We'll be choosing a random fan at Noon PST today. Good Luck!
What's in the Megasuite?
Aged Film - Turn back the clock with Aged Film and show which era you set your shot.
Berserk - 20 award-winning special effects plug-ins including StarField, FogBank, VanGoughist and Laser.
Aurorix - A set of updated 26 cool special effects filters including AgedFilm 2, VideoLook 2, Earthquake 2 and Turbulent Flow 2.
Delirium - Delirium is a set of more than 46+ amazing plug-ins and tools for creating particle-based fire, smoke and bubbles.
Camera Mapper - Simulate a 3D scene from 2D still images or video footage.
Damage - Damage is a collection of four effects plugins designed for post production professionals who want to create an extensive variety of digital and/or analog defects/errors in your footage.
Buena Depth Cue - A set of plug-ins that adds realistic depth effects to 3D layers.
Falloff Lighting - provides an enhanced lighting system to After Effects built-in light.
Simulate: Illuma - Light and filter options you didn't have in the field... Halo, Lightracer, Radiance, Photogust, and Luminus.
Simulate: Camera - Who says you can't change your mind once it's shot? Archive, Overexpose, Iris, Destabilize, and Lens Flare.
For those shooting drama and want to make it obvious that the material being viewed is on a monitor or TV ("Sir, we’ve just recovered this videotape of the rescue mission to the Amazon whose flight crashed in 1992!" "Put it in the VCR now, sergeant!") Damage is an excellent plug-in. Additionally, for those who need to insert newly shot footage into old video, running those new shots through Damage could help them blend much more easily. And for those who wish to spice up their transitions, it could be combined with the usual fades, wipes, and dissolves, to simulate a TV being switched on or off.
You know if you haven't yet tried Damage, you're dying to! Download a demo here. Buy Damage here and save 5% with Toolfarm's everyday discount.
Back in January I presented the "Top 10 Must-Have Plug-ins for Adobe After Effects" at MGFest in Chicago. The presentation was only 22 minutes so that really didn't give me much of a chance to show off the capabilities of the plug-ins and I wanted to do a feature on this for Toolfarm with lots of movie samples.
Several people have asked me about the list and wanting to republish it, so here it is. (If you want to republish the list, go for it, just please link back to Toolfarm). First, a bit about the criteria and some notes.
The plug-in should be a single plug-in and so I tried to avoid big plug-in packages when possible. There will be notes included about the product when needed. The plug-in had to be unique, fast, powerful or something I've used a lot and it fits into my workflow. If it hit 3 of the criteria, I would consider it for the list.
This is MY opinion, not because I was paid to say this or because the plug-ins come from a manufacturer that gives us higher margins. It's very tough to seem unbiased, but I want you to know, it is all my opinion here.
These are in no particular order (but I do have a clear favorite).
The list was created in January 2009 and a few new plug-ins that I really like were not included in the list. I guess they'll have to wait for 2010.
Without further ado.....
1 Red Giant Primatte Keyer
Description: A Perfect Key the First Time! The simplest, fastest green-screen tool available that even extracts keys from challenging DV and low lit sources by sampling the background color and clicking.
Why I Like It: With my book about keying (Greenscreen Made Easy) out on the market, I've been doing quite a few seminars on keying. People always ask which keyer I like the best. I've been showing Primatte quite a bit and did two presentations at NAB at the Red Giant booth. I find that Primatte is easy to show because of how it works. It's not a matter of fiddling with a bunch of numbers to get the right settings, but dragging around your mouse and clicking big buttons. It works in a very visual manner, which is perfect for artists (who aren't engineers). Also, Primatte has everything I need in one tool.
Easy to use and very fast
Built in DV Deartifactor, Spill Suppression, Color Matching and Light Wrap
Description: ReelSmart Motion Blur Pro automatically tracks every pixel in a sequence and blurs based on calculated motion.
Why I like it: Again, with the greenscreen book, I've realized how incredible this tool really is! Have you ever tried to key footage with motion blur? Not too easy and the results aren't usually very good. You can shoot with a high shutter speed but then you lose all of that natural looking motion blur. This is where RSMB steps in and adds that natural looking footage back into your shot, without blurring the whole frame, just the movement in the video.
Also great for compositing 3D, which I have in the example below.
