Support for Sapphire v3 on Avid AVX Products

Why do I get a watermark over the plug-ins' outputs?

This usually indicates your free trial period has ended, or the expiration date of your serial number has been reached. Go to the "Help" dialog while using any plug-in, and it should tell you when it expired. If you acquire and enter a new valid serial number, the results should return to normal. Otherwise, please review the following list.

• If you have a Sapphire v3 serial number, and are using a Sapphire v2 plug-in, make sure you have installed version 2.081. Earlier 2.0x versions do not work with v3 serial numbers. (If you do install v2 over v3, make sure you also reinstall v3 afterwards to avoid missing some v3 AVX2 plug-ins.) If your Avid supports AVX2, it may be better to just uninstall Sapphire v2 so your v2 plug-ins are automatically promoted to v3.
• If you installed a Serial Number that requires a specific Avid dongle ID, make sure that dongle is connected to your machine. If it is connected and you are running an Avid version 2.5/5.6 or 2.7/5.7, please see the support item below to update your dongle driver.
• If the Ethernet (MAC) address of your computer has changed since you ran the installer or entered your serial number, you may get this watermark because the software thinks it is running on a different machine than the one that was licensed. If you are on Windows, make sure your Local Area Connection is enabled: go to Start -> Control Panel -> Network Connections, and right click on Local Area Connection. Running the Sapphire Plug-ins installer again may also help with this. If you need to change your Ethernet ID, you should uninstall the plug-ins before it changes, and select the option to register that uninstall, so the serial number can then be reinstalled with the new Ethernet ID.
• On Windows, if your license is lost when connecting to ISIS, Unity, or Interplay, please see the support item below to resolve this.
• If you are on Media Composer Software-Only version 2.5, please upgrade to MC version 2.7 or greater, or contact us for a temporary work-around until you are able to upgrade.
• Make sure you have run the Sapphire installer on your machine, rather than cloning, ghosting, or copying files from another workstation. If you installed by copying, just re-run the installer.
• If you are getting the watermark only on the DS side of a Symphony/DS dual-boot system, and your Serial Number requires an Avid Dongle ID, try reinstalling your dongle driver. Go to http://www.safenet-inc.com/support/tech/sentinel.asp. Click on Sentinel SuperPro, then download and install the Windows driver, restart DS, and see if that helps.
• Make sure the date on your computer is correct.
• Make sure you are not just looking at old frames rendered with the watermark before you installed your license. Change any parameter to rerender the image, or delete the precomputed clip.

If none of the above helps, please email us the s_log.text file from your machine along with a description of the problem.
On Windows this file is in: C:\Program Files\GenArts\Sapphire3AVX\s_log.text
On Mac it is in /Applications/GenArtsSapphire3AVX/config/s_log.text

On Windows, Sapphire becomes unlicensed when connecting to ISIS, Unity, or Interplay

This issue can occur if your Sapphire serial number got licensed to one of the PCI network cards rather than the on-board NIC. Sapphire version 2.051 or greater includes improvements that will help with this. To resolve this issue:

How do I access the online documentation?

Online documentation for Sapphire Plug-ins is normally installed on your machine along with the software and is available in HTML and PDF formats. It includes some general information about how to load and use plug-ins, and also includes a page for each effect with an example image, description of what each parameter does, and links to related effects.

You can access this documentation directly from your Avid workstation even if it is not connected to the internet. On Windows go to Start -> Programs -> GenArts Sapphire3 AVX -> Online Help (HTML) or (PDF). On Mac, go to Applications/GenArtsSapphire3AVX and select the online documentation.

A "Help" dialog is also provided when using a plug-in, which gives information about that plug-in currently being used. To view this on Avid AVX1 products, click on the small rectangular icon to the left of the effect name in the Effect Editor. On DS, click on the "Show Effect UI" checkbox that appears after the effect parameters. This dialog shows your license status, and provides links that bring up online documentation in your HTML browser.

How can I process a title or key without affecting the background?

