If you’re reading this article, chances are you’ve read my previous Continuum reviews, or my write ups on Boris FX products in general.  For me, and my editing, the value for what you get is unmatched out there in the post production world, and don’t get me wrong, I love me some S_Glow inside of Sapphire, but Continuum has always been my go to plug-in package in Media Composer.  Easy to use, tons of presets and real-time.  But something else has become noticeable in the last little while.  Normally, when plug-in packages get released, they get their grand release normally around NAB, and you’ll see incremental updates throughout the year, and then the big release again twelve months later.  That’s not the case with Boris FX products.  They have now gotten into the flow of a major release once a year, followed up with a fairly hefty “.5” release 6 months later, and I’ll be honest with you, the “.5” release is almost as big as the “.0” release.  In this writeup, we’ll look at the newly released Continuum 2025.5 release, and see what the Boris FX team has added to make it worth your hard earned dollar.

COST

As I’ve mentioned before, if you’re a Media Composer editor, don’t even look at the purchase price.  It hasn’t changed much, well, ever.  The perpetual license will still run you $1895 USD.  The subscription price is where it’s at!  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  I hate subscriptions, much like probably everyone else out there.  However, Boris FX’s subscription model is one of the few out there that I feel is actually a better deal for editors and compositors.  For Media Composer editors, you’re looking at $595 USD per year.  In three years you would have paid less than what a purchase cost would have been.  Keep in mind that if you were to decide to go with the perpetual license, you would get updates for the year, but once that’s up, you’re looking at $545 USD to upgrade to current (at the time), and updates for a year.  Media Composer editors, if you’re serious about your editing, the $50 USD per month for the yearly subscription is well worth what you get in return.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE ML

In the world of Boris FX, we don’t call it “AI”, we call it “ML”, Machine Learning.  Machine Learning was first introduced to Continuum in the 2024 release with the debut of BCC+ DeNoise ML and BCC+ Uprez ML and was quickly followed up in the 2024.5 release with BCC+ Retimer ML and Witness Protection ML.  2025’s “.0” update brought us License Plate ML and Motion Blur ML, and there is more Machine Learning coming in the 2025.5 update but, before we talk about that, let’s take a look at what is, for me, the best update to Continuum in years!

WHAT’S NEW

AI-Powered Masking in Mocha and Pixel Chooser

So, what does this mean, exactly.  AI-powered masking.  Well, how you used to normally do roto in Mocha was you would do an initial track of your footage to get the position, rotation, scale, etc set, then you’d attach your roto mask to your track, and make adjustments as you go.  Fairly simple.  A little cumbersome, but it worked.  So, let’s sidestep for a second.  Before we get too deep into the weeds with Mocha and its AI masking, let’s take a look at the introductory version of this technology, which is actually an After Effects tool called Roto-Brush.  There is also a tool that works side-by-side with it called the Refine Edge tool.  Roto-Brush does the masking, and the Refine Edge tool softens up the edges.

The basic Roto Brush end result

The Roto-Brush tool works pretty simply.  Double click on your clip to call it up as a layer.  Then, simply take the Roto-Brush tool, and paint what you want to roto.  Once you have what you want isolated, you can simply move forward frame by frame to make sure that the Roto-Brush tool is masking out the area that you want.  I’ll be honest, the tool is AWESOME for After Effects CS5 in 2010 but, much like almost every other feature that’s added to After Effects, it was added, and then never improved on.  I’ve been using it up until, well, Continuum 2025.5 came out which gives me the features of the Roto-Brush and Refine Edge tool, all in one nice neat little package.  Keep in mind that the closest tool we had to roto in Media Composer is Animatte, and it’s manual roto every step of the process.  Alright, let’s switch back to Media Composer, and before we move forward and talk about the AI masking in Mocha, keep in mind that with Continuum, you’ll only find the new AI/ML feature of Mocha in the BCC+ Effects.  We’ll use Super LED as our example, as our dancer will stand out the most using this effect.  

So, it’s pretty simple.  I want to roto out our dancer, and have her appear on top of our LED effect.  In the BCC+ effects, you’ll now notice (assuming you’ve used Continuum before), that the Mocha parameter is now called “Mocha Mask and Track”.  Since we want to do a mask effect, I’ll twirl down the parameter and select “Mocha Mask”.

Once in Mocha, you’ll notice that there is a new tool in the middle of the masking tools called “Create New Mask ML Layer”.  

Once you’ve selected it, much like with Roto-Brush in After Effects, simply click where you want Mocha to draw the mask, and if it doesn’t select your entire subject, just click where it didn’t select to select that area too.  After a couple of clicks, mine looks like this:

Once you’re happy with your initial roto selection, simply hit the “Arrow” for Mocha to create the splines.

Since I’m on frame one, I’ll just hit “Render Forwards” for Mocha to start rendering.  My 5 second clip took about 20 seconds to process.  I made no adjustments to the roto that Mocha did, and here’s how it turned out.