RSMB has adjustable tracking points for problematic footage
Description: Telcine-style color correction within After Effects, Premiere Pro & Final Cut Pro, giving you full creative control over the color and look of your images.
Why I like it: Color Finesse gives you total control of image, much more than just curves, levels, hue/saturation. You can make adjustments in HSL, RGB, CMY, and YCbCr color spaces, and have individual control over shadows, midtones, and highlights, as well as overall correction.
Has 32 Bit Float support... so why is this important? It allows you to have much more flexibility and allows AE to be used in higher end productions and more cinematic work. You will have more contrast between your blacks and whites. For details on working in 32-bit Float, check out Stu Maschwicz's article on 32-bit float workflow in AE on fxguide.
It ships with After Effects so it won't cost any extra.
Cost: $595 (Buy | No demo at Toolfarm, but you probably already have it if you have AE)
Sample: Just a couple of screenshots...
4 Red Giant Knoll Light Factory
Description: Light effects from John Knoll for photo-realistic sunsets and motion graphics.
Why I like it: Maybe this is just the kid in me, but plug-ins get bonus points for being fun to play with and easy to use and KLF is both. With KLF, you get natural looking lens flares and loads of great presets that are customizable. I really like the fact that you can set up an obscuration layer so that when an object moves in front of the flare, it dims or turns off.
Tons of variety for one type of effect (not a one trick pony)
Use presets or the Lens Editor to build your own flares.
Auto tracking
As with all of the Red Giant products, one license works in multiple host applications on one machine, so you don't need to buy multiple copies.
Description: Create 3D text and primitives without having to learn a 3D program.
Why I like it: I've attempted to learn a true 3D program and give up after about 30 minutes. I have bad depth perception (that's why I used to hit so many things with the car). ProAnimator makes it so easy to create slick looking 3D elements directly in AE and with a short learning curve. I picked up the plug-in quickly without using the manual (that is how I roll).
Nice presets
Track the After Effects camera and lights
Export wireframe versions for that techie, futuristic computer environment look
Description: 3D Particle system that produces various natural effects like smoke, fire and sparks and also organic and techie-style graphical effects that are very useful for motion graphics design.
Why I like it: I love how it looks and all of the presets. I'm a sucker for presets. I don't read manuals so presets help me get going. I just modify them until I get something I like. Particular has loads of fantastic presets, plus you can preview them and what you've created realtime in the Effect Controls window.
Particular is tightly integration with AE's Camera & lights - oh, wait until you see version 2!
Particular has a complex physics engine, allowing you to fully control your particles, again, new improvements in v2.
Inexpensive, especially considering all it can do. Particular is one of those tools you can use on a multitude of jobs and it will never get old.
Description: Damage creates an extensive variety of digital and/or analog defects/errors in your footage.
Why I like it: It's another plug-in that is fun to play with! I've used the plugin for many creative purposes - interference with a hologram popping on, a luma matte for a gradient wipe, and grungy moving backgrounds and grungy text. My favorite part is the little blue button that randomizes the effects. The effects do have a TON of sliders so it's not always clear on what needs to be adjusted to get the effect needed, and that little blue button is just what I need to get started. The plug-in is very fast for previews and renders and is CHEAP at just $99. Also, one license works in multiple hosts on a single computer (AE, FCP, PPRO, Combustion).
Description: Remove an object from your shot quickly without much work.
Why I like it: I showed Motion Key as part of BCC5 at NAB08 and found that this plug-in absolutely blew people away. If you've ever had to rotoscope something out of a clip of video, you know how tedious and un-fun it can be. Motion Key takes all the work out of it by using Optical Flow technology. It's now sold by it self as a single unit and is also included with Boris Continuum Complete 6.
Description: Academy Award winning keyer. It is simple to use and is particularly good at tackling reflections, semi-transparent areas and hair.
Why I like it: I know, two keyers on the list! What gives? You know I recently worked on a book, right? I have used a lot of keying tools in the past 2 years! Keylight is a very powerful keyer and when others can't do the job, Keylight can usually handle it. It is easy to use, fast and has built-in spill suppression. Keylight gives several ways to view the matte/key, and it's included with After Effects, so most of you already own Keylight. Also, Toolfarm also put out some great training for Keylight called Professional Keying with Keylight, that I highly recommend picking up.
