Storyboard Pro 20 Release Notes

A new Stencil Brush tool is now available in Storyboard Pro. This tool is located in a drop-down menu under the Brush tool in the Tools toolbar.

This tool has two modes, Overlay Brush Mode and Repaint Brush Mode . The two modes are available in the Stencil Brush Tool Properties, under the brush presets.

• Repaint Brush Mode: In this mode, the existing artwork is replaced and repainted, ignoring empty zones. The Stencil Brush always behaves as a Repaint Brush on bitmap layers.
• Overlay Brush Mode: In this mode, the existing artwork is not modified. Instead, the existing artwork is used as a mask to clip new brush strokes on top of the existing artwork. You can perform a multi-layer selection and use the union of the artwork in all of the selected layers as the mask. Although all the selected layers participate in generating the mask, only the current active layer is modified with the new brush strokes. The Overlay Brush mode is available for vector layers only.

For more information, see Painting with the Stencil Brush tool.

Pencil lines can now be drawn with textures. A pencil line texture is applied with regard to the width and direction of the pencil lines. For example, if you draw a spiral with a dash texture, the dashes will follow the curves of the spiral, and if you draw a thicker line with the same texture, the dashes will be both longer and thicker.

Pencil textures can also be applied to the Line , Rectangle , Ellipse and Polyline tools. Default textures are found under the Texture tab in the Pencil tool extended properties.

You can also import your own textures. Select the pencil line and in the Tool Properties assign a new texture.

For more information, see About Pencil Line Textures.

The Cutter tool now has two gesture cutting modes available in the Tool Properties view:

• Single Line Cutting Gesture : This mode trims the first line segment cut by a single straight gesture.
• Multiple Lines Cutting Gesture : This new mode trims multiple line segments cut by the same gesture.

For more information, see Cutting Artwork.

New options in the Line tool properties to curve the line on mouse up:

• Curve Line Mode : Allows for the drawing of a curved line by moving the mouse after drawing a straight line. Click or press Enter to commit the curved line.

• S-Curve Line Mode : Allows for the drawing of an S-shaped curved line. Moving the mouse after creating a straight line will curve the line from both ends until the mouse is clicked. The tail end of the line will then curve until the mouse is clicked again or Enter is pressed.

For more information, see Drawing Curved Lines with the Line Tool.

• The Select tool pivot now preserves its position when using the Undo and Redo commands.
• The Select tool pivot now follows the selection when scaling, rotating and skewing.

Improvements have been added for editing brush strokes with the Centerline Editor tool:

• Points can now be deleted from the centerline curve on brush strokes by selecting them and pressing the Delete key.
• New Centerline Smoothness option to control the fitting of the center line is now available in the Tool Properties.
• The centerline selection is now maintained when using the Undo and Redo commands.

For more information, see Reshaping Brush Strokes Using the Centerline Editor and Centerline Editor Tool Modes.

You can now toggle the different states (visibility, lock, Background Mode) of multiple layers by holding the Alt key when clicking on the Show/Hide , Lock/Unlock or Background Mode icons.

Alt-clicking the Show/Hide icon on a layer will hide all other layers in the panel and only show the layer on which you clicked.

If the layer that is being clicked is the only layer that is visible, Alt-clicking will enable all the layers in the panel.

For more information, see Showing and Hiding Layers, Locking and Unlocking Layers and Excluding Layers from the Onion Skin.

The following options are now available for better Onion Skin display in the Camera tab of the Preferences:

• Lightness as Alpha: In this mode, when displaying drawings before and after the current frame, dark areas remain opaque while light areas become transparent.
• Onion Skin Render Style has replaced the Enable Shade option and has the following options:
• Original Colours: Gradually fades the colours in the drawings.
• Coloured: Uses the colours set in the Preferences > Colours tab.
• Coloured Outline: Displays the drawings as outline using the colours set in Preferences > Colours tab.
• Onion Skin Position: Allows you to select whether the onion skins are displayed under or over the current panel.

For more information, see Camera Preferences.

Storyboard Pro can now pre-render frames using OpenGL and save them in a cache. This cached playback can be used to reliably playback at the project’s frame rate, without pausing or skipping.

A cached playback can be viewed from the Playback view in Storyboard Pro or on a reference monitor through a Blackmagic Design playback device. The cached playback can be enabled in the Preferences > Playback tab, under the Playback Mode options:

• Disabled: When this option is selected, cached playback is disabled. This is the default state.
• Playback View: When this option is selected, the Playback view becomes available to add to the Storyboard Pro workspace. Relaunch is required.
• [Blackmagic Design playback device]: If a Blackmagic Design playback device is installed or connected to your computer, the device will be appear and be available for selection in the Playback Mode options drop-down.

