The latest HitFilm 4 Pro update was heavily influenced by your feedback, as was update #3. Many of the interface adjustments and fixes are a direct result of requests and observations from the community. HitFilm’s development really is a collaborative exercise and we’re really grateful that you all take the time to talk.
What’s in update #4? The highlights for Windows users are support for high DPI displays, bringing the PC version in line with Retina Mac, and much more comprehensive font support. There’s big news for NUKE users, as the Ignite plugins are now ready for you to use.
There are numerous interface enhancements, some of which are super useful but not entirely obvious at first glance. Here’s a few of my favorites:
- The rendering features have been condensed into a single button on the Viewer. Clicking this turns them all on or off. This makes it far easier to instantly switch between fast performance and pretty rendering. You can of course still adjust individual rendering elements by clicking and holding on the button, or from the Viewer Options menu.
- The Viewer now has an optional checkerboard. If you’ve ever exported a project or a still image only to discover half of it is transparent, this’ll be a big help. Turning it on shows a checkerboard pattern in transparent areas of frame, which are much easier to identify than the plain black background.
- If you hold Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) while clicking a scale, position or anchor point it’ll invert. So a value of 500 will instantly become -500. Handy, eh?
- As requested, the vertical orbit direction has been reversed to better match other 3D environments.
Here’s the full changelog:
HitFilm 4 Pro
Features
- Changed default blend mode of the Light Wrap plugin to Lighten
- Added support for high DPI displays on Windows (display scaling must be set to 150% or higher)
- Added checkerboard background to Viewer, which defaults to On for the 2D view (can be activated for 3D views in the Viewer option menu)
- Ctrl-clicking (Cmd+clicking on Mac) the scale, position or anchor point values in the Controls panel now flips/negates the value. This shall henceforth be known as reversing the polarity
- Playback shortcuts now function when in the Lifetime panel (Space and JKL)
Renamed the H264 Export tab to MP4 for greater clarity - Added button in the Viewer to toggle all rendering options on/off. Hold on the button to display individual options (also accessible from the Viewer options menu)
- The mouse now wraps around the screen when using camera tools to allow larger movements
- Reversed the direction of the orbit tool on the Y axis to match common 3D interface behavior
- OpenType fonts are now accessible in Windows as well as fonts that do not support ANSI character sets
- Alignment options are now available to 3D point layers
Fixes
- OS X Yosemite 10.10 & El Capitan 10.11 no longer show the wrong framerate for some videos
- Importing over 300 .MOVs no longer consumes all system memory
Fixed incorrect result of dragging a motion path key frame (or its bezier handles) in the Viewer when the layer is parented and its parent layer has a transformation - Corrected issue where rubber band selection no longer worked on the layer timeline in some cases
- Fixed problem where mask and curve motion path keyframes were not cloned when the path keyframe(s) in the layer timeline were cloned
- The Sharpen plugin no longer affects the alpha channel
- Fixed issue where parts of masks could become black
- Rectified Audio Spectrum and Audio Waveform on the Intel HD 4000
- Fixed orbit tool to work with non-null anchor points
- Motion blur in complex nested projects no longer causes 3D model to vanish
- Fixed crash that could occur when copying and pasting trackers between layers in different composite shots
- Improved rendering of viewer gizmos
- Fixed crash that could occur when using undo with the track panel open
- Resolved issue where the track panel did not update correctly when layers were renamed or reordered
- Fixed crash when deleting mask points
- Repaired crashes that could occur during media loading or preview creation, particularly when the ‘Close all media files when application is not active’ option is on
- Fixed issue with proxying or reloading proxies for composite shots containing Boris FX effects
- Improved performance of masks when motion blur is enabled
- Restored the document proxy icon and menu to the main window on Mac
- Fixed case where previews on the editor timeline did not update when the source media was relinked
- Corrected styling of color picker dialog in the lifetime panel
- Fixed multi-selection of mask points in the viewer
- Corrected mask and layer rotation when using Alt shortcut in the viewer
- Fixed crash opening a project file when the file for a 3D model animation is not found
- Rectified crash expanding the Animations group when the file for a 3D model animation is not found
- Fixed crash when reopening composite shots containing trackers
- Rectified potential crash when quitting the program when one or more panels are floated
- Fixed rare case where Start & End Frame of a particular H.264 .MOV is reversed on the PC
- Fixed film grain combo box typo to display 35mm instead of 32mm
- Mended problems with dragging panels on a secondary screen on Mac
- Fixed problem where panels might not maximize correctly on secondary displays on Mac
- Fixed crash when undoing the removal of a 3D model animation asset that is currently on a timeline
- Minor Retina/High DPI fixes
- Fixed issues with previously cached image data being used after an image asset is removed and then reimported or relinked
- Fixed rare crash when exporting after switching from the edit screen
- Corrected audio being cut off when using the Rate Stretch Tool on audio with a different sample rate to the Project.
- Renamed “Fisheye warp” plugin to “Action Cam Lens Distort”
- Renamed “Lens Distort & Undistort” to “Lens Distort”
HitFilm Ignite
Features
- HitFilm Ignite Plugins now load in NUKE. Which gave us an excuse to use a GIANT nuke header image.
Fixes
- Fixed End Credits Crawl plugin in Sony Vegas
- Renamed “Fisheye warp” plugin to “Action Cam Lens Distort”
- Renamed “Lens Distort & Undistort” to “Lens Distort”
Which has been your favorite update so far, and why? Tell us in the comments!