Samples: I thought I'd just put the trailer for the Keylight training up. It will give you a good idea about what the plug-in does.
10 Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks
Description: Define the style of your video or film, regardless of on-set conditions, with powerful imaging tools.
Why I like it: This is my favorite plug-in of the lot. It is extremely easy to use, as the interface was designed for artists, not engineers. It comes with a huge library of Looks that are fully customizable and savable. It's lightning fast because of GPU acceleration. It can make video with flat lighting look amazing and it's also great for matching your foreground and background when compositing greenscreen. I use this on pretty much everything, including photos.
Cost: $399 (Buy | Try) Quick Looks now available for $99 (presets only).
Samples: Here's one from our German friend at MyToolfarm.
And here's a promo for a greenscreen contest that I used Looks on the webcam shots to spice them up.
Late Entry: Boris Continuum Complete 6.0 3D Object Filters
Description: 5 new plug-ins in BCC6 that extrude text, paths and eps/Illustrator files.
Why I like it: Easy to use and very fast (hardware accelerated). It works with the native AE camera and lights and everything except the text type window is in the native AE Effect control window. There are loads of options and loads of presets. All bevels can be customized with paths and did I mention the real-time previews? This will certainly make the 2010 top 10 list (but who will I bump?!)
Samples:Here's the finished video shown at the Boris FX Booth at NAB09.
Here's a tutorial I put out a couple of weeks ago.
And here's a tutorial I did for Boris FX. I plan to do a few more tutorials on these fan-diddly-tastic plug-ins.
Honorable Mention: Noise Industries FxFactory Pro
Description: Revolutionary VFX package with over 300 hardware accelerated plug-ins
Why I like it: I really was going for no big packages but just individual plug-ins in this list however, this one is a little different. Why is it different? With FxFactory, you can create your own FxPlug effects for Final Cut Studio without writing any code. Okay, I know this is for FCP and not AE, but, it's still an excellent package of plugins that are VERY fast and have unlimited expandability (you can download more plug-ins at the FxMarket).
Customers who already own some of the Digieffects plug-ins.... you can now get in on the Digieffects MegaSuite Sale! Get the MegaSuite for $199 when you upgrade from any Digieffects plug-in.
The Digieffects MegaSuite (regularly $799) will be available for $399
Wilmington, NC - December 9, 2008 - Digieffects, a developer of popular visual effects software plug-ins, and Toolfarm, the world's leading source of content, community and commerce for professional visual effects and motion graphics plug-ins, today announced that it is holding a 50% off sale for the Digieffects MegaSuite bundle.
The MegaSuite bundle includes all Digieffects plugins - Delirium, Berserk, Aurorix, Damage, Simulate: Camera, Simulate: Illuma and Buena Depth Cue. From December 9 - 11, the MegaSuite will be on sale for $399 (regular price is $799).
And, as part of our Toolfarm 12 Days of Freebies, we'll be giving away some Damage presets. Stay tuned!
The Digieffects MegaSuite (regularly $799) will be available for $399
Wilmington, NC - December 9, 2008 - Digieffects, a developer of popular visual effects software plug-ins, and Toolfarm, the world's leading source of content, community and commerce for professional visual effects and motion graphics plug-ins, today announced that it is holding a 50% off sale for the Digieffects MegaSuite bundle.
The MegaSuite bundle includes all Digieffects plugins - Delirium, Berserk, Aurorix, Damage, Simulate: Camera, Simulate: Illuma and Buena Depth Cue. From December 9 - 11, the MegaSuite will be on sale for $399 (regular price is $799).
"We've done a lot of updating, optimizing and launching of new products since I acquired Digieffects in May of 2007. We're proud of our efforts and this sale represents the most affordable way get all of our products at once and see what we've been up to.", says Robert Sharp, President of Digieffects.
According to Jason Sharp, President of Toolfarm, "We recognize the economy is crap right now. The Digieffects MegaSuite has never been discounted so deeply and if you have any end-of-year budget, this is the time to act."
About Digieffects Digieffects is a developer of popular visual effects plug-ins for Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro and Autodesk Combustion. The company has been in the business since the beginning of the "plug-in revolution" which dates back to 1996. Over the years, Digieffects has had great success with software products like Cinelook and Delirium and is proud to call thousands of film and video producers all around the world its customers and friends.
