MacDirectory Magazine

Spring-Summer 2010

MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.

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REVIEW RED GIANT PLUG-INS >A BIG THUMBS-UP WORDS BY TREY YANCY Instant HD Advanced Red Giant Software has earned a reputation for creating some of the most powerful and exciting motion graphics and video plug-ins around. A visit to their Web site at is like a trip to Disney with a stopover at the Academy Awards. We have selected three plug-ins that are representative of the range of the Red Giant catalogue: the sophisticated and practical Magic Bullet Instant HD Advanced ($399), the highly tweakable collection of animatible type, shape, and effects filters, Text Anarchy ($199), and the simple yet useful Radium Glow filter (absolutely free). All three are compatible with Adobe AfterEffects, while Text Anarchy and Radium Glow also support Final Cut 6 and Motion 3. In addition, Radium Glow is also compatible with Premiere Pro and Avid. Instant HD Advanced Unlike scaling, the process of upconverting video involves resolution enhancement, which requires specialized tools, particularly when a lot of detail or motion is involved. Magic Bullet Instant HD Advanced is the hands-down answer to such challenges. The bundle includes two versions: a basic tool that is limited to progressive video and a popup list of conversions, and the full-featured HD Advanced. Its upscaling algorithm can work either on a frame-by-frame basis or by comparing individual pixels with those in neighboring frames. It also features motion analysis and compensation, de-interlacing, de- noising, and advanced pan-and-scan. The interface is very straightforward, with input and output sections along with options for removing artifacts, adding grain and more. It is very simple to use: Drag the imported footage onto the new comp icon, specify your settings, and send the comp to the render queue. Thanks to the filter’s multi-core Intel support, this is a speedy process, with a conversion rate of just over a second a frame on the fastest machines. In addition, it comes with support for five additional render nodes at no extra charge. Text Anarchy Text Anarchy is a collection of 15 plug-ins and filters for creating, manipulating, and animating type, shapes, grid-based articulations, and gradient paths, and it includes an assortment of tiling and adjustment filters for manipulating bitmapped content. While it is adept at creating Matrix-style raining type or streaming highly-nuanced blocks of text for high-tech HUD shots, it can also be used for creating animated textures, moving patterns (such as the classic L.A. shot of distant urban traffic on a grid), effects resembling grid-based particles, and more. In addition to its more straightforward applications, Text Anarchy is also a great for creating source footage for other filters and is a great tool for creating animated backgrounds. Radium Glow As might be surmised, Radium Glow adds a glimmer to your footage and text. It provides intelligent selection tools, built-in masking, a shape library for stylized highlights, and it can use custom images 58 MacDirectory

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