Sapphire v3 allows you to easily process a title or key without affecting the background. To do this, drop a Sapphire Plug-in onto a title or key and then select the Apply To Title/Key checkbox in the Effect Editor. This causes the plug-in to process the fill and matte of the title together.

When you replace a title effect in this way, any animation curves in the title are lost, and only the matte and fill clips remain. If you want the title to move, you can instead use the Crop/Transform parameters to perform the moves within the Sapphire effect.

You can also apply more than one Sapphire Plug-in to a title or key without affecting the background. To do this, drop the first effect onto the title and select Apply To Title/Key as above. But then change its Background input to "None" to prevent it from compositing. Next, apply another Sapphire effect by alt-dropping it on the first effect, but leave Apply To Title/Key unselected this time. You can alt-drop any number of additional effects in this way. In the final effect, set the Background to "1 Track Below" to composite the final result. Note that only the first effect should have Apply To Title/Key selected, and only the last effect should have a Background selected. You should use only Sapphire3 effects between this first effect and the final composite, because other effects will probably not pass the alpha channel through in a compatible way.

The Wipe and Dissolve transition effects do not include an Apply To Title/Key option, because they are required by AVX to accept only 2 inputs, and therefore can not replace a title which requires 3 inputs.

To apply a transition between two titles without affecting the background, first apply S3_MakeRGBA to both titles, and add the transition effect between these titles. Then shift-select both sides of the transition (incoming and outgoing) and use the Collapse button on the timeline toolbar to nest them together. Finally, alt-drop S3_Layer on the nest and you should see the completed effect. If your Avid allows you to apply effects on filler, instead of collapsing the transition, you can add S3_Layer on a filler track on top of that (alt drop), and select Background: 2 tracks below to composite over the background.

If you want to also apply other effects to each title such as distortions or blurs, use them instead of S3_MakeRGBA above, and select Apply to Title/Key.

To wipe on or off a title, just use an all-black title for the other side.

If you are using Xpress DV and processing a title with multiple nested plug-ins, make sure you turn OFF real time mode, because real time mode will corrupt the alpha channel being passed from one plug-in to the next.

How can I promote sequences with older Sapphire versions to v3 AVX2?

With recent Avid versions you can automatically promote all older Sapphire versions to Sapphire v3 AVX2.

In some cases you can instead leave older Sapphire versions installed on your Avid so they will continue to be used when sequences with those versions are loaded. This is appropriate for Avid versions prior to 2.8 which do not support promoting AVX1 to AVX2. See more info below on having different Sapphire versions installed at the same time.

Sapphire v2 AVX2 should always be promoted automatically to v3 AVX2, and these two versions should not be installed at the same time.

To promote older Sapphire AVX1 versions to Sapphire v3 AVX2:

• Make sure the older Sapphire versions you want to promote from are not installed.

For Media Composer or Symphony 3.5 or greater:

• Open a bin containing one or more sequences with missing effects.
• For each sequence you want to promote, right-click (or Control-click on Mac) the sequence in the bin and select Promote Effects from the menu. A dialog box will come up with an option to promote missing AVX1 effects. Click OK and it will create a new sequence called SEQUENCENAME.Promoted.01; that will have all the missing effects promoted and conformed. (This is documented in the online help for Media Composer under "Promoting and Demoting Existing Effects in Sequences.")
• Load that sequence instead of the original and you should see all your effects intact.

Note: if you simply open the original sequence, you get a similar promotion dialog, but it does NOT offer to promote the missing AVX1 effects. Do NOT use this method; you must right-click and promote first, then open the promoted sequence.

For Media Composer or Symphony 3.0 but less than 3.5:

• In the Project window, go the Settings tab and double-click on Effect Editor. In the dialog that pops up, check the box labelled "Automatically Promote Missing AVX1 Effects".
• Click OK, and restart your Avid.

From then on, when you open a sequence with missing effects, a dialog will popup up with the following message: "This sequence contains missing AVX effects which will be promoted to Advanced Keyframe AVX 2.0 effects." Click OK. A backup copy of your sequence will be made, and the missing effects will be promoted to AVX2.