About Toolfarm Founded in 1999, Toolfarm is the world's leading source of content, community and commerce for professional visual effects and motion graphics plug-ins. In the past ten years we have served hundreds of thousands of professionals from all around the world who make a living working with digital video. We continue to provide objective, timely information for users of Adobe, Apple, Avid, Autodesk and Sony applications and related third-party plug-ins. In addition to competitive prices on software, some of our free resources include the Plug-in Finder, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, articles, press releases, user forums, compatibility charts, software demos and much more.
John Lashley (Reel Show) shows you how to create a nice glow effect around a subject and some ideas for generating interesting, abstract background elements in Combustion using Digieffects Damage and Simulate: Illuma plugins.
Scott Novasic gives Digieffects Damage a fabulous review.
Damage is a must-have for any animator or editor! These are not redundant effects overlapping things done in other packages I own, they are unique and versatile tools for manipulating and yes, damaging imagery unlike any other tool I have come across. Add to that, that these are, for the most part, FASTER than realtime and Im in love. For $99 its a steal. Digieffects, under new ownership, has set the bar high. Im excited to see what else they deliver us in the future.
Also, if you truly derive pleasure from destroying perfect good footage, the cost of this plug-in is much cheaper than hiring a psychiatrist to tell you why you feel that way. Plus, you'll get the same therapeutic value.
Here I am at Denver International waiting for my connection and there's free wifi! I thought this might be a good opportunity to tell you about my experience at NAB 2008. I have about 10 minutes until I board, and I'll have to put up the photos later. Enjoy.
Sunday, April 13 - Arriving in Las Vegas
Alicia VanHeulen (fellow Toolfarmer) and I got into Vegas around 6pm and caught a taxi in the organized chaos outside the airport. I hate cabs. Hate em. I always get a weird cab driver who wants to come to my house or has some strange hobby he wants to tell me all about. This time, we got to spend 25 minutes hearing about how to prepare Lake Superior Whitefish.
We checked in at the Sahara, which was chosen souly on the fact that you don't have to walk through a casino to get to the monorail. We had plans to go to the FMC party on Sunday evening with John Kerr from Red Giant. It was $85 to get into the rooftop party at Pure at Caesar's Palace, however, RG was a sponsor, so we told them we were guests of John Kerr and they let us in with no problem. We had to walk through about a mile of corridors and stairways to get up to the roof where they had a small buffet of carved beef, shrimp on skewers and spring rolls, which were completely gone. We did have some refreshingly tasty drinks of vodka, cranberry, sprite, and grapefruit juice. There was a woman whose body was being painted on the patio, some people carrying around gobs of hula hoops, as well a big giveaway, that we didn't enter, unfortunately. We met some really cool people from Hawaii (Hi Shanti). We did finally meet up with John Kerr, Sean Safreed and Jeremy Hill from Red Giant, as well as our good friend Seth Hancock from ICVA and his lovely wife Lisa.
After the party, we headed to Mesa, Bobby Flay's restaurant, with the Red Giant guys and had a nice dinner. By the time we left, it was 3:00am our time, so we were tired, to say the least.
Monday, April 14 - Day one of the convention
7:45am - We took the monorail to the convention center. This was our first day on the convention center floor, and Alicia's first NAB ever. I took her to the doorway and pointed her to the Digieffects booth where she was starting her day, but I couldn't get in to the show floor due to the fact that I never received my badge! I had a printout receipt that I had registered in December. It took a while at registration but somehow they lost my registration. After 45 minutes, I was badged.
I headed over to Red Giant, where I had a presentation on Magic Bullet Looks at 10am. Looks is very easy to demo and lots of fun to use, and I have to say, the presentation went pretty well. I've just learned to get through the spiel within 10 minutes because people were standing and I wasn't giving a tutorial, but an overview. The Looks Theatre sold it for a lot of people. It was really great seeing everyone at the RG booth and meeting the new RG employees. Thanks for the nuts and popcorn, Beth! Delicious.
