Support for Sapphire on OFX Products

What host products and versions are supported?

The following OFX host products have been tested:

Other OFX hosts may also work such as Bones, Piranha, etc but testing has been limited on these so far.

Sapphire should work on any OS versions supported by the host product.

Why do my plug-ins only output black with a "Sapphire Plug-ins" watermark?

This usually indicates your free trial period has ended, or the expiration date of your license 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 license, the results should return to normal. Otherwise, please review the following list.

• If you are using a free trial or a serial number license, 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 download and re-run the installer.
• If you are on Baselight and get a watermark with your installer-provided free trial, please request a trial RLM license by sending your company info, product details and Ethernet ID to us at license@genarts.com.
• Make sure you are not running an old beta version that may have timed out. You can download and install the most recent version for Windows, Mac, or Linux.
• Make sure the date on your computer is correct.
• If the Ethernet address of your computer has changed since you ran the installer, you may get this watermark. You can try re-installing Sapphire Plug-ins and see if that helps.
• If you have an RLM floating license, please see the list below.

My RLM floating license is not working. A watermark appears.

• Check the status of your licenses using the RLM server's web interface. From the server machine go to http://localhost:9000 or from another machine use http://servername:9000 replacing servername as appropriate. See if any useful information is shown there. To reread the license file: on the left side of the main page select Reread/Restart Servers, and then on that page click on Reread Licenses.
• Make sure the Ethernet ID in your license correctly matches that of your license server machine. Run the following command on your license server machine to find the Ethernet ID that RLM is expecting:
  
  On Windows: "\Program Files\GenArts\rlm\rlmutil.exe" rlmhostid ether
  On Mac: "/Library/Application Support/genarts/rlm/rlmutil" rlmhostid ether
  On Linux: /usr/genarts/rlm/rlmutil rlmhostid ether
  
  Then make sure the Ethernet ID in your server license file is equal to that. The Ethernet ID is just after the hostname in the HOST line of the license. If they differ, please let us know the correct Ethernet ID so we can regenerate your license.
• Make sure the hostname in your license files correctly matches that of your license server machine. Run the following command on your license server machine to find the hostname that RLM is expecting:
  
  On Windows: "\Program Files\GenArts\rlm\rlmutil.exe" rlmhostid host
  On Mac: "/Library/Application Support/genarts/rlm/rlmutil" rlmhostid host
  On Linux: /usr/genarts/rlm/rlmutil rlmhostid host
  
  Then make sure the hostname in your client and server license files are equal to that. If they differ, either correct the name in the license files, or use the license server IP address instead.
• Make sure you can "ping" the server from the client using the hostname specified in the license file. This ensures that the client can get the server's IP address from its hostname, and that there is a working connection between them. If this doesn't work, you can try replacing the hostname with the IP address of the license server in the license files.
• Check that the date on your computer is correct for both server and client.
• Make sure the port numbers used in your server and client license files are the same. The port number is shown after the hostname and Ethernet ID in the HOST line of the license. You can change the port numbers without invalidating the license, but you will need to restart the license server after they are modified. Also make sure this port number doesn't conflict with other applications that might use the same port.

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.

On Windows: go to Start -> All Programs -> GenArts Sapphire OFX -> Online Help (HTML) or (PDF).
On Mac: go to the Applications/GenArtsSapphireOFX folder and double click on Online Help.html or .pdf.
On Linux: go to the RedHat Applications menu and select GenArts Sapphire OFX -> Sapphire Online Help (HTML) or (PDF).

A "Help" button is also available at the bottom of the plug-in parameters, which provides information about the plug-in, your license status, and links that bring up online documentation in your HTML browser.

Nuke known issues with OFX plug-ins:

• Nuke sometimes crashes when a plug-in attempts to display a message to the user. This should be fixed in Nuke 5.1v1 beta6 or greater.
• In Nuke 5.0, plug-in parameter values are displayed with many more digits that you might care to see. This is improved in Nuke 5.1.

Toxik known issues with OFX plug-ins:

• Previous versions of Toxik do not handle changes to OFX plug-in parameter layouts, and loading a project containing previous versions of plug-ins can cause Toxik to crash. This is fixed in Toxik 2009 SP1. Please upgrade to that version if possible.
• The Time effects ReverseClip, RandomEdits, and ReverseEdits are not available because Toxik does not give plug-ins the ability to access the clip length.
• In previous versions of Toxik, the DeinterlaceAuto Pattern string parameter is invisible to the user. This is fixed in Toxik 2009 SP1. Please upgrade to that version if possible.
• The Frame number parameter values in Time effects may be off by 1 in some cases.
• Render effects such as texture generators that use the current frame number to auto-animate do not update properly. You can workaround this problem by connecting them to some input footage.

Fusion known issues with OFX plug-ins:

• Rendering on fields gives incorrect results.
• Render effects such as texture generators that use the current frame number to auto-animate, do not update properly when connected to constant inputs, such as Background.
• Render effects with no input connected give incorrect images when downsampled, such as while dragging a param.
• Pixel aspect ratios may be incorrect with mixed resolutions.
• The on-screen widget controls sometimes have the wrong position or size.
• Plug-ins are shown in backwards order in the main menu.

Baselight known issues with OFX plug-ins:

• Mixed resolutions can cause a crash in some cases. This should be fixed in an upcoming version of Baselight.

Film Master known issues with OFX plug-ins:

• Plug-ins with more than one required input are not currently supported by Film Master, and do not appear in the menus.
• Using DeinterlaceAuto can cause a crash.
• Integer parameters are usually too sensitive because Film Master doesn't obey the sensitivity information provided by the plug-ins.
• Pixel aspect ratios may be incorrect with mixed resolutions.
• The names of parameter pages don't always fit within the page buttons.
• The Sapphire effect categories appear in a random order, rather than alphabetical.

Scratch known issues with OFX plug-ins:

• Scratch does not properly support 2D point parameters. This should be fixed in a future version of Scratch.
• The effects menu shows all plug-ins in one long list instead of grouping them into categories.

The results of Sapphire Glow, Glint, Glare, or Convolve seem different.

In version 1.02, a problem with thresholds in Glow, Glint, Glare and Convolve was fixed. This gives improved but slightly different results from 1.01, and it makes the results compatible with Sapphire on other host products.

If you noticed a change in the results between Sapphire for OFX and Sapphire for other hosts, please install 1.02 or greater to resolve this.

If you have projects saved with versions 1.0 or 1.01 that you still need to render with the same results, you can continue using 1.01.

How can I uninstall Sapphire Plug-ins?

On Windows: go to Start->Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs. Find 'GenArts Sapphire Plug-ins 1.0 for OFX' in the list, and press the Change/Remove button.

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

On Red Hat or similar Linux: become root, and type the shell command: rpm -e SapphireOFX

On Ubuntu Linux: become root, and type the shell command: dpkg --purge sapphireofx