For Media Composer 2.8 or Symphony 1.8:

• After opening a bin, but before opening a sequence, type the command: PromoteMissingAVXEffects in the Avid console.
• Then open the sequence. If there are any missing promotable AVX1 effects a confirmation dialog will be displayed. Click OK.

Note this must be done again each time you open another bin containing old effects.
If you have trouble conforming with this method, we suggest upgrading to Media Composer 3.0.

Known Avid issues with promoting:

• These methods will not currently allow you to promote templates (presets) saved in the bin. Avid may fix this in a future version. For now a workaround is to make a sequence with the old templates (using older versions of Avid and Sapphire if necessary), promote that sequence as described above, and then create new templates from the promoted sequence.

• If you have an effect alone on filler on the top track, a bug can cause this to get trimmed away during promotion. This should be fixed in Avid's version 3.5. For prior versions, a workaround is to place a real clip on the filler track and put the effect on that instead before promoting it.

How can I upgrade old presets or favorites to v3 AVX2?

Current Avid versions auto-conform effects used in sequences, but do not conform effects stored in bins. Until Avid supports this properly, use the following workaround: before upgrading to v3, first make a temporary sequence with black on v1, and put each preset on that sequence. Then upgrade to v3 and uninstall the older version, load the sequence, and the Avid will conform (upgrade) the effects to Sapphire v3/AVX2. You can then drag the effects back into the bin, replacing the old ones.

Can different Sapphire versions be installed at the same time?

Yes, you can have Sapphire v1 AVX1, Sapphire v2 AVX1, Sapphire v3 AVX1, and/or Sapphire v3 AVX2, all installed on your Avid at the same time, as long as your Avid product supports those versions. This allows sequences saved with older versions of plug-ins to still be loaded and rendered. However, we don't recommend mixing these different versions in the same sequence because there can be problems when AVX1 and AVX2 plug-ins are nested together.

Sapphire v2 AVX2 and Sapphire v3 AVX2 should not be installed at the same time. The v3 installer should replace the v2 AVX2 version, and sequences saved with v2 AVX2 should automatically be promoted to v3.

On Mac, Avid has discontinued support for the older Sapphire v1 AVX1 plug-ins with releases 2.5/5.5, so they do not appear in the Effect Palette. Avid's version 3.0 now allows promoting uninstalled AVX1 plug-ins forward so previously saved settings are not lost. Please see above for info on how to promote older Sapphire versions to v3 AVX2.

Sapphire v1 plug-ins are all together in one "Sapphire Plug-ins" category, but the Sapphire v2 and v3 plug-ins are split into multiple "Sapphire2" and "Sapphire3" categories. The Sapphire3 AVX1 version is indicated with an "(avx1)" appended to the category name. After installing Sapphire v3 you could in theory still have all these versions installed:

Sapphire Version	AVX Version	Effects Category Name(s)
v1	AVX1	Sapphire Plug-ins
v2	AVX1	Sapphire2 ... (avx1)
v3	AVX1	Sapphire3 ... (avx1)
v3	AVX2	Sapphire3 ...

If you intend to online using an Avid product such as DS that does not yet support AVX2, be sure to use the AVX1 version. See below for more details about DS support.

After installing v2 most of my v3 plug-ins are missing.

If Sapphire v2 is installed over Sapphire v3, the v3 AVX2 plug-ins with the same names will no longer appear in the Effect Palette. To resolve this, just run the Sapphire v3 installer again.

Does Sapphire 3 work with Avid DS 10?

Yes, DS 10.2 and later support both AVX2 and AVX1, giving full compatibility with Sapphire. The AVX1 version of Sapphire 3 will also work with older versions of DS 8 and DS 10 on Windows 32, Windows 64, and Vista. Here is a compatibility matrix for various Sapphire and DS versions:

	DS 6-7	DS 8-10  32bits	DS 8-10  64bits	DS 10 on Vista	DS 10.2 and later
Sapphire 1  AVX1	Yes	Yes (use 1.35)	No	No	No
Sapphire 2  AVX1	(with limitations)	Yes	Yes	No	No
Sapphire 2  AVX2	No	No	No	No	No
Sapphire 3  AVX1	(with limitations)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sapphire 3  AVX2	No	No	No	No	Yes

