Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease everytime.

Wax can create 2D & 3D special effects and can work in two modes - as a standalone application which would appeal for home users/beginners, and as a plug-in to video editors/NLEs which would be more useful for professional editors. Currently Wax can work as a plug-in with Magix Vegas, Pure Motion EditStudio and Adobe Premiere.

Presets

Wax can create and use presets, which are chain of plugins with customized parameters to create unique effects. The basic installation of Wax comes with hundreds of presets created by Vassias Loverdos and you can also create your own using Wax.

Download

The current version is 2.0e. Download from one of the following sites (thanks to them for providing bandwidth).

Wax also supports Freeframe plugins and you can download many of them from http://freeframe.sourceforge.net/downloads.html.

The Wax Plugin Dev Kit is available for developers who are interested in writing plugins and transitions for Wax (requires programming knowledge in C/C++). If you are interested please send a mail to me requesting the devkit.

As the first step after installation, please read the Wax UserGuide (a link available in the start menu program group of Wax)

The Wax Google Group is a good place to discuss tips and tricks.

Features
  • Distributed as freeware for business or personal use. However if you want to redistribute Wax, you need to get permission from the author.
  • Use graphics acceleration available with your video card for creating mind-boggling effects in realtime or near-realtime.
  • Unlimited video and audio tracks with top-down compositing and many compositing modes (audio features are limited at this time).
  • 2D and 3D Plugins and transitions for creating effects. Full featured 3D compositing with 3d objects, lighting, shadows, texture generators, etc. Plugins include the following.
    • RotoMate - rotoscope/paint over video with fully keyframmable shapes and masks
    • Shatter - create explosive effects
    • ModelLoader - load 3d models from .3DS, .MD2 and .MS3d files
    • Particle Generator - generate various natural particle effects like fire, smoke, rain etc
    • Text 3D - create extruded/beveled 3D text, and much more...
  • Plugin Adapter technology - can load and use VirtualDub filters, DirectX plugins, Freeframe plugins and Windows Movie Maker presets inside Wax or your NLE when using Wax as a plugin.
  • Full featured project management with media bins/folders, element properties and comments for ease of use.
  • Transition and Plugin SDK available for developers to extend functionality by adding external plugins. WinMorph uses this Plugin SDK to extend Wax's functionality for warping and morphing.
  • File input/output through filters, Filter SDK available upon request for developers to extend file format support.
  • Input formats : AVI, WAV, all popular image formats.
    Output formats : AVI, MPEG, WAV, Flash, all popular image formats.
    (AVI and WAV formats support compressed audio too, using Audio Codecs installed in your PC).