Red 3GL (www.borisfx.com) is the latest upgrade to Boris Red. And, like nearly any movie that makes it to sequel number three, it is in 3D. Of course, Boris Red has always been a 3D application/plug-in, but the introduction of OpenGL hardware support as well as numerous 3D and 2D enhancements make it even more 3D.

For those readers unfamiliar with Boris FX or Boris Red, Boris is a plug-in effects package that provides compositing, 3D DVEs, titling, motion tracking, vector paint, and custom filters. It also enables you to apply third-party After Effects plug-ins to your video inside of your NLE, and it can extrude and animate EPS and Illustrator files. So if you feel like your NLE is a little underpowered in the effects department, you could solve that problem with this plug-in. Boris Red can also act as a standalone application.

One of the new features in Red 3GL is a simple yet powerful graph animator. But the main feature of Red 3GL is its integration with OpenGL hardware for increased speed and enhanced 3D capabilities. Red 3GL runs here as a plug-in inside of Avid Xpress DV.

For users who know and love Boris Red, the question becomes, "Is it worth it to upgrade?" The price for the upgrade from any previous version of Red is $295. Red 3GL costs $999 for owners of Boris FX, Boris Continuum, or Boris Graffiti. Boris FX also runs specials for users of Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid Xpress Pro and Xpress DV, and Sony Vegas Video for the same price. Otherwise, Red 3GL costs $1595.

Boris FX marketing materials boast a whopping 350 new features in this release. Here are some of the biggest improvements, in a nutshell.

OpenGL is included as part of the name of the release, so it's obviously the trump card. Red 3GL takes advantage of hardware-accelerated playback of 3D effects with the use of an OpenGL card. Because Boris FX plug-ins have always relied heavily on 3D, this suits it very well. While you are previewing 3D effects and making parameter changes to 3D objects, you will notice a very significant boost in speed. The theoretical limits for these speed increases reach to 1000 percent. On a practical level, of course, this speed is limited by the specific hardware configuration and the type of effect you are trying to create.

While working in Draft Quality, everything displayed on your monitor uses OpenGL. Pressing the Space bar or the Play button on the Composite window provides OpenGL-accelerated previews. Even when you animate the position and scale of a very high resolution image, you'll see playback in realtime. This instant feedback helps you quickly finesse your animations.

Because OpenGL is designed to speed up 3D playback, the most obvious speed enhancements are seen during creation and animation of 3D objects. Also, static effect filters applied upstream also receive the benefits of OpenGL acceleration, and an unlimited number of these filters can be stacked without affecting OpenGL performance.

Spped enhancements in REd 3GL don't rely solely on software and hardware, they also enable editors to work faster and more intuitively with new features such as a customizable keyboard.

Red 3GL's implementation of OpenGL also allows it to expand the kinds of effects it can create, including 3D primitive shapes and 3D cameras with depth-of-field control. It also enables Red's 3D DVE shapes to have true depth, including 3D-cast shadows. Even video layers can be treated as 3D objects with textures and reflection maps. OpenGL also lets Red 3GL include bump maps with a variety of customizable and animatable presets. Bump maps can also be derived from any still or animated image, including video.

There are quite a few things that OpenGL won't do for Red 3GL, however. Most 2D effects are not affected at all by OpenGL. OpenGL previews are also slightly hampered because the speed of animations is not entirely accurate and can't play back with audio. Also, some high-level 3D features such as reflection maps, bump maps, and cast shadows can't be displayed in Draft Quality. Finally, OpenGL doesn't accelerate the final rendering of the animations.

For corporate editors, and users faced with creating interesting business communications, Red 3GL adds the ability to easily create and animate 2D and 3D charts of various types, and it lets you import spreadsheet data.

Most Boris FX users will appreciate the ability to place and edit titles directly over video, as well as the addition of about 40 new filters from the Boris Continuum package, for a total of more than 110 filters. These filters include Dust and Scratches, Light Wrap, Motion Blur, and Wire Remover. The latter removes wires and rigs from video by either blending pixels from the sides, creating a mask from one area to cover another, or cloning one area or time to cover another.

Red 3GL adds Optical Flow technology for superfine slow-motion. This technology analyzes video motion from frame to frame and creates brand new frames in between the existing video frames to create very smooth slow-motion.

Despite the fact that OpenGL doesn't assist render speeds, there were other changes under the hood that improved render speeds. I definitely noticed the faster renders when I compared them with renders in my previous version of Red. Boris FX claims that render speeds on certain effects have improved by 30 percent.

Workflow improvements are always important to me when I look at a new release, and Red GL3 has plenty. I especially like the new customizable keyboard and work spaces. Boris FX also added the ability to slip tracks in the timeline and slide them, and allows you to change their durations.

Red 3GL received even more additions to its huge stable of preset effects. Now there are over 1600 of these effects that are as simple to use as dragging and dropping. There's also a new button in the timeline to call up the preset effects and preview them. These presets are invaluable to editors who are more interested in editing than special effects, or who don't have the time to learn how to use every effect and parameter of this hefty program.

One of the caveats people usually make about Boris is that it has a steep learning curve. To some extent, this reputation is well deserved. After all, Boris Red 3GL comes with nearly 1300 pages of instructions. That's bigger than the manuals for either Avid Xpress Pro or Final Cut Pro! The upside is that Boris tries to provide you with enough preset effects that you can use as a starting point for almost any effect. The other great feature to ease the learning curve is the inclusion of The Intelligent Assistant. This is more than a simple Help menu. It is actually a completely separate application that can remain open for reference while working in Red. It includes movies for most tasks and "Follow Along Mode" instructions that act as tutorials.

If you don't own Red already and you need more effects power-especially to enhance the anemic effects capabilities of Avid Xpress Pro-Red 3GL will provide what you want for almost every effects job.

If you already own Red and depend on it a lot, then definitely purchase the upgrade to Red 3GL. If you only use Red occasionally, or mostly depend on the presets instead of building your own effects from scratch, you may not want to upgrade because most of the power of Red 3GL is related to increased speed in developing and tweaking effects, especially 3D-based effects.