Back in the early days of nonlinear editing, Boris Yamnitsky worked as an engineer at Media 100, which was paving the path that leads to today, along with companies like Avid Technology. At the time, these new tools took editing out of the corporate broadcast environment and large post facilities and empowered individual users to edit and finish video projects in their homes and small offices. But something was missing... According to Yamnitsky, “There wasn’t any software alternative to the hardware switchers and DVE boxes used in conventional tape-based post and broadcast.” Enter Boris FX.

How did you go about solving that problem?
In the summer of 1995, after toiling for about six months in my parents’ basement, I came up with a VFX plugin software for Media 100 and Adobe Premiere — the first one of its kind. I introduced features and workflows later adopted by many other plugin companies, such as saved parameter presets, custom window user interfaces, etc. All the things we take for granted now. Boris FX created the NLE plugin space — today, a very competitive marketplace for many developers and products.

Avid support came next, and the initial Boris FX plugin was transformed into Boris RED and Boris Continuum. In fact, Boris RED and Boris Continuum became the first AVX plugins available to Avid users, and Avid chose to bundle these two products for many generations of Media Composer and Symphony systems. They were used heavily on reality and documentary TV shows, such as the Academy Award-winning documentary O.J.: Made in America and Keeping Up With the Kardashians, as well as many broadcast news programs. Eventually, Boris Continuum and Boris RED were merged into one Boris FX Continuum product. Plugins for more compositing and NLE hosts were introduced over time as various editing systems appeared and disappeared from the scene.

Throughout the history of Boris FX, you have acquired technology and companies to expand your offerings. What led you down this path?
The goal is to always offer video editors, VFX artists and motion designers best-of-breed plugins. Build or buy is always a choice. Sometimes, an opportunity comes along to accelerate that goal by buying existing market leaders. Looking back, more acquisition ideas were rejected than accepted. The ones completed so far have been successful. I call it a success when products continue to evolve and users are better served by the new larger entity.

Today we offer Boris Continuum, Sapphire, Mocha, Silhouette and DFT products to our users. But the real story starts with integration and leveraging of technologies. All our products share algorithms and software code underneath. Each new company contributed many past years of R&D done by very smart people, and we take full advantage of that. A “not invented here” attitude is something I do not accept at Boris FX.

Contributed by prior acquisitions, in our archives, there is a large VFX code library. Periodically, we draw from this archive for VFX ideas or tech and use it in current products. For example, Particle Illusion was recently relaunched as part of Boris FX Continuum set.

Boris FX recently acquired Silhouette FX and Digital Film Tools. Was this designed to bring the company even further into the feature film world?
Yes. We were looking for ways to deliver more roto and paint options to feature film VFX artists. Artists rely on Silhouette for its extensive roto capabilities. Its unique raster/vector paint approach is well-suited for large frame formats where performance, especially with a large number of strokes, is critical. Silhouette’s tools paired with Boris FX’s flagships give high-end feature film artists working on big Hollywood movies even more powerful and streamlined workflows.

DFT, on the other hand, introduces Boris FX to a new world of artists. DFT’s Photoshop plugin has been a favorite of photographers and digital artists for years, with features like camera lens and filter simulation, film stock matching based on iconic Hollywood movies, image relighting and color correction. It's custom UI with masking and paint tools is a great complement to the existing Boris FX filter sets.

Can you talk about the future roadmaps for Mocha and Silhouette? Will they ever be combined into one app or kept separate?
Although Silhouette and Mocha share a similar user base, each stands on its own for different reasons. Mocha is the leader in planar tracking and masking, while Silhouette’s claim to fame is its high-end frame-by-frame film rotoscoping and paint tools. The two products complement each other so well that Silhouette has licensed Mocha’s SDK for years to help speed up VFX workflows.

In the upcoming 2020 releases, we’ll see more Mocha features coming to Silhouette and vice versa, but completely merging the two products is not expected. It wouldn’t benefit end users who have learned to appreciate the workflows of each application. Both products have won Sci-Tech Academy Awards, and both will continue to evolve to hopefully win future awards.

We have heard rumors that you are addressing color space workflow issues with your Mocha and Sapphire plugins. What will this look like in the future?
Earlier this year we set a goal to support various color spaces using OpenColorIO technology where it is most important: Sapphire’s Lens Flares, Browser and Builder, as well as Mocha Pro’s Remove Module. Our customers have been asking for it.

We are trying to solve a couple of problems here. First, we need images in our UI previews to match rendered images from the host. Second, we provide a large array of preset effects that may look different if created in color space other than what’s currently used by the host. So color management is critical to our high-end users, and we are committed to supporting it in the 2020 releases.

You’ve been updating Sapphire, Continuum and Mocha Pro a lot more frequently than in years past. Is this a new company strategy?
As a company, we moved away from a traditional “waterfall” release strategy where, after a long development cycle, we release a large number of new features all at once. Now we’ve moved to an “agile” release model where cycles are much shorter — typically, about six months. Developing along an agile model also helps the overall stability and reliability of our software.

We offer an upgrade and support contract to users, which gives them at least one feature upgrade. We also offer an annual subscription option.

Can you talk about the importance of partnering with host applications?
As far as many users are concerned, our software becomes inseparable from the host application and workflow. This is only possible by maintaining close technical relationships with the host engineering teams. Issues such as performance, OS updates, host feature updates — all require changes on both sides of the plugin API. Traditional ties with Adobe, Avid, Apple, Autodesk, Vegas and Blackmagic teams play an important role in our development process. Over the years, we have earned the respect from the host teams for the thoroughness, expertise and overall quality of our coding process.

What's next for Boris FX?
We will use Boris FX as a “platform company” that will grow organically, and via add-ons to accelerate growth. We'll release all of our products twice a year packed with new features and workflows, supporting all major hosts as they gain popularity among our users. And you never know, we may acquire another company soon… I just can’t tell you which one yet!