Visuals ProducerLuca Visual FX Progress Bars v2 is a pack of 20 generators and eight effects, including an object tracker. They provide a wide variety of progress, loading, processing bars and rings as well as gauges and hi-tech motion graphics to overlay over any media. It’s distributed by FxFactory.
Color Trix has just released its colour correction and grading plug-in for Final Cut Pro X, Color Finale 2.0.
A decade or so later than when I tested a Tangent Wave control module, the Loupedeck CT is here, retailing at half the price, with a touch screen, a wheel, dials and buttons, and the promise of usability with multiple applications.
Your average NLE’s built-in glow effects are a bit skinny. Taking Final Cut Pro X as an example, it’s actually not worth dragging the effect to the timeline. A plug-in like Red Giant’s Universe Glow doesn’t add a glow effect around the underlying footage elements; it’s completely independent and has its own merits and use, but it may not always be what you want. Hawaiki’s Super Glow, on the other hand, is a glow effect that “just” adds glow to underlying footage and does so with six “glow sources”. It offers complete control and the result can be simple but also complex.
Universe, Red Giant Software’s subscription-based plug-in for Adobe After Effects and seven other NLEs and compositing apps, has been updated to version 3.1 and incorporates some interesting new modules.
I remember buying my first and last Power Mac Pro many years ago. It looked gorgeous, it was blazingly fast and I used it for about eight years. Keep in mind that last figure as I take you on a city trip to the price level of the new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR.
The people of Hedge, the (mainly video) offloading slash backup app, have acquired Postlab. This will allow them to deliver an efficient and vendor neutral workflow solution very soon.
There are five new text effects and a brand new dashboard in Universe 3.0. I tried the new version with Final Cut Pro X and Motion, and while the dashboard still needs some tweaking, the new text effects were brilliant for enhancing sci-fi and thriller movies.
There are a lot of ways to add callouts to footage, but callouts that follow motion require plug-ins with a tracking mechanism. So far, I had only tried motionVFX’s mCallouts. These I have always found spectacular but rather limited in their use while the Mocha-driven tracking sometimes drives me up the wall. Now FxFactory has released Tracking Callouts, an Idustrial Revolution plug-in that seems to use point tracking instead of Mocha’s planar tracking and I found that one easier to use.
Word Pop is one of FxFactory’s latest addition. It’s a set of Final Cut Pro X titles. They allow you to create anything from lower thirds to a full explanation in the centre of the frame. I first thought it was pretty much limited in what you can do with it, but it turned out to be more than meets the eye.
