Compositing Preferences Property Editor

| Performance | Raster Paint | Cineon/DPX Files

These options let you set various preferences for FX rendering, memory management, and Cineon file conversion.

To display: Choose File Preferences from the main menu. In the explorer that appears, click the Compositing icon.

Performance

Maximum Multi-Processing

FX Tree rendering from a File Output operator can take advantage of distributed rendering. This option specifies the maximum number of render slave CPUs used to render FX trees. You can specify one, two, four, or eight CPUs.

Memory Usage

Image Memory Size (MB)

The minimum amount of RAM to allocate for storing images when the FxTree starts. You may need to set a higher value when working with large images or complex trees, and you may need to set it lower if Softimage crashes when you open the FxTree view.

On 32-bit systems, this value should not be set higher than 128 MB.

Maximum For Caches (%)

Specifies the maximum percentage of RAM that should be used for caching images. This value can be set to several levels between 0% and a maximum of 80%.

Disk Usage

When caching to disk, make sure that there is enough free space in the Temp or user-specified directory.

Overflow Cache to Disk	Activate this option to save images to a disk cache that would otherwise be lost due to insufficient cache memory during editing of an FX tree.
Maximum Disk Cache Size	When Overflow Cache to Disk is activated, specifies the maximum size of the data stored in the cache directory which is used to store cached data after overflow.
Minimum Disk Left Unused	When Overflow Cache to Disk is activated, specifies the amount of disk space that must remain free. The helps prevent the disk from filling up with cached images.

Cache Directory

Use Standard Temporary Directory	When activated, the images cached to disk are stored in the system's Temp directory.
User-specified Directory	When Use Standard Temporary Directory is deactivated, images cached to disk are stored in the directory specified here.

Raster Paint

Save Frames on Time Change

When activated, frames modified in a Paint Clip operator are saved when you change frames.

Cineon/DPX Files

Cineon/DPX images use a logarithmic color space, so to work with them in the FX tree, you first have to convert them to linear space. Once you've applied the desired effects, you will likely want to convert them back to logarithmic space. These options allows you to set preferences for automatically converting log images to linear when they are read, and converting them back to log when they are written.

Log-To-Lin Look Up Table

Black Point	The "Black Reference". This value maps the minimum log value to the linear black value of 0. Values below this will be clipped to black.
White Point	The "White Reference". This value maps the maximum log value to the linear white value of 255. Values above this one will be clipped to white.
Soft Clip	The soft clip value helps smooth out color imbalances cause by clipping the highlights in the original log image. It defines a range of values around the white reference over which the clipping curve is softened. This preserves details in the image's highlights.
Film Gamma	Adjusts the film gamma.
Display Gamma	Performs a gamma correction. Entering your monitor's gamma correction value ensures that the original Cineon/DPX image's gamma looks correct on your monitor.

Automatically Use Table...

When Reading Files	When activates, Softimage will automatically use the Log-To-Lin lookup table when reading Cineon format images from disk.
When Writing Files	When activates, Softimage will automatically use the Log-To-Lin lookup table when writing Cineon format images to disk.

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