Today’s update brings performance improvements plus a huge range of fixes and enhancements. It’s also a response to the incredible feedback received from all of you, so a big thank you to everybody who has reported issues, performed benchmarking tests, and discussed techniques.
Highlights
The biggest story in today’s update is performance, which has been optimized in several areas. Several of these optimizations were possible thanks to feedback and precise benchmarking tests from Arek, rgbii, Daniloth, and others over on the forum.
- Huge performance improvements to atomic particles. This should benefit all users but if you’ve got an NVIDIA graphics card you’ll notice a particular speed boost. HitFilm 3 Pro is now much faster than HitFilm 2 Ultimate when it comes to atomic particles.
- The particle simulator now handles the built-in textures far more efficiently. If you have projects with multiple particle systems using the built-in textures you’ll now see noticeable performance gains.
- We’ve enhanced the intelligence of the behind-the-scenes caching system for more responsiveness when working on the current frames. This should be particularly evident if you’re adjusting grading effects on top of an intensive 3D timeline.
- Expanding and collapsing property groups on the timeline or in the controls panel is now much more responsive when you’re working on an intensive project. It’s now much snappier to swap between control sections.
- Property values are now accurate up to three decimal places, without unexpected rounding or shortening.
- Chroma key color picker now doesn’t update until you release the mouse.
- Holding the Shift key while launching HitFilm 3 Pro will disable OpenFX plugins, so that your effects library only shows the primary HitFilm collection.
Issues fixed
Thanks again to all of you who have reported issues, helping us focus our efforts in the right areas. Today’s update brings a huge number of fixes to make HitFilm 3 Pro even more stable. Here’s a quick summary, in no particular order:
- Improved render caching when using light layers
- Issue when switching to perspective view after proxying
- Viewer rendering unnecessarily in some cases
- Improvements to proxy loading and invalidation
- Issue when immediately cancelling a proxy
- Timeline updates correctly when keyframing is activated in the Controls panel
- Looped playback now works in all cases in Trimmer & Viewer panels
- Transitions removed correctly when deleting Media on the Editor timeline
- Dragging 2D effects between layers updates layer pickers
- Resetting 2D effects now resets all properties
- Atomic Particles position shift was ignoring 3D model rotation
- Sub-frame keyframe modifications
- Improved Wireframe rendering consistency
- Custom shortcuts now work without restarting
- Color controls now displays more increments
- Demo export image colors fixed
- YouTube upload aspect ratio changed to 16:9 for standard definition
- Control panel values being cut off inside some properties
- Cine Style moved from Stylize to Color Grading category
- Quicktime warning respects user options
- GPU warning no longer shown multiple times in certain cases
- Most panels can now be made smaller
- Various media replacement fixes
- Various fixes to project loading
- Various styling fixes
What’s next?
Keep that feedback coming, because we’re committed to making the product better and better.
Let us know how you get on with today’s update, especially in terms of the performance boosts. We also want to see what you’re working on, so do post your videos over on the forum. Don’t forget that the HitFilm.com community is full of talented, friendly people – if you’re looking for advice on techniques, it’s the place to go.
We’re also working on new tutorials for HitFilm 3 Pro, spread across a range of subjects and skill levels, from essential workflow tips to advanced unified 3D space techniques. Expect to see some of that before the end of the year.
