Frequent questions for Beauty Box

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If I buy a plugin license, will I be able to use the plugin on more than one computer?

You may use your 1 license to activate a plugin on a work machine and a home machine. However you cannot run the software on two machines simultaneously as the two will conflict.

Do you offer any discounts if I buy 2 or more of your products?

We certainly understand budgets and we do offer volume discounts. For more information, please email sales@digitalanarchy.com.

Beauty Box isn't showing up in the video editing app

This can be caused by a variety of reasons. A common one currently is Premiere/After Effects have a plugin manager. If the app crashes it will often turn off plugins and require you to turn them back on. More details on that and other reasons are in this blog post:

Why Your Plugins Aren't Showing Up

Beauty Box is crashing

This can occur in any host application and is usually related to your graphics card. However, before troubleshooting graphics card issues, make sure you have the latest version of the plugin installed by downloading it from our website.

Make sure you get the correct Mac or Windows version. Additionally, the crash might not be the graphics card but the graphics software driver that may be at fault. You can update the driver for your specific GPU by checking out the relevant link:

NVIDIA Drivers
AMD Drivers
Intel Drivers

If the updated plugin or the driver update doesn't seem to be having any impact on the crashes, it’s likely the result of a graphics card issue. To confirm this, look for the ’UseGPU’ parameter at the bottom of the Beauty Box parameter list. Turn that off. This will force Beauty Box to ignore the video card (and GPU) and should resolve the problem (although it will render slower). If turning off the GPU resolves your issue, but want to continue using the GPU for fast renders, you may need to look into getting a new graphics card that is supported by your computer, operating system and programs.

beauty box open cl device gpu enable

“If that doesn’t work or if it's crashing before you can turn "Use GPU" off, you can also find the Digital Anarchy preferences folder (Mac: Macintosh HD>Users>Shared>Digital Anarchy, Windows: Users>Public>Public Documents>Digital Anarchy). In that there's a file called "DA_OpenCL_Devices.txt" and/or "DA_CUDA_Devices.txt". Open that and change everything that says "Enabled=ON" to "Enabled=OFF". That should also disable the GPU for Beauty Box.

You can also contact us at: sales@digitalanarchy.com

The GPU on your video card is used by a lot of software these days. The host applications use it, other plugins use it, the OS uses it, etc. Unfortunately there's no good way for all this software to talk to each other and manage how this finite resource is used (Although some apps, like Premiere, are getting better). Frequently, especially with older video cards or really new ones, we either run out of memory unexpectedly or run into other software trying to use it. This can result in crashes or other performance issues. The more filters you have applied to a clip that use the GPU, the more likely it is that you'll have these problems. If you are running into problems, you might want to render out your clip with Beauty Box first and then do all the color corrections and other effects work to the rendered clip.

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Beauty Box shows missing thumbnail or the parameters are missing in FCP

This means you have an incompatible FCP version installed. You must be on the latest version, if you are using a Apple Silicon Mac. If you are on an Intel mac, some older versions may work, but it is always best to stay up to date because there is less of a chance of running into any issues.

frequently asked question final cut pro watermark

Serial number does not remove watermark in FCP

This problem occurs when you have a sequence that has already been previewed with the Beauty Box demo version. When you apply Beauty Box to footage, FCP renders the plugin and caches the render. If you’re using the Demo Version this means the watermark gets rendered and cached. When you enter the serial number, FCP doesn't recognize that any parameters have changed so it doesn't re-render and remove the plugin watermark. The cached render doesn’t automatically get replaced.

The easiest workaround is to delete and reapply the filter. You can also change a Beauty Box parameter, for example changing Smoothing Amount from 30 to 29. Both these methods will force FCP to re-render Beauty Box and recognize the new serial number. If neither of those work, you can delete your render cache manually and restart FCP.

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Why do lines appear across my images?

The crosshatch lines that appear are the demo watermark. This allows you to evaluate the product before purchasing. When you purchase the product, we'll email you a serial number that you will use to activate Beauty Box and then the watermark will disappear.

final cut pro beauty box frequently asked question

No parameters show up in FCPX’s Inspector when I apply Beauty Box

This just means that Beauty Box was not installed correctly or you installed an incompatible Beauty Box version that FCP doesn't support. First, try rebooting FCP to see if the effect controls for Beauty Box come back. If you're still not seeing any parameters in the controls, please delete all versions of Beauty Box that are in: Library>Plug-ins>FxPlug>Digital Anarchy

Afterwards, run the latest installer and reboot FCP. If you don't see a Plug-ins folder make sure you're looking at the Library folder on your main hard drive. There's also a User Library folder. If you are on a M1 machine (Apple Silicon chip), you must use the latest version. Beauty Box 4 and older are not compatible withe the latest FCP.