It literally did the roto perfectly the first time.  Now, I could have gone in and made some very, very slight adjustments to the dancers hands, but I was completely blown away about how accurate Mocha was on its default settings.  Roto’s that would take hours, will now be able to be done in a matter of minutes.  Mind=Blown.  For me, this is the single biggest step forward for Continuum since Mocha was integrated into the effects.  Period.

BCC+ Depth Map ML

Who’s excited about Depth Maps?????  No one is the normal answer to this question but, let me tell you, I’m SUPER stoked about Depth Maps now available inside of Continuum 2025.  To be honest, Depth Maps were normally only part of 3D applications like Nuke and Fusion and, surprisingly, have always been available by third party plug-ins in After Effects (sadly).  So, if you’re new to Depth Maps what, exactly, are they?  Well, they’re basically a black and white image that create a 3D reference from your image.  Anything that’s white in the image is closer to the camera, anything black is farthest away, and anything grey is somewhere in between.  Here’s an example of what one would look like.

Now, you’ll notice in the depth map that you can still make out a lot of detail that will impact whatever effect you want to add to this shot.  With that said, it does beg the question….how to you stack effects to the BCC+ Depth Map effect.  Well, that’s the beauty part of the effect.  It’s integrated into all BCC+ effects via the Pixel Chooser.  So, let’s use an effect that would be appropriate for this shot.  Some smoke and fog and, not surprisingly enough, there is a BCC+ Smoke and Fog effect that we can use.  Once you drop the effect on a shot, you’ll see that the smoke and fog cover, basically, the entire shot.

The problem we have is that the smoke and fog is basically just sitting on top of the shot.  I want it to appear farther down the tunnel.  I could use a mask to do that, but I’d rather just use the depth information that BCC+ Depth Map ML provides, via the Pixel Chooser.  Here’s how it works.  Simple twirl down the Mocha Mask and Tack and turn the Pixel Chooser on.

Once you’ve turned the Pixel Chooser “ON”, you’ll now see Depth Map ML in the Pixel Chooser drop down, which you can simply enable, and then click “View Mask/Matte” to see the Depth Map ML.

Believe it or not, that’s it.  If you turn off the “View Mask/Matte” function, you’ll notice that your fog/smoke is close to the camera.  Simply invert it, and you’ll now see that your fog and smoke are sitting at the back of the tunnel, and you can simply adjust your Level Far/Level Near settings to move the fog the Z position, to have it sit wherever you want in your frame.

Would I ever us BCC+ Depth Map on its own?  Probably not.  Would I use it as a part of the Pixel Chooser?  100%.  It’s just a super simple way to add more realism to my composites in Media Composer, than I’ve ever been able to do before.

BCC+ Frame Fixer ML, BCC+ ST Map and a bunch more goodies

We’ve got more machine learning goodness in BCC+ Frame Fixer, which is frame fixer on steroids.  Need to remove some camera flashes from your footage?  Need to remove some tape glitches from archival footage?  Do you have a shot where it drops to black for a frame or has a dropout on it?  No problem.  It’s still the same Frame Fixer we had before, but now it’s been enhanced with the power of machine learning to help take even the more difficult glitches/dropouts and fix them like they were never there to begin with.

The BCC+ ST Map effect in Boris FX Continuum is a tool that lets you creatively distort or remap the pixels of a video clip using special “map” images. The most common use of an ST map in your timeline would be to help fix distorted drone footage by telling the video exactly how to “unwrap” or correct the image.  When a drone camera has a wide lens or gets footage from tricky angles, the video can look stretched, curved, or warped—like how a fisheye lens makes things bend. An ST Map (Spatial Transform Map) is like a repair guide. It’s an image that shows how every pixel in the video should move to look normal again.  For me, this would be the most common use for most Media Composer editors.

And last, but certainly not least, Continuum 2025.5 brings some exciting upgrades that will make a big difference in both performance and creative options. First, 8K resolution support has been added to Title Studio, which is great news for high-end productions. Title Studio has long been my favorite toolset for creating professional 3D titles and motion graphics, and now it’s even more future-ready with support for ultra-high-resolution workflows. Whether you’re designing cinematic titles or complex lower thirds, you can now do it all in crisp, detailed 8K.

In addition to that, the update includes over 100 brand-new presets spread across seven popular effects categories, giving editors and motion designers even more ready-to-use looks to speed up their creative process.

Last, but certainly not least, performance has seen a major boost, especially when working with 4K footage. The FX Editor now plays back 4K media at twice the speed, significantly improving editing efficiency and making previewing effects much smoother. All these enhancements together make Continuum 2025.5 a powerful update for both creative flexibility and technical performance.

In the end, if you’re already on the subscription plan for Continuum for Media Composer (or really any other iteration of Continuum out there), you really should update to 2025.5 for the Mocha Mask ML and Pixel Chooser Depth Matte ML implementation as soon as possible.  For anyone else sitting on the fence, it’s really still the flagship effects package for Media Composer editors, and I’ll end by saying this.  Boris FX gets it when it comes to AI/ML.  They are updating older tools with functionality to make the more complex jobs (Roto) even easier than it was with Mocha inside of Media Composer.  If you’re interested in trying out Continuum for Media Composer, or any other host application, you can check it out at https://borisfx.com/products/continuum/ .