I'm a video hobbyist seeking advice for a easy-to-use, well integrated (AVX?) and not too expensive replacement for Boris RED 5.6 which I like but where I keep discovering show-stopper bugs in most of my projects (and I'm afraid Boris won't fix them since the product is EOL).

The default choice in compositing sw is AE, but do I understand correctly that the workflow MC <-> AE is somewhat convoluted (can be justified in professional projects where post-prod is a serious matter and complex clip-by-clip roundtrips are worth the effort) ?

My needs are much simpler, and I like the AVX integration of RED (access to the MC timeline), OTOH  Continuum+MC built-in effects isn't always a viable solution due to MC effects/layers/nesting logic.

What are my options ?

BenoitM:

What are my options ?

What is your budget?

I work for myself and for non-profit orgs (theatre & music shows etc.) so acceptable budget is 'very small'.

Note: I would hate leaving MC and the skills I learned here (on some other forums I've been recommended to switch to Premiere Pro or Resolve altogether): this is not a full-time job so learning a new editing ecosystem from scratch would be expensive time-wise in the the time I can allocate for this.

So....AE or nothing ?

BenoitM:

I'm a video hobbyist seeking advice for a easy-to-use, well integrated (AVX?) and not too expensive replacement for Boris RED 5.6 which I like but where I keep discovering show-stopper bugs in most of my projects (and I'm afraid Boris won't fix them since the product is EOL).

Id be interested to know what 'show-stopper' bugs you are experiencing. I am a great fan of Boris Red and have not come across any issues to date although I suppose they could come.

After Effects is a beast, but I suspect rules itself out on budget grounds.

@BenoitM:

1. Apple Motion ($49 USD). No AVX integration, but super-powerful and highly underrated.

2. Blackmagic Design's Fusion 9 ($299 USD) - AVX integration and really matured as a motion graphics / compositing tool.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion/compare

MattB:

Id be interested to know what 'show-stopper' bugs you are experiencing.

Latest one: when trying to use a Spline Primitive as Pixel Chooser Layer Media for any effect, RED goes haywire as soon as I touch any parameter of the shape; workaround found is to create the wanted shape with an external drawing tool and use it as matte. OK 'show-stopper' is perhaps a bit excessive , but I became really mad trying to find the culprit (same behaviour on different OS, machine, GPU, OpenGL, etc. - but could be a user error ?)

Isaac T.:

2. Blackmagic Design's Fusion 9 ($299 USD) - AVX integration and really matured as a motion graphics / compositing tool.

Looks promising - will have a look, tx

Just be aware that Fusion is node based, not layer based.  It has become my tool of first choice, but until I got my head around it, there was an awful lot of swearing coming from the edit room!

I’m going fusion, (there is also a free version which I am learning) , as I’m grading in resolve.

There is a avid plug-in for the fusion round trip, which I’ve not tried but there are discussions on this forum concerning its use.

please report back on your exploits!

Just be aware that since MC 2018.7 the Fusion plugin is broken (apparently BMD needs to change something to make it work and BMD has been strangely silent about its future plans for Fusion Studio).