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Processing Order of Soft Effects

Soft effects have a fixed pipeline. Regardless of the order in which you create them, they are always processed in the same order, from Text to Axis:

- Text
- Resize
- Blend
- Timewarp
- CC
- Sparks
- Wipe
- Axis

NoteNot all soft effects can be added to a segment at the same time. For example, if you add an Axis soft effect to a segment with a Resize soft effect, the Resize effect is muted.

If you add both a Text and CC soft effect to the timeline, the soft Text is always affected by the soft CC regardless of the order in which they are added to the pipeline. An Axis soft effect is always processed last so it is not affected by other soft effects in the pipeline. This is illustrated in the following example.

First a Text soft effect is added to a clip.

Image courtesy of Technicolor (formerly Toybox)

Next a CC and an Axis soft effect are added.

Image courtesy of Technicolor (formerly Toybox)

The soft effect indicators are added to the timeline in the processing order of the soft effects. Because the soft Text is processed first, it is affected by both the soft CC and the soft Axis. The order of the soft effects on the timeline is fixed regardless of the order in which they were created.

(a) Soft effect indicators listed in processing order

If you enter a BFX level and extract the soft effects, they are converted to nodes in the following order to maintain the same visual result.

Because the BFX pipeline is not fixed, you have the flexibility of reordering nodes. In the following example, the Text and CC nodes are reordered. Because the CC node is processed first in the pipeline, the Text node is not affected by the CC node.