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If I have multiple filters applied to a clip, where in the effect chain should I apply Beauty Box?

We suggest applying Beauty Box at the beginning or end of an effect chain to avoid potential conflicts between effects or color correction.

Thumbnail image in FCP is too small

If you see the Thumbnail image in FCP and/or Premiere, it is likely you have a very old version of Beauty Box and we highly recommend updating your Premiere, FCP and Beauty Box.

Does the plugin work on black skin tones?

Beauty Box definitely works on all skin tones.

However, hair and skin color being similar can pose a problem. This can happen for black hair and darker skin tones or blond hair and lighter skin tones.

You can work around this by decreasing the Hue, Saturation, and Value Range sliders to help limit Beauty Box’s inclusion of similar color tones. While adjusting those sliders, it is helpful to have "Show Mask" on simultaneously, so you can see the mask changing real time. Admittedly, for very dark skin tones it can be a problem since the mask will start picking up shadow areas or dark clothing. So if you have someone in a black suit/dress/shirt you need to pay special attention to the mask to reduce the effect Beauty Box has on the hair and clothing. We always recommend doing a test on your footage with the demo version of Beauty Box before purchase.

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I ran the installer for the plugin but I can’t find it in the effects list in the host app OR don’t see any controls for the plugin where they should be

First, restart the host application or the computer you’re working off of. If this doesn’t work, it could be that the installer didn’t install the plugin to the correct location.

So please confirm that the plugin did actually get installed and it was installed to the correct folder/directory. Here’s a list of where the plugins should be installed:

Mac:
Premiere Pro/After Effects
"Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/ <”CS6” for CS6, “7.0” for CC>/MediaCore"
FCP 7 or FCPX 10.0.9 and EARLIER
"Macintosh HD/Library/Plug-ins/FxPlug"
FCP 10.1.4 and LATER
"Macintosh HD/Applications/Digital Anarchy"
Avid Media Composer
"Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Avid/AVX2_Plug-ins"
OFX Host Apps (Resolve, Vegas, Nuke, etc.)
"Macintosh HD/Library/OFX/Plugins"
DaVinci Resolve (From App Store)
"Macintosh HD/"

Windows:
Premiere Pro/After Effects
"C:/Program Files/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/ < "CS6" for CS6, "7.0" for CC>/MediaCore"
Avid Media Composer
"C:Program FilesAvidAVX2Plug-insDigital Anarchy"
OFX Host Apps (Resolve, Vegas, Nuke, etc.)
"C:Program FilesCommon FilesOFXPlugins"

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Does Beauty Box support Adobe Dynamic Link?

Yes, we support Dynamic Link across the Adobe applications

Does Beauty Box use GPU render acceleration?

Yes, Beauty Box 5.0 uses Metal, OpenCL and CUDA for speed optimization. This is a way of accelerating rendering on Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA cards. On faster cards with enough RAM we're seeing real time renders on HD footage and near-real time in 4K. If you are still using BB 4 on an intel mac, it is not GPU optimized when using Premiere 2021 or newer. This is because BB 4 only supports OpenCL (and not Metal) and Premiere 2021 and newer no longer supports OpenCL. This means anyone using an Intel Mac, latest versions of Premiere and Beauty Box 4 will experience long render times.

How long should my renders be?

The short answer to this question is that it depends. There are multiple factors that can increase or decrease your render times. Those factors that can increase or decrease your render times. Those factors are the length of your footage, the resolution of the footage, your computer's hardware, which video application you are using and if your running renders using CPU or GPU. Premiere Pro is currently the fastest host app for rendering out Beauty Box.

If your renders are significantly slower than expected, it is likely processing using the CPU. To ensure your Beauty Box renders are optimized, you need to have your GPU is on/enabled. Go to (Mac: Macintosh HD>Users>Shared>Digital Anarchy, Windows: Users>Public>Public Documents>Digital Anarchy) and in this folder location you will find either a DA_CUDA_Device.txt, DA_Metal_Devices.txt, DA_OpenCL_Devices.txt file. Open the devices file and change everything that says "Enabled=Off" to "Enabled=On.” Once you’ve changed that, save the file and restart your video editing application. Now, the next time you render, you should see improvements.

