plug-in encryption and watermarking support

i'm not a native english speaker, but i think that the wording "as of" can be used in a few ways:

"as of sunday, ice cubes will no longer be available" meaning that after saturday there will be no more ice.

another way would be:

"as of sunday, no ice cubes were available" meaning that last time we checked (sunday), ice was still unavailable.

an my favorite, the ambiguous way:

"as of sunday, there are no ice cubes" meaning... either way.

back to our case

pixel bender effects are text documents with humanly readble code.

anyone who has such an effect can open it's file in "note pad" and see the code exactly as you have written it.

as of the release of CS4 adobe hasn't supplied a solution to that problem for developers.

i don't develop pixel bender, so i'm not familiar with the latest news on that issue.

i do know that they (adobe) consider solving this a high priority.

"normal" plug-ins on the other hand are complied to machine code.

that means that no one can access the original code. (not in any effective way at least).

the difference on the watermarking issue is the same.

pixel bender effects are actually can only access their own parameters and pixel data handed to them (and very few other things).

the pixel bender API currently doesn't provide the developer the means to tell whether or not watermarking is needed.

normal plug-ins are actually DLLs, so besides having a much more expanded AE API, they can also do whatever the osAPI has to offer. (read and create files, read the system clock... ect...)

actually, anything you can do with c++, you can be implemented with a normal plug-in.

using these next-to-limitless tools, the developer can easilydecide whether or not to display the watermark,

and they do not rely on the AE API alone

summing up.

pixel bender is an AWSOME way to develop. the only drawback is that currently, commercial developers don't have any means to prevent their effects from being used unlicened, or having their original code simply taken from the effect file.

take that into consideration when deciding using which API to develop.