image and pastes it as a color over the background.

BCC Edge Composite

NEW IN CONTINUUM 2021, the BCC Edge Composite filter automatically generates an edge matte from an existing Alpha channel and allows you to color correct or blur only the edge of the foreground.

Glow Matte

The BCC Glow Matte filter is similar to the BCC Colorize Glow filter, except that it outputs an alpha channel instead of colors. This filter is useful for making semi-abstract mattes based on a glow of any channel in the original image.

The Filter allows users to select the channel in the source image from which the glow is derived. Pixels with higher values in the selected channel are considered to have higher intensities.

• Luma, Red, Green, and **Blue **use the corresponding color channel and multiply it by the source alpha channel.
• Luma Inverse uses the inverted luma channel.
• Unmultiplied Luma and **Alpha **use the unmodified corresponding source channels.
• Luma Cartoon Edges and Alpha Cartoon Edges find edges in the corresponding source channel, apply outlines to the edges, and use the resulting image. When Luma Cartoon Edges or AlphaCartoon Edges is selected, all the Source Edges parameters apply.
• Luma Edges and _Al_pha Edges find edges in the corresponding source channel and use the resulting image. When Luma Edges or Alpha Edges is selected, all the Source Edges parameters apply.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.

Holdout Composit

NEW IN CONTINUUM 2021, the BCC Holdout Composite Filter is a two-layer/track effect that effectively composites images such as fire, explosions and smoke.

Light Matte

The BCC Light Matte filter uses applied light to create or modify an alpha channel. Rays of light spread from the light source point in all directions. As the rays expand, their intensities are affected by the luminosities of the pixels that they cross. The farther from the source the rays extend, the less they are affected by the intensities of new pixels that they crosses. This process is referred to as attenuation, since the affect of the pixels on the intensity of the rays attenuates, or lessens, over time.

The filter allows users to determine which  source color channel is used to create the light and to calculate the intensities of the source pixels. Pixels with higher values in the selected channel are considered to have higher intensities.

• Luma, Red, Green, and **Blue **use the corresponding color channel with the source alpha information.
• Luma Inverse uses the inverted luma channel.
• Unmultiplied Luma uses the source luma channel but ignores the source alpha information. All pixels in the source are treated as fully opaque.
• Alpha uses the corresponding source channel.
• Luma Cartoon Edges and Alpha Cartoon Edges find edges in the corresponding source channel, apply outlines to the edges, and use the resulting image. When Luma Cartoon Edges or Alpha Cartoon Edges is selected, Thickness/Intensity adjusts the width of the outlined edges, and Cartoon Threshold sets the value in the image above which pixels are considered to be fully on.
• Luma Edges and Alpha Edges find edges in the corresponding source channel and use the resulting image. When Luma Edges or Alpha Edges is chosen,Thickness/Intensity adjusts the intensity of the edges.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.

Light Wrap

The BCC Light Wrap filter reflects a background image around the edges of a foreground image to form a border. This creates the illusion that light from the background image is reflected onto the foreground image. This creates a more convincing composite by making it appear as if the images were shot in the same environment.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.

Linear Color Key

The BCC Linear Color Key filter creates a key based on the difference between the color of each pixel and the specified Key Color. The color comparison can be done in RGB or in HSL color space, and you can adjust the relative importance of each RGB channel with the RGB Weights parameters.

BCC Linear Color Key also allows you to remove unwanted foreground objects or restore opacity to a transparent region in the foreground using the Region of Interest controls. This feature is useful when the foreground has an isolated region that is similar in color to the background (for example, a person wearing a tie of the same color as the background).

Linear Luma Key

The BCC Linear Luma Key filter creates a key from a single channel in the source. This type of filter is called a luma key, because the key is usually created from the image luminance, but you can also use any single RGB channel. You might want to examine the individual channels of the source and use a channel that provides more contrast between the foreground and background than the luma channel.

Make Alpha Key

The BCC Make Alpha Key filter creates a new alpha channel from one of the existing channels in the image and then applies levels and gamma correction to the new alpha channel.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which pixels are used to create the alpha channel. You can create many useful effects by making a Full On (completely opaque) alpha channel and using the PixelChooser to control which parts of the image key out.

Math Composite

NEW IN CONTINUUM 2021, The BCC Math Composite filter combines two clips using one of the Blend modes.

Matte Choker

The BCC Matte Choker filter is a tool for the often frustrating task of adjusting mattes that are not quite right. A first-pass matte often has unwanted holes in areas that should be opaque, and/or unwanted spots in areas that should be transparent. These problems can usually be fixed with Matte Choker.

BCC Matte Choker uses an iterative technique to process the source alpha channel. In other words, the filter applies one stage of the process to the source image, then applies a second stage to the output of the first stage, and repeats the process using the output of each iteration as the input of the next.

Matte Cleanup

The BCC Matte Cleanup filter is used to help correct imperfect mattes as well as generate interesting matte effects.

Often a key can create an imperfect matte in which traces of the background color remain around the edge of the foreground subject. BCC Matte Clean up allows the user to fine tune aspects of the composite blending, as well as choke the opaque regions to remove any unwanted fringes.

Non-Additive Mix

NEW IN CONTINUUM 2021, the BCC Non-Additive Mix filter combines two images by controlling their luminance level relative to each other as well as a set mix percentage.

Optical Dissolve

NEW IN CONTINUUM 2021, the BCC Optical Dissolve filter uses a power function to simulate an optical film dissolve.

Pixel Chooser

The BCC PixelChooser, fully re-engineered in BCC10 to include mocha planar tracking and more robust and intuitive masking/matting tools, provides numerous techniques for selecting which areas of an image will be affected by a filter.  The PixelChooser has been incorperated into most filters in BCC, but is also available as a stand alone filter.

Pixelchooser creates a matte/mask between filtered and unfiltered pixels allowing far greater control over the design process.  The matte/mask can be defined in numerous ways:

• mocha planar spline tracking
• host spline import (in AE)
• basic geometric shapes/gradients
• luma/alpha/channel mattes with thresholding
• robust color keying

Premult

Because of the complexities of the algorithms, some BCC filters (for example, BCC Glow) can mix in color channels from pixels that were originally transparent. This creates a premultiplied alpha channel which includes transparency information in the color channels as well as in the alpha channel. The BCC Premult filter sets the color channels of all transparent pixels to the selected color, giving the user control of the color that is mixed in these cases.

When you composite an image with a premultiplied alpha channel over a new background of a different color, the edges of the alpha channel show a “fringe” of the old background, because the edges of the alpha channel were blended with the original background color information. Premultiplied Alpha Key allows you to key out most of this unwanted color.

RGB Blend

The BCC RGB Blend filter provides independent compositing of the source image’s RGB channels with the Mix Layer’s RGB Channels. The brightness and contrast of the composite can also be adjusted

independently for each channel.

The built in PixelChooser, with integrated mocha planar tracking allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.

Two Way Key

BCC Two Way Key is useful for keying out a range of colors while retaining one color in the range. Two Way Key works by using a Key Color to determine which color is keyed out, then using a Keep Color to restore opacity to selected colors in the range. You can also adjust the range of colors to key out and key in using the Similarity controls.