DS 10.1 and earlier did not include support for AVX1.5 or AVX2. The temporal effects in Sapphire 3 are only available on DS 10.2 and later because it includes support for alternate frame access (AVX2). If you intend to conform from another Avid product to DS 8 or 10.1, be sure to use the Sapphire 3 AVX1 version of the plug-ins, and also avoid using the effects in the "Time" category. If you are conforming to DS 10.2 or later, Sapphire 3 AVX2 will give the best compatibility and all the latest functionality.

DS 7 and earlier versions do not allow the optional inputs used by Sapphire v2 and v3, so the plug-ins can not be used in the timeline. In tree-mode the input connections can also be confusing. We recommend using Sapphire version 1.35 with DS 7 or earlier, except for conform of sequences that have already been created on another Avid product.

Note that while Sapphire v2 and v3 works with DS 8 and 10 on 64bits, Sapphire v1 does not. If you need to load sequences on DS 10 saved with Sapphire v1, make sure you are running DS 10.2 or later; Sapphire 3 AVX2 will conform any sequences containing Sapphire v1 or v2.

Can I transfer my serial number to a new machine?

It is possible to transfer your version 3 serial number to a new machine. To do this, first uninstall Sapphire Plug-ins on your old machine. During the uninstall, select the option to register that uninstall via the web. As long as the uninstall is successfully registered, you should then be able to install your serial number on the new machine. The license is cross-platform so you can transfer a serial number between Windows and Mac systems in this way.

If your serial number is for a specific Dongle ID, make sure that dongle is also moved to your new machine and connected.

How can I make Sapphire Plug-ins render even faster?

• Any increase in the number or speed of your computer's CPUs should speed up Sapphire Plug-ins. They do not use Avid boards or special hardware, but they will benefit from dual, quad, or even 8-CPU systems.
• Adding more RAM to your computer might also help, but if you have a recent standard Avid hardware configuration then you probably already have enough.
• For a temporary speed increase, you can lower the Resolution parameter found at the end of the parameter page for all plug-ins (except on DS where the resolution can be set in the DS interface itself). In addition, some effects such as Rays, EdgeRays, BlurMotion, and Glare have special resolution parameters (RaysRes, BlurRes, GlareRes) which lower the internal resolution to soften the effect.

On Mac, with Avid 2.7/5.7, Sapphire is not finding my Dongle ID

Avid has included an older dongle driver in their 2.6/5.6 and 2.7/5.7 releases for Mac which does not work with Sapphire Plug-ins. If your Sapphire serial number requires a dongle which is properly attached, but you still get a warning while installing it that says "Could not find the dongle required by your serial number", or you are getting a watermark when using the effects, you may need to install a more recent dongle driver.

To solve this, download the Sentinel Driver version 7.3.0 and save the file to your desktop. It should unzip automatically and create a folder called Sentinel System Driver 7.3.0. In there, double-click on SentinelSystemDriver.pkg to install the driver. Finally restart your Avid application, and the plug-ins should work.

I have various issues with the AVX2 version of Sapphire 3, on Avid 2.5/5.5 or earlier.

Avid versions prior to Media Composer 2.6 and Xpress Pro 5.6 included various AVX2 bugs that could make it difficult to use AVX2 plug-ins sucessfully. If you experience some of the problems listed below and are not able to upgrade your Avid version, you can instead rerun the Sapphire installer and select the AVX1 version. Then replace the the AVX2 plug-ins in your sequence with the equivalent Sapphire AVX1 plug-ins.

Some known AVX2 issues with earlier Avid versions are as follows:

• Renders sometimes hang at the end, with the render dialog window open.
• Auto Start and End keyframes don't get created, even when that option is selected in the preferences.
• Transition keyframes are not elastic by default, and don't move when you change the transition duration. (See below for more info on this.)
• The Auto Keyframes don't appear when you replace one transition with another. They are invisible until you change a parameter value.
• Applying a 3-input effect as a transition can cause a crash.
• There is no way to multi-select keyframes and adjust them together.
• Keyframes sometimes don't appear, or can't be edited properly.
• The advanced Keyframe editor seems confusing.
• The vertical scale in Keyframe graphs is too large with no way to scale or shift, making it difficult to set up keyframe graphs with small ranges of values.

