Digital Anarchy has announced a free update to their skin retouching plugin, Beauty Box Video. Version 1.2 gives Beauty Box Video a speed increase by taking advantage of the latest hardware and operating systems.

The update uses nVidia’s CUDA and other GPU optimizations to achieve rendering results that are 3–6x’s faster than version 1.0. The update also features user interface changes and bug fixes that provide a smoother, faster workflow in After Effects, Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro, says Jim Tierney, president of Digital Anarchy.

Beauty Box Video gives an actor or model an incredible makeover in post-production by incorporating state-of-the-art face detection and smoothing algorithms, he adds. Beauty Box automatically identifies the skin tones and removes imperfections and blemishes.


For the version 1.2 update, users with an nVidia card that supports CUDA will see the most drastic speed increases, particularly when used with a 64-bit operating system and multiple processors. nVidia’s CUDA gives Beauty Box an amazing speed boost and provides an impressive increase even with "gaming" cards that support CUDA, like the GeForce 480GTX. Higher end video cards, like the Quadro FX4800, when used in conjunction with After Effects’ multi-processing can render HD footage up to six fps.
 

Beauty Box Video 1.2 is regularly priced at US$199, but will be on sale for $149 until Nov. 15. Beauty Box Video runs in After Effects 7.0–CS5, Final Cut Pro 6.0–7.0 and Premiere Pro CS4–CS5. The plug-in runs on Mac 10.4–10.6, Windows XP–7 and Vista systems. Demo filters and samples are available at http://www.digitalanarchy.com .