At 1:00pm each day I demoed Boris Continuum Complete and Boris Final Effects Complete at the Boris FX booth. This booth was on the middle aisle of the show floor in a highly trafficked area. Boris FX had a theatre set up with about 25 seats. It was the Motion Key plug-in for BCC that really seemed to get a lot of attention. I'll be putting together a tutorial for Motion Key in the next few weeks, because it really is an amazingly cool plug-in. It garnered lots of ooh's and aah's as a silver car driving across a busy street scene is removed from the shot with ease. I showed off the BCC UpRez plug-in, which converts SD to HD and uses a nifty feature called Magic Sharpen. I demoed the BCC Pan & Zoom which makes the Ken Burns style effects. I showed a few other BCC plug-ins and Final Effects Complete (FEC). Did you know all FEC plug-ins contain motion trackers and a feature called Pixel Chooser, which is a built-in masking tool? If you would've known that during the presentation, you could have won a Boris hat or training Class on Demand Boris Continuum Complete Training DVD.
Digieffects and Red Giant's booths were directly behind each other in the Plug-in Pavillion, which made things very nice for us. Digieffects was demoing the new Damage, as well as the Simulate and Natural Forces plug-ins for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Combusion and Boris Red, which will be out in 4-6 weeks. We hadn't seen the new plug-ins at all yet, so it was a big difficult to answer questions. We ended up setting up little comps with examples, but then found the best way to demo was by using the little blue button. What is this little blue button? It's the randomizer. Shin Kurokawa, the engineer at Digieffects explained that he put the button in for testing purposes so he could see the range of values for each parameter without having to change all of the sliders each time, and soon realized that it's brilliant for getting ideas and seeing what variety of looks that the plug-in can produce. Tim Kolb, David Vieria and Robert Sharp were also at the booth with us all week. Robert... smart move on the couch rental. You can't go wrong with a big comfy couch, especially after you've been on the show floor all day.
Monday night was the IMUG Media Motion Ball 2008 at the Sahara Hotel, which I've attended the last 4 years. The crowd is generally IMUG and AE-List people. Brian Maffitt of Total Training was the speaker and once again and he was hilarious! Brian is a collector of crazy movie memorabilia and marketing gimmicks from William Castle fims. The presentation was about brilliant marketing campaigns for these movies. Macabre with the tagline 'So Terrifying We Insure You For $1000 against Death By Fright! (Not valid for persons with heart or nervous conditions)'. He showed us an original Tingler (filmed in "Percepto"). The best film of all, The House on Haunted Hill, filmed in "Emergo", in which an inflatable skeleton would pop out over the scene. Well, Brian had one of these inflatable skeletons with him at the dinner! We laughed, we cried, it was better than The Tingler.
Dinner at the Media Motion Ball was delicious as always. It was antipasto, salad and several Italian dishes. The highlight was definitely the dessert. Steve Kahn had arranged a surprise for everyone and that was Bananas (and strawberries) Foster over ice cream. Fabulous. I think overall I gained 5 pounds in Las Vegas, but I probably walked it off.
Alicia and I dined with Mark Spencer, author of Apple Pro Training Series: Motion 3, which I highly recommend. Also at the table was Niclas Bahn of Noise Industries on crutches, Niclas' girlfriend, Peter Wiggins and a few others from Noise Industries. Straight across from me was the guy who looks like Andy Samberg from SNL (who incedently ended up winning a Boris Training DVD during my presentation).
It was great to see everyone again at the MMB - it's kind of like a reunion every year. I get to meet up with Keith and Alan, the Plugged-in Podcast guys, Jim Kanter, who is one of our forum experts, a lot of the plug-in developers and those wild and crazy guys from Anchorage. They had gobs of giveaways, including several donated by Toolfarm. I didn't win anything, but I got to go on stage and draw a few names. The first name I drew was Lisa Hancock, who took home Maxon Cinema 4D. Toolfarm did give away lots of prizes, including several bundles of Professional Video Templates, Harry Frank's Expressions Training and his Trapcode Form Training, and two copies of Digieffects Damage.
We cabbed over to the party with Harry Frank and left the MMB early to go to Peder Norrby's party (Peder Norrby is the man behind Trapcode). Sadly, Ko Maruyama told us that not long after we left the MMB, Harry Frank's name was drawn for the big prize of the night, but since he left, he couldn't claim it. Bummer.