For more information, see High Quality Playback and Playback Preferences.

Storyboard Pro now supports the use of Blackmagic Design devices for audio output. If a Blackmagic Design device is connected to your computer, it will be available in the Preferences > Playback tab > Audio Output Device options drop-down—see Playback Preferences.

It is now possible to add audio effects to audio clips using the new Effect Stack view (Windows > Effect Stack). The following effects can be added and managed in this view:

• Balance
• Delay
• High Pass Filter
• Low Pass Filter
• Pitch Shifter
• Reverb
• Volume

To add an effect to an audio clip, select the clip in the Timeline view, then at the bottom right of the Effect Stack view, click on the Add Effect button.

For more information, see Effect Stack View.

It is now possible to create clips on video tracks that contain multiple drawing layers. To do this, position the red playhead to the desired location in the Timeline view, then right-click on the desired video track and from the menu select New Empty Clip.

Select the newly created clip to display its layers in the Stage or Camera view. You can add more layers to the clip's layer stack or draw and create artwork on these layers.

A clip can now be created by dragging a panel from the Storyboard track to a video track. This creates an independent copy of all the layers in that panel, now housed in a clip.

The reverse is also possible, a clip can be dragged from a video track to the Storyboard track to create a panel. This works as long as the clip does not contain a movie file.

There is a new option to Ripple Markers in the Timeline view when editing panels. This option can be turned on or off from the Storyboard > Markers menu and in the contextual menu that appears when right-clicking on the Timeline view's ruler.

When enabled, operations that cause the overall project duration to change will shift and ripple the markers to follow the panels.

Deleting a panel ripples markers up the Timeline from the point of the deleted panel. Markers placed before or in the timecode range of the deleted panel will stay at their current timecode.

To help keep the colour of markers consistent, a list of predefined colours is now available when editing the properties of a timeline marker. It is still possible to assign a custom colour using the Custom option at the bottom of the colour list.

Additionally, markers now have a Name field in addition to the Note field.

Video track information can now be exported in an XML or AAF file when exporting via the File > Conformation > Export Project command, by checking the new Export video tracks option in the Options tab of the Export Project dialog box.

When enabled, content of video tracks will be included in the generated XML or AAF file and the first frame of each clip on these tracks will be rendered as a flat image.

On macOS additional codecs are now available when exporting QuickTime movies. The list of codecs available depends on the version of macOS being used. The following are now available on Catalina:

• Apple ProRes 422 HQ
• Apple ProRes 422 LT
• Apple ProRes 422 Proxy
• H.265 (Alpha channel support is available with Catalina)

For more information, see Configuring Movie Settings for QuickTime Movies on macOS.

A Transparent Background option is now available when exporting movies using a codec which supports alpha channel. On macOS, this option is greyed out if the selected QuickTime codec does not support an alpha channel. On Windows, the options cannot be greyed out automatically. A codec supporting an alpha channel with the depth set to Millions of Colors+ must be selected.

This option is available in both Movie and EDL/AAF/XML exports—see Exporting Bitmap Images.

Storyboard Pro now includes the OpenColorIO library for managing and converting colours to ensure consistent colours throughout your pipeline.

• The working colour space for a project can be set when creating a project or from the project properties. This colour space is used for internal processing when rendering. All images imported into a project should use the same colour space as images are not converted on import.
  
• The colour space used when exporting images and movies can be set from their respective export dialogs. If the colour space selected at export differs from the working colour space, the colours will be converted during the export process.
  
• Exported images and videos in the following formats will be tagged with the colour space information. Other formats will only have the colour values converted and will not be tagged:

• PSD and PNG images

• QuickTime Movie export on macOS

For more information, see New Project Dialog Box and Exporting Bitmap Images.

A new dialog to import audio tracks from an XML or AAF file is now available in Storyboard Pro. The dialog can be opened using File > Import > Audio Tracks command and has the following options:

• Import to New Audio Tracks: This option will create new audio tracks and import the audio to these tracks.
• Replace all Audio Tracks: This option will remove all audio tracks from the project and replace them with new audio tracks on which the linked audio clips will be imported.

The Align Left Most Camera Frame option is now available on the Panels tab of the PDF Profile dialog.

When a storyboard panel contains a camera motion, selecting this option will align the left most camera keyframe with the panel frames in the exported PDF. The artwork and camera movement will spread over the caption columns and to the other rows depending on the range of camera movement.

This new alignment option works best when using the options in one of the three Japanese PDF profiles.