Release Notes for Flix 5.4v1

Release Date

5 July, 2018

Operating Systems

Client-side

Supported Operating Systems

Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (Up to version 1709)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 7 (Up to version 7.4)

OS X 10.11 El Capitan, macOS 10.12 Sierra, macOS 10.13 High Sierra (Up to version 10.13.5)

Note:  Other operating systems may work with Flix, but have not been fully tested. If you have any problems with a particular operating system, please contact the Foundry Support Team here.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Flix runs on any system able to comfortably run our officially supported third-party applications (Adobe Photoshop 2018, Toon Boom Storyboard Pro 6, and so on).

Server-side Requirements

Hardware: 2.3+ GHz 2x core, 8 GB RAM

Operating System: RHEL or Centos 6.6/7 x86_64 (Minimum 2 VMs)

Officially-Supported Third-Party Applications

Applications

Supported Versions

Adobe Photoshop

CC 2015.5, CC 2017, CC 2018*

Adobe Premiere

CC 2015.5, CC 2017**

Autodesk Maya

2016, 2017, 2018*

Avid Media Composer

8.8, 8.9, 8.10**

Final Cut Pro

7

Toon Boom Storyboard Pro

5.1, 5.5, 6*

TVPaint Animation

11 Pro

Autodesk Shotgun

All versions

Note:  * Older versions may work, but they haven’t been fully tested with Flix 5.4, so they cannot be listed as officially supported. ** Older and newer versions may work, but they haven’t been fully tested with Flix 5.4, so they cannot be listed as officially supported.
If you have any problems with a particular application's version, please contact the Foundry Support Team here.

Compatibility

This version is not compatible with previous Flix 5.3 versions for remote studios; upgrades need to happen at the same time.

The Photoshop actions are not compatible with previous Flix 5.3 versions, the scripts need to be updated.

The Maya plug-ins are compatible with previous Flix 5.3 versions, the shelves do not need to be updated.

New Features

Drawn Notes

• ID 341949 - Drawn notes are now automatically burned in to the .pdf files you export. You can disable this option by setting the new pdfNoteBurnIn parameter to 0.

• ID 341950 - The new Export Notes plug-in allows you to export all your annotated panels as .jpeg files.

• ID 341951 - Flix now adds drawn notes as a new layer in your Photoshop layer stack. You can disabled this option by setting the new psdNoteAsLayer parameter to 0.

Editorial

• ID 247659 - Flix now links to the Flix Editorial Interface from the e-mail generated upon publishing to Avid. The new link, called Import AAFs, opens the To Avid tab and loads the corresponding show and sequence, making it easy for you to import AAF files.

• ID 247843 - There is now a link to the .pdf file in the e-mail that is generated to notify Editorial of the new sequence. The new Contact Sheet link directly opens the .pdf file.

• ID 343620 - You can now specify the maximum file size allowed (in GB) for a QuickTime movie, when publishing back from Editorial using the new maxEditorialMovieSize parameter (set to 3GB by default).

• ID 343758 - Flix can now automatically import the AAF and ALE files to a pre-set directory by setting the avidImportFolder parameter.

User Interface

• ID 348914 - Flix now displays an asterisk in Google Chrome's tab to indicate that the sequence contains unsaved edits.

Feature Enhancements

General

• ID 343763 - To make setting up shows easier, the following parameters are now included in the overrides.yml file by default: emailFromEditorial, emailToEditorial, avidMarkInPoint, and avidMarkOutPoint.

• ID 343766 - Flix has updated the supported versions of its third-party applications. Please refer to the Officially-Supported Third-Party Applications section as some versions may no longer be supported.

• ID 343798 - Flix now burns in the dialogue into your .mov file when using the Export Movie plug-in. You can disabled this option by setting the new toMOVBurnIn parameter to 0.

• ID 346140/346142/346143/346144/343744 - The Photoshop, Premiere, QuickTime, Storyboard Pro, and Maya icons have been updated.

• ID 352357 - Opening a new sequence now automatically creates a clean version instead of displaying Empty Sequence.

Editing

• ID 343800/343801 - A new Install SBP scripts option has been added in the Install/Update scripts menu located in the status bar. This installs or updates the Storyboard Pro project resolutions and export parameters.

Editorial

• ID 343757 - Flix no longer applies any color correction when conforming the sequence from Avid, due to the ability to export QuickTimes with the Keep as Legal Range Avid option. The color correction can be toggled back on by setting the new colorCorrectionFromAvid parameter to 1, if using the Scale from Legal to Full Range Avid option.

• ID 343759 - Flix now automatically generates a .pdf file from the new sequence when publishing to Premiere using the new fcpAutoGeneratePDF parameter.

• ID 343760 - Flix now automatically generates a .pdf file from the new sequence by default when publishing to Avid using the avidAutoGeneratePDF parameter.

• ID 343761 - Still clips in the ALE file now have the same duration as in Flix by default.