Peder threw yet another swanky party! The suite was very modern and silver and on one of the top floors of the hotel. From the main room you could see in the bathroom through a window and there was even a stripper pole in the shower! Crazy stuff. I have a feeling Paris Hilton had stayed in that very room last weekend. There were lots of people from the plug-in industry in attendance and a DJ spinning some great house music. Peder has a new product coming out called Trapcode Horizon, which helps AE users work in 3D space. He presented it at the Red Giant booth, but unfortunately, I missed his presentations. He wasn't showing anything at the party, just socializing. Horizon will be out near the end of summer, so stay tuned.
Tuesday, April 15
The second day on the show floor was busier than the first. I did another presentation for both Red Giant and Boris FX and each went smoother the second time around. Alicia and I also worked at the Digieffects booth showing the new plug-ins. I caught a couple of great presentations at the Adobe Booth - one about After Effects, presented by Steve Holmes, and one about working with video in Photoshop, presented by Richard Harrington. I use these programs day in and day out and they both managed to show me new things about the software. I took notes during both presentations and both really got the wheels in my head spinning.
I walked around and got a nice demo of GridIron Flow from Jim Geduldick. The GridIron booth was freakin' huge. Andrew Kramer, Aharon Rabinowitz and Mark Coleran were also hanging around the booth, demoing the GridIron goods. They were also giving away cool GridIron yo-yo's. You know the first yo-yo's were used as weapons? I learned that one from a tv commercial.
Pete from RE:Vision Effects gave us a nice demo on DE:Noise and Shade/Shape, and we also spent a some time with Jim Tierney of Digital Anarchy, as he walked us through ToonIt and some of their other offerings.
I also sat in on an awesome presentation by Harry Frank at the Red Giant booth. He showed off some cool projects that he did using Trapcode Form and Trapcode Particular. He broke down his technique into little bit-sized pieces. It was really amazing work. Harry is just so darn talented.
Colin and Jason Sharp from Toolfarm flew in Tuesday and the Toolfarm crew went to a fabulous dinner at B&B, Mario Batali's place. I tried the most amazing octopus appetizer, and had sweet potato ravioli with sage butter, as well as squab with beet risotto. Did I mentioned I think I gained weight? :-) Afterward we met up with some friends from Boris FX/Channel Wolves and walked a bit around the Venetian.
Wednesday, April 16
Another day on the show floor and boy, are my dogs tired! More presentations for Red Giant, Digieffects and Boris FX. By this time, I'm pretty good with the presentations. Also, this is Alicia's birthday. Happy Birthday! What did Alicia do on her birthday? Presented Magic Bullet Frames at Red Giant's booth. Now how many people get to do that on their birthday!? Haha. I also met Bert Kish at the RG booth. Bert was the winner of the MyToolfarm Red Giant NAB contest. He presented his winning video and also showed what went into the project.
On Wednesday night I ended up going out with Boris and his crew. We ate at an Italian place in the Venetian. I ate some really interesting pear ravioli with a bechemel sauce and some asparagus. Yummo. I just love the guys from Boris. They are all such nice guys. The food was fantastic as well.
Thursday, April 17
It's the last day of the show, so we got up nice and early and met Kevin Bourke who handles PR for the likes of Automatic Duck and Imagineer Systems for breakfast at the EGO Cafe, right outside the convention center. He told me about Imagineer mogul so as soon as I got into the show I went in to check it out. It was a private screening room and the presentation was given by CE and Alan Jaenicke of Imagineer. I am not entirely sure what information they'd like to be shared about this product, but I can tell you it's a subscription based product that includes software and hardware and is something that is in dire need. This product is going to be massive. Huge.
I also stopped by to see the GenArts booth and talked with Anish and Laurie. Lastly, we sat in on a private demo of Nuke at The Foundry's booth. It's awesome. I want it. We did get some free training DVDs on Nuke and we can download the demo. Too bad I am not doing any work that requires such a splendid piece of software. I didn't have much time to see anything else because we had to get to the airport.
What I learned at NAB 2008
I've learned a few tricks over the past few years at NAB that I think are worth sharing.
Avoid cabs if at all possible, unless you're looking for Lake Superior whitefish recipes and restaurant recommendations for Beverly Hills. Trust me. So, you ask, if you're avoiding cabs, how do you get around? There is a shuttle that goes between the convention center and the aiport that is free. That will save you $25 right there.
