The Effects stack

Creating and deleting effects  |  Renaming effects  |  Disabling effects  |  Annotating effects  |  Copying effects and stacks  |  
Edit mode and Solo mode  |  Snapshots  |  Effect presets  |  Large stacks  |  Disk caching  |  Playblast

The Effects Stack is shown to the left of the Cinema:

The base clip is shown at the top with the various effects layered beneath it to form a top-down list of operations that are applied to the clip. The currently active effect is shown in white. Clicking on the round button next to any effect or the base clip makes that the active item shown in the Cinema.

The button sets the current image in the Cinema window as the project's thumbnail.

Working with stacks

The name of the currently active stack is shown below the base clip thumbnail. To the right of the stack names are buttons to delete, create and duplicate stacks. The buttons on the left can be used to navigate between multiple stacks.

A stack can be renamed by double clicking the name and entering a new name.

Creating and deleting effects

To create an effect click on the large + button on the left of the Stack Manager. This will display a popup menu from where an new effect can be selected:

New effects are always inserted below the currently active effect or below the the base clip, if the base clip is active.

Clicking and confirming the trashcan button on the left will delete the currently active effect.

Renaming effects

An effect can be renamed by double clicking the name and entering a new name.

Disabling effects

Each effect has a notes button and a disable button in the bottom right corner.

A disabled effect is shown with a red cross through its name and the disable button highlighted in red:

Annotating effects

Clicking the notes button opens a text editor that allows to enter notes specific to the effect.

Each effect can have multiple notes. New notes can be created by simply pressing Return in the notes editor. To add a line break in an existing note press Ctrl-Return The notes icon changes its appearance to indicate if notes are present.

Copying effects and stacks

Individual effects, masks, ROIs and effect stacks can be copied and pasted to other clips in the current work list.

Click the or press Ctrl+C to open the copy options. Individual effects, masks and ROIs in the active stack can be checked or unchecked to include or exclude them being copied. Clicking Copy then copies the selected effects.

Once a stack has been copied, the clip overlay will appear. Select a clip and click Paste to paste the stack to the current clip.

There are three ways a stack can be pasted on a clip:
Overwrite active stack: deletes the currently active stack and replace it with the copied stack.
Create new stack: creates a new stack and makes the new stack the active stack.
Append to active stack: Adds the copied stack after any effects in the already active stack.

Edit mode and Solo mode

On the left of the Stack Manager are the buttons to enable Edit mode and Solo mode:

By default, the Cinema shows the result of the stack, down to and including the active effect, and the Edit panel below the Cinema shows the active effect's parameters. Edit mode splits the relationship of what is shown in the Cinema and Edit panel, allowing to edit the parameters of one effect, whilst viewing the results of another in the Cinema.

Enabling Edit mode will lock the currently active effect as the one being viewed in Cinema, whilst the effect which will be edited can be changed.

The eye icon for the active effect indicates that this effect is viewed in the Cinema, while the highlighted sliders icon indicates the effect that is open in the Edit Panel. Clicking on a slider button opens that effect's parameters in the Edit Panel.

Note: Only effects above the current effect can be edited in Edit mode.

Solo mode solos the active effect, i.e. it disables all other effects in the list showing just the action of the single effect.

When an effect is solo'd you are limited to just modifying the parameters of that effect and you can not, for example, add new effects.

Snapshots

The saves the current effect stacks and its results in a snapshot.

The button lists the number of available snapshots for this clip. Clicking the button will open the list of snapshots, from which a previous snapshot can be opened or deleted.

Effect presets

The A and M on the left of the effect signifies if that effect is classified as automatic or manual. The definition of an automatic effect is one that works without the operator needing to identify artefacts in the image. Examples of automatic effects are Auto Dirt Fix and Film Grade. A manual effect on the other hand does require the operators input to function. Examples of manual effects are Paint and Fix Tear. Automatic effects can be transferred from one clip to another whereas it does not make sense to do that for manual effects since they are specific to image content. Automatic effects can store their parameters in presets which can be used to reuse settings for other clips.

Effect presets can be created and applied using the presets manager to the right of each automatic effect's editor. Press the Store button to create a preset using the current parameters. Selecting a preset and clicking Recall will copy the previously stored parameters into the current effect. To delete a selected preset click the Del button. Double-click the preset to change its name.

A right click in the preset manager will open a context menu which allows to export or import presets.

Large stacks

If a stack contains a large number of effects then these can not be fully displayed in the space available. Under these circumstances the top and/or bottom effects are shown simplified (without text or controls):

Use the mouse wheel mouse to scroll up and down through the effect stack.

Disk caching

Before disk caching can be used, disk cache locations must be defined Project Manager.

For efficiency, the results of individual effects, and the result of the entire stack, can be disk cached. The round C button in each effect can be toggled on and off to enable and disable disk caching for the effect. As frames are cached, a progress bar and percentage figure illustrate how much of the clip is cached.

To cache the results of an entire stack use the C button at the bottom of the effect stack manager.

Playblast

The result of the current stack can be previewed with playblast as described in the Cinema chapter of this manual.

Note: Playblast always caches the full stack, regardless of the currently active effect.