Most of these issues should be fixed by Avid in their 3.0.5 versions, although in 3.5 the ability to add Auto Start and End Keyframes has apparently been removed altogether.

My transition keyframes don't adjust when the length is changed.

In some Avid versions the transition keyframes automatically made by AVX2 plug-ins are "fixed" instead of elastic as they should be. The workaround is to right-click in the keyframe graph of the Wipe Amount or Dissolve Amount parameter and select "Elastic". This should cause all the keyframes to adjust when the transition length changes.

This problem should be fixed as of Avid versions 2.7.4 / 5.7.4.

Loading or using a complex bin is very slow or runs out of memory.

If a plug-in fails to access the amount of memory it needs, an error message may say: "Insufficient memory: 1234 bytes requested" or "Sapphire ran out of memory trying to allocate 1234 bytes".

When AVX1 plug-ins are used in very complex bins, the Avid can create many more effect instances than you actually created. This happens when there are many short cuts in the sequences in the bin, combined with deep nesting of effects. The Avid makes a copy of each effect on each layer every time there's a cut anywhere on any layer. This can multiply to many copies of the effects, and so even though Sapphire doesn't allocate much memory for each effect, you can end up running out of memory. The recommended workarounds to this from Avid are:

• Prerender (mix down) some of the layers. Its usually best to do this in a separate sequence so you can easily go back and make changes.
• Cut the sequence up into shorter sub-sequences.
• Make sure you have at least 1GB of memory, or more if possible, and allocate most of it to the Avid.
• If possible, upgrade your Avid product to a version that supports AVX2 plug-ins, which should not have this problem.

Adding more RAM to your computer should also help with this.

The Avid crashes while initializing AVX plug-ins.

• Make sure the only files in your AVX_Plug-ins and AVX2_Plug-ins folders are plugin files. If there are extraneous files there, remove them and restart.

• If that doesn't help, remove all the files from the AVX_Plug-ins and AVX2_Plug-ins folders except Sapphire, and restart. If it now restarts ok, put the other files back one by one, restarting each time, to find out which one is failing.

When rendering multiple tracks with Sapphire effects, the results look incorrect.

This issue can sometimes occur when Sapphire plug-ins generate transparency (alpha) channels and combine them between multiple tracks. Processing titles or keys or using the crop/transform parameters can generate an alpha channel.

The solution is to render only the topmost track containing Sapphire effects. If you render any lower track first, or all tracks together, you may get incorrect results depending on the order Avid happens to process them. When you render only the topmost track, it should automatically render the lower tracks correctly as needed.

If you already have bad results, first delete the incorrect prerender clips for all the affected tracks (top and all lower ones) or just change a parameter in an effect in the lowest track which should cause the other tracks to become unrendered.

How can I delete precomputed clips?

If you use Sapphire Plug-ins without a license beyond the free trial period, rendered frames will have a protective watermark on them. If you later receive a license, you may need to re-render some precomputed clips that have been saved on your system.

To delete your precomputed clips:

How can I uninstall Sapphire Plug-ins?

On Windows: go to Start->All Programs->GenArts Sapphire3 AVX->Uninstall Sapphire.

To uninstall Sapphire version 1 or 2 on Windows go to Start->Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs. Find "GenArts Sapphire Plug-ins for AVX" on the list, and press the Change/Remove button.

On Mac: go to the Applications/GenArtsSapphire3AVX folder and double click on Uninstall Sapphire.

To uninstall Sapphire version 2 on Mac go to the Applications/GenArtsSapphire2AVX folder and double click on Uninstall Sapphire.

To uninstall Sapphire version 1 on Mac go to the Applications folder, double click on GenArtsSapphireAVX, and select Uninstall Sapphire Plug-ins.