v2024.5 Boris FX Continuum Unit: Blur

Bring the focus in

Draw your audience’s attention exactly where you want it to be with depth, rack focus, lens blurs, and more.

Add depth and motion blur. Pull rack focus, create lens blurs, and more.

The Continuum Blur Unit offers multi-host support with a single license.

Highlighted Features

• 10 effects
• 100s of drag & drop presets
• Rack focus & create lens blurs with bokeh highlights
• Mocha tracking & masking
• Beat Reactor audio-driven animation
• FX Editor with custom interface
• More!

Effects

Directional Blur

The BCC Directional Blur filter blurs the image by displacing it in one direction. The effect is similar to how a photograph of a speeding object appears if taken with a slower shutter speed.

In addition to advanced controls to fine tune the quality of the blur, the filter allows for detailed control over:

• Blur Amount controls the amount of blur applied to the image. Increasing Blur Amount displaces pixels farther in the chosen direction and creates more blur.
• Angle sets the direction in which pixels are displaced to create the blur.
• Thin reduces the number of pixels used to compute each point in the blur. Increasing Thin decreases the smoothness of the blur but reduces render time. Higher Thin values produce a “double vision” effect
• Increasing Spread causes each point in the rendered output to be affected more by points farther away from it in the blur, producing a blurred “double vision” effect.
• Blur Threshold reduces the amount of color change to each pixel by the threshold amount. Increasing Blur Threshold causes the parts of the image with abrupt changes in color to blur, while areas with subtle details remain unchanged.

Fast Lens Blur

The BCC Fast Lens Blur filter is a 100% GPU accelerated replacement for our original BCC Lens Blur.  BCC Fast Lens Blur uses OpenCL to emulate a lens blur defocus/rackfocus effect where out of focus highlights of an image clip take on the shape of the lens diaphragm.

When a lens is used at it’s maximum aperture (fully open / set to the smallest f stop number) the out of focus highlights are typically in the shape of a circle, however, when the lens is stopped down (set to something other than the smallest f stop number) the blades inside the lens shape the out of focus highlights into multi-sided shapes. This filter includes a pop-up that can be used to match the different looks that can be achieved in the physical world based on the lens aperture setting. This pleasing optical result is referred to in photographic terms as Bokeh.

The BCC Fast Lens Blur filter also includes a comprehensive depth of field (Z-Depth) option, whereby a separate image can be used to control the depth and position of the focus field.

Gaussian Blur

The BCC Gaussian Blur filter implements a popular blur algorithm that produces smoother blurs but takes more time to render than the Basic Blur filter.

Gaussian Blur softens the image by averaging each pixel with its neighboring pixels. The word “Gaussian” refers to the bell- shaped curve commonly used in statistical analysis. The shape of this curve determines how much each averaged pixel contributes to the output.

Lens Shape

The BCC Lens Shape filter emulates a lens blur defocus/rack-focus effect where out of focus highlights of an image clip take on the shape of the lens diaphragm, however, the Lens Shape filter takes an image input and uses this for the highlight shape.

When a lens is used at it’s maximum aperture (fully open / set to the smallest f stop number) the out of focus highlights are typically in the shape of a circle, however, when the lens is stopped down (set to something other than the smallest f stop number) the blades inside the lens shape the out of focus highlights into multi-sided shapes. This filter includes a pop-up that can be used to match the different looks that can be achieve in the physical world based on the lens aperture setting. This pleasing optical result is referred to in photographic terms as Bokeh.

The BCC Lens Shape filter also includes a comprehensive depth of field (Z-Depth) option, whereby a separate image can be used to control the depth and position of the focus field.

Motion Blur

The BCC Motion Blur filter creates a realistic blur on the motion in an image, simulating the effect of shooting a moving object on film. The blur is based on the motion of the pixels in the image. For example, you could apply the Motion Blur filter to a clip of a speeding car and the car’s motion would blur while the background would not. The blur is most pronounced when the object moves quickly and more subtle when it moves slowly.

Motion blur is not visible if the image is static.

Based upon optical flow technology, this filter examines past and future frames to determine the motion of the pixels in the image. Depending upon the selected settings, a blur or a smear is applied to the pixels that move from one frame to the next. You can use an image in the timeline as a source for motion and then apply the motion from the chosen image to the filtered track.

BCC10 introduces a new Advanced optical flow option – accessed via the Optical Flow Method menu.  This Advanced mode uses OpenCL hardware assisted rendering to implement a more sophisticated (and more computationally intensive) motion vector analysis.  The performance of the Advance mode varies widely from one graphics card to another and if you see reduced performance or unexpected
results when using the Advanced option it is recommended that you switch to the Simple mode on that card.

Pyramid Blur

The BCC Pyramid Blur filter emulates the look of shooting in soft focus or with lens diffusion. This filter allows you to blur the horizontal and vertical components of the image separately.

BCC Pyramid Blur uses a refined algorithm that speeds rendering approximately 20 – 40 percent. When you create new blur effects, you should use this filter. To maintain compatibility with existing BCC settings, use the BCC Blur filter.

Radial Blur

The BCC Radial Blur filter creates a blur around a specific point, simulating the effect of a zooming or rotating camera.

The Amount option specifies the amount of blur, depending on the selection for Type. For a Spin blur, which applies blurs in circles around the center point, the Amount value indicates the degree of rotation. For a Zoom blur, which applies blur that radiates out from the center point, the Amount value specifies the degree of radial blurring.

Spiral Blur

The BCC Spiral Blur filter creates a blur or smear that appears as though it is spiraling toward the center of the image.

In addition to the ability to adjust the amount of blur, users are able to fine tune other aspects of the filter:

• The Blur Type menu sets the type of motion blur that is created. The choices are _Blur _or Smear. Smear blurs the pixels in one direction. Blur blurs the pixels symmetrically.
• Center sets the coordinates of the center of the spiral effect. The following example shows a Zoom Amount of 25 applied as a Smear, with no Spin Angle.
• Spin Angle sets the angle of the spiral effect. When Spin Angle is set to 0, no spiral is applied. The following examples show the first image above with Spin Angle applied.

Unsharp Mask

The BCC Unsharp Mask filter uses a classic image sharpening technique similar to the method used to sharpen film images. The source image is blurred, and the blurred image is then subtracted from the source. The resulting image is sharper and has more contrast.

Unsharp Mask sharpens areas in an image with significant color changes by adjusting the contrast of edge details to create the illusion of image sharpness. This filter is useful for refocusing an image that appears blurry due to scanning, poor lighting, or other factors.

Z-Blur

The BCC Z-Blur filter uses a Z-map image to emulate a rack focus effect.

Move the focal plane through the source image, using the Z-map to control the focus. Adjust the focal point, depth of field and blur parameters to finetune the area of the image to blur.

You can also set a channel from the image clip, then use that channel to control the z-blur effect. This type of effect is most noticeable in real life with a long focal lens, such as a 105mm or greater zoom lens.

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