If you are using Premiere, AME, or After Effects, you will also need to make sure you set your mercury renderer correctly for optimization. Set the mercury renderer in these applications to OpenCL, Metal, or CUDA. Not all of these options will be available. The options you will see are based on the graphics card you have in your computer.

Also, faster graphics cards and multiple cores will make a big difference as well. We currently recommend the NVIDIA GeForce GTX xx70 or xx80 cards as providing the best performance. NVIDIA's Quadro cards are nice cards, but the top GeForce cards out perform them and are usually half the price. The cost of the Quadros comes from their testing and better components. This can make them more stable but for most video editing, it's probably not required. It matters more for 3D.

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Is it better to use Premiere or AE?

It USED to be AE, but now Premiere renders GPU plugins faster, so it's the better app.

Are there limitations in Premiere Pro?

Yes, but it only affects playback. If we tell Premiere that the plugin, in this case Beauty Box, is a GPU plugin, it assumes it's real time. If it's not real time, then it'll skip frames instead of rendering all the frames. So you have to manually 'Render Effects In to Out' to get it playing back in real time. This is mainly a playback problem for Beauty Box used on resolutions higher than HD.

Are there limitations in Final Cut Pro?

Beauty Box is fully functional in most versions of Final Cut Pro X. At this time, we do have Beauty Box versions that are specific to the FCP version, so make sure to read on the demo page and install the correct version. FCP 7 and Beauty Box 3.0 are no longer supported.

Do you support Motion?

Beauty Box should work in Motion. However we do not provide technical support for Motion at this time.

Can Beauty Box retouch arms, legs, even a scar?

Yes, Beauty Box can be used on all skin areas, not just the face. We have comparison footage that show Beauty Box working on hands.

The process for treating arms, legs, etc will be mostly the same. However, since the detection algorithm generally looks for a face, in this case you will have to manually tell the video editing software what the skin tones are. This usually requires 3 or 4 clicks of the Analyze Frame button on the image, changing. We have a tutorial which will explain this in a bit more detail:

Regarding a scar, it depends on how bad the scar is. If the scar is new and there's a lot of discoloration, then probably not. For older scars, if it's a fairly thin scar, then Beauty Box should improve things. If it’s a massive patch of skin from a motorcycle accident, probably not.

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Beauty Box Specs

Product

Price

Beauty Box Video 5.0

$199 USD

Upgrade from Beauty Box Video 4.0

$89 USD

Upgrade from Beauty Box Video 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0

$129 USD

Discount Bundle: Beauty Box Video is available at a discount in this special deal: Beauty Box Extreme.

Currently Beauty Box Video 4.0 is optimized for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Davinci Resolve, Avid, Assimilate Scratch, Nuke, and Sony Vegas.

Beauty Box is supported by both Windows and Mac Operating Systems:

- Windows 10 and later

- MacOS High Sierra and later, MacOS 11 and later

- Supports Intel and Silicon Chips on Mac

Older builds may be available for Windows 7/8. If you are running an older version of Windows, please use this Request Form to check if a compatible version of the plugin is available.

All our products are kept up to date and run in the latest versions of the OS or host application. However, if you have questions and need help making sure the plugin is compatible with your system, please email us at cs@digitalanarchy.com

This chart gives the release date and version number of each release of Beauty Box Video.

Release History

Version

Date

Detail

1.0

December 2009

release version

 

1.0.1

January 2010

FCP-only update

 

1.2

October 2010

render speed update

 

1.2.1

November 2010

bug fix for 'render failed' error

 

1.2.2

March 2011

GPU color correction fix

Beauty Box Video

2.0

May 2012

speed render increase, shine removal

  3.0 June 2013 Better Masking, Presets
 

4.0

March 2015

Realtime HD Rendering

 

5.0

July 2021

Apple Metal, M1 support. After Effects MFR support. CUDA Optimizations.

 

5.0.11

December 2023

Fixed Low memory Issues, New Default Parameters

Go to our updates page to find easy steps on how to update your plugin.

Have questions about this fantastic tool for better composites of masked and keyed footage? Contact Digital Anarchy any time with our simple Request Form.

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