• ID 343762 - By default, Flix now ignores keyframes from Premiere and uses QuickTime's keyframes instead.

• ID 343813 - Flix now exports audio as an .mp3 file along with AAFs and ALE file when publishing to Avid.

Photoshop

• ID 343806/343807/343808/343809/343810/343811/343812 - New Photoshop actions have been added:

New Thumbnails 177, 185, 235, or 239 - This creates a new document that contains 9 thumbnails, each with an aspect ratio of 177, 185, 235, or 239.

Send Thumbnails - Sends the thumbnails created by the New Thumbnails action to Flix as individual panels.

Replace Each Frame - This replaces Flix panels with each frame in the Timeline, starting from the selected Flix panel. This is only available if you are using the frame timeline workflow.

Replace Each Layer Comp -This replaces Flix panels with each layer comp, starting from the selected Flix panel.

Replace Selected Layer Comps - This replaces Flix panels with each selected layer comp, starting from the selected panel in Flix.

Replace Animation - This replaces Flix currently-selected panel with an animated panel when using the video timeline.

Replaced Cropped Current Image - This replaces Flix currently-selected panel with the image selection.

• ID 347014 - The Photoshop Actions buttons have been updated to take into account the new scripts.

• ID 347451 - When the Send Thumbnails, Each Layer Comp, Selected Layer Comp, Each Frame, Each Layer + BG, and Each Layer + FG/BG actions are triggered, Flix now automatically exports the current .psd file as a master image to Flix's Panel Libraries. You can disable this option by setting the autoSendMaster parameter to 0.

Shotgun

• ID 343779 - You can now export the whole sequence as a new sequence version, along with the sequence's shots, by setting the new sgUploadSequence parameter to 1.

• ID 343781 - Flix now uses Shotgun's versioning system when publishing new shot/sequence versions to Shotgun. This can be reverted to using Flix's versioning by setting the new sgUseFlixVersioning parameter to 1.

• ID 343775 - Flix now supports Shotgun episodic shows and added the sgFieldEpisodeName parameter. This represents the field used to validate an episode name between Flix and Shotgun.

User Interface

• ID 343745 - The Refresh Images plug-in has been renamed to Reload Thumbnails and is now also available in the right-click context menu.

• ID 343747 - In the Dialogue workspace, the thumbnail' size has been enlarged for better visibility.

• ID 343748 - In the Dialogue workspace, the comment displayed after every thumbnail has been removed for clarity.

• ID 343749 - The color palette, used for highlighting panels, has been redesigned.

• ID 343750/343751/343752/346137 - The Open in Nuke, Nuke Studio, Shotgun Import, and Split PSD Layers to Clips plug-ins are now disabled by default.

• ID 351692/351694 - The Draw tools' icons have been improved for better visibility and the Eraser tool's thickness has been increased.

• ID 351804 - The Compare mode's green and red colors have been edited to match the default highlight colors contained in the color palette.

• ID 352320 - The Export plug-in Group has been rearranged for better organization.

• ID 353048 - The Info pop-up, which notified that a Master Image had been added to the Panel Libraries has been removed.

Bug Fixes

General

• ID 310304 - Ref panels did not display as New when using Flix's Compare mode.

• ID 339153 - Stepping through two copied panels in Pitch mode, when the copied panels were placed one after the other, did not work.

• ID 344209 - Accessing Flix remotely caused the application to crash.

• ID 344672 - The bug fix introduced in 5.2v6 solving the issue where some drawn notes were not being displayed, caused import performance issues.

• ID 346195 - The pop-up, which displayed that Storyboard Pro exported successfully, opened after closing Storyboard Pro.

• ID 346201 - Flix unnecessarily prompted you to save your sequence to Refresh Images.

• ID 350035 - Some scenarios allowed you to add Master Images to the sequence, which shouldn't have been allowed.

Editorial

• ID 345624 - In Avid, imported panels were 1 frame too short if the timing information was taken from Flix and the aleMaintainStillsTiming parameter was set to 1.

• ID 346289 - Publishing to Avid with the avidAutoGeneratePDF parameter set to 1 unnecessarily opened the file browser to the location where the .pdf file had been generated and displayed a pop-up indicating that the .pdf file had been generated successfully. Flix now only opens a new tab displaying the generated .pdf file and displays a pop-up indicating the publish was successful.

• ID 346839 - The directory created to import AAFs from Avid had an unnecessary .xml extension.

• ID 352622 - The Flix Editorial Interface always opened the To Flix tab even if To Avid was the last tab open.

Photoshop

• ID 263683 - In Photoshop, hidden layers were toggled to a visible state if they were selected when clicking the Each Layer or Each Layer + BG actions.

• ID 263684 - Selecting the Each Layer + BG Photoshop action while the background layer was hidden caused Flix to become unresponsive.

• ID 268564 - Dialogues written in letterboxes in Photoshop sometimes did not appear in the Dialogue workspace's thumbnails.

• ID 347701 - International characters sometimes caused an error when opening a panel in Photoshop.