There is also a monorail. We bought monorail passes before the show and had them mailed to us. It was cheaper to buy 3 single day passes than it was to buy a three day pass. Weird. Now here's a great from Alicia. If you have single day passes, they are good for 24 hours. To maximize your usage, get to the station a few minutes earlier each day. If you use your card for the first time at 8:26am on Monday, you can use it at 8:23am the next day. You can start your next single day pass on the way back.
When registering for your NAB pass, it doesn't hurt to register twice! NAB will hate me for saying so, but I would have saved myself 45 minutes at registration on Monday morning if I would have registered again when I didn't receive my badge by mail.
Wear comfortable shoes and bring bandaids. Sunglasses are also mandatory, as well as a little bottle of vitamin E to rub on chapped hands and lips. The desert is incredibly dry and flying doesn't help matters.
Keep a pen with you to make notes on the back of people's business cards. This will help you keep them straight when you get back.
Free wifi is a bit hard to come by in Las Vegas. If they can make money off of something in Vegas, they will. One place you can get free wifi, or even check your email at one of their computers, is the Sprint Center at the monorail station at the convention center. Las Vegas' McCarran Airport (and Denver Airport which we flew through) also has free wifi. I love free wifi, but I'm Dutch, so I like anything free. :-)
Time to recover. A massage sounds really good right now.
Digieffects Damage was released last week and there has been quite a lot of buzz about it! It is the first new product from Digieffects in years, and since Robert Sharp took over the company last year.
Damage is a collection of four effects plug-ins designed for post production professionals who want to create an extensive variety of digital and/or analog defects/errors in your footage.
Damage runs in Adobe After Effects 7 - CS3, Final Cut Pro FCP 5.1 and higher, Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0+, and Autodesk Combustion 4.
Collection of four effects for "sabotaging your creativity"
Wilmington, NC - March 19, 2008 - Digieffects, a developer of popular software plug-ins for Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Autodesk Combustion today announced that it shipped Damage, a new set of plugins for video and film post production.
Digieffects Damage is a collection of four effects plugins designed for post production professionals who want to create an extensive variety of digital and/or analog defects/errors in your footage.
"We designed the Damage package to be the most comprehensive set of tools for creating images that look affected by digital or analog artifacts available." said Digieffects President, Robert Sharp. According to Sharp, Damage is a unique product in the marketplace. No other plugin collection is dedicated to 'damaging' a video project". Damage includes the following effects:
Blockade: Video acquired by low fidelity devices like cellular phones and PDAs is becoming more commonplace. Blockade makes your clip look like it is highly compressed and being transmitted through a very bandwidth-limited pipe. Essential for simulating internet based micro cam display or personal video communication.
Artifact: Developed to create digital defects, Artifact simulates lost DCT blocks and frame dropping, most often seen when a digital video file suffers from corruption or a satellite feed is hampered by weather. Make sure you warn clients and your house engineer that it's only an effect...
Interference: If it's television you want, traditionally you'll need some sort of interlaced field scanning. Interference creates the look of interlaced video fields, even on progressive footage or still images, adding noise, colorization and offset separately for each field.
Skew: The never-ending quest to aim the rabbit ears so that the television show looks as good once you're in your chair as it did when your hands were attached to the antenna is fast fading into the lore of old... That valuable (if under-appreciated) look is preserved in Skew. Uniquely analog/broadcast image badness like noise, image shearing, ghosts... it's all there.
Damage has a retail price of $99 and is available immediately from Digieffects and its resellers.
About Digieffects Digieffects is a developer of popular software plug-ins for Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro and Autodesk Combustion. The company has been in the business since the beginning of the "plug-in revolution" which dates back to 1996. Over the years, Digieffects has had great success with software products like Cinelook and Delirium and is proud to call thousands of film and video producers all around the world its customers and friends.
John Lashley (Reel Show) shows you how to create a nice glow effect around a subject and some ideas for generating interesting, abstract background elements in Combustion using Digieffects Damage and Simulate: Illuma plugins.
, which I highly recommend. Also at the table was Niclas Bahn of Noise Industries on crutches, Niclas' girlfriend, Peter Wiggins and a few others from 