Working with BORIS RED 4

Revised User Interface Overview

One of the major new changes for RED 4 is the overhaul of the user interface (UI), which now has a more modern look and feel as well as additional new features which speed and smooth workflow. The color scheme of the application can be set by the user to practically any color, but as most people will agree, a shade of neutral grey is probably the most favorable look as use of color in the UI can be distracting, especially when doing any color critical work. Let's start the UI overview by opening up the preferences window and setting the look and feel of the application.

User Modifiable Color Scheme

Let's open the user preferences pane by clicking on Boris RED>Preferences. The color scheme is set in the appearance tab, which is the first tab in the row. I'm going to start the changes by clicking on the windows color chip. Notice a standard OS pop-up appears where we can set the color that we want to use. I'm going to select a grayscale slider and set the color to 25 percent luminosity and press okay. I'm going to use the same color for the Background, Shape Track, Media Track, Container Track and Filter Track. Then I'm going to set the Text to be color so I want the to set the RGB sliders to 255R, 240G, 200B. This will make a light yellow. I'm going to set the Button Highlight to be a light green with values of 238R, 255G, 235B. The Selection color I am setting to a red of 189R, 6G, 0B. The render progress bar I'm changing to a green of 18R, 144G, 0B, which I am also going to use for the Cache Marker Color. Now we'll click the OK button to exit the preferences and set the color scheme.

General Overview

The BORIS RED UI is comprised of 4 main windows, each with a separate and distinct function an purpose. The Controls Window, which is by default located at the top right of the screen contains all of the parameters to control elements in the timeline, whether they are shapes or filters.

The Composite Window is the image display area and displays a preview of the final rendered result. Items from the Composite can be selected and manipulated directly within the composite window. The OpenGl gimble is displayed when OGL is enabled and this gimble can be used to move and composite objects in 3D space.

The Timeline Window contains all of the tracks in the composite, which are stacked vertically with keyframes displayed horizontally along the timeline.

The forth window is the Project Window, which serves as a repository for any media that is being used in the current project. Also contained in the Project Window is the Render Queue, which contains items that have been set for external render.

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