Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few weeks, you are probably aware of the following two news items. So this update is for those rock-dwellers. Apologies to everyone else, carry on with your tweeting and such.

First, Canon announced a BETA availability date for their EOS Log & Transfer plugin for Final Cut Pro. Well, not a specific date, but sometime in March. This software product will be made freely available for DSLR video users and enables simple and straightforward acquisition of footage from CF cards via Log and Transfer, just like you would with P2, XDCAM, Red, etc. It’s a fantastic standardized workflow for FCP users, and kudos to Canon for making this available free of charge. If you were thinking that this software is eerily close in featureset to the Glue Tools product we demo’d at Cine Gear, well you’d be correct. That’s because it is. Missed that Glue Tools demo? No worries, I’ve embedded the video at the bottom of this post.

The second bit of news came in the past week, first in the form of that Canon 5D MKII firmware rumor we posted, followed by official news from Canon that the new MKII 2.0.3 firmware would be available worldwide March 17, 2010. New features confirmed in this firmware update include:

* 1080p 24, 25 and 29.97fps recording options. (24p is actually 23.976fps, and 25fps requires the camera first be set to PAL mode).
* 640×480 30 (29.97) and 25fps (25fps requires camera first be set to PAL mode).
* Video histogram display (Canon notes on this only show brightness histogram, but an earlier rumor presentation slide indicated RGB hist as well).
* Manual audio level control (with meters!).
* Audio sample rate changed from 44.1KHz to 48KHz.
* Aperture (Av) and Shutter Priority (Tv) in Video Mode.

This is an incredibly useful update for filmmakers, fixes several workarounds we’ve had to deal with, and GIVES US PROPER EXPOSURE TOOLS! The video histogram should prove to be incredibly useful. There are some limitations of course. For instance, the histogram cannot be viewed while recording, only before hitting record. If you’d like to see the framerate menu and audio meters in action, take a look at this behind-the-scenes Canon promo video And you can see these menus and other details in Canon’s posted notes on this firmware update.

Here is the Glue Tools Log & Transfer plugin demo from Cine Gear 2009:

Jem Schofield over at The C47 has posted a cool little impromtu handheld video stabilization test. He used Redrock Micro’s theEvent DSLR handheld rig to shoot some walking footage, and then compares FCP’s Smoothcam filter with the new Lock & Load stabilization filter from Coremelt. Watch the video below to see the results.

Everyone’s favorite After Effects resource Video Copilot has announced a new FREE plugin for AE users called Sure Target 2. It will be released for After Effects 7, CS3, and CS4.

Announced features include; Auto-Camera Rigging, Auto-Populate, Ease Target Modes, Auto-Focus, Inertia Inheritance, Camera Roll, Dolly Control, Create a Baked Camera, Condition Protection, and Refresh Expressions. Check the blog post on this for full feature descriptions and details.

Imagineer Systems has posted a case study on their website that shows the power of their tracking technology. Nick Guth, the VFX artist tasked with post-production on a student-filmmaker produced music video had to track and fix 165 shots in 7 days.

It’s a classic student filmmaker tale; “The entire music video was shot on RED… Additionally, the director was outputting a 2K film print so we stuck to working at 2k.” Of course. To complicate matters, no VFX supervisor on set meant that many issues fell through the cracks. “In one shot, we’d only see a single tracking marker, and in another shot, we had two completely different green screens cobbled together with the seams showing.” The main character in the music video wears a gas mask with a front section that was to be replaced with a composited screen. “The director thought a single 3×5 orange index card would be enough for tracking the mouth, so he literally slapped the card onto the front of the mask as he shot the entire film! Some shots were close up, some wide - and all of which required a unique track for every shot.”

The bottom line is that Nick was given a nearly impossible task, and couldn’t have pulled it off on that accelerated timeline without a powerful tracking tool like mocha. He goes on of course, for the full cautionary tale of classic poor planning and execution on set, check out the article. And watch a few before and after shots below, as well as the finished music video.

Area 51 - Music Video Basic Breakdown from Nick Guth on Vimeo.

VFX and color guru Stu Maschwitz has created an amazing tutorial on how to use the plugins Magic Bullet Looks and Colorista to effectively emulate in your own work the distinctive color palette shared by many of the blockbuster films you’ll see this summer. Stu also uses Adobe Kuler (which we love) to show some of the color theory behind film grading choices. We are pleased to bring you that tutorial here at FreshDV. Watch below, and click the fullscreen button to see large.

Noise Industries is a major manufacturer of FX plugins for both compositing and non-linear editing software. They are perhaps best know for their FX Factory software, a plugin management software that gives the user a central application for adding and controling FX plugins. FX Factory is available as a free download, and additional plugin packages for FX Factory may be purchased separately. These plugins range from title generators such as MoType which I reviewed earlier this year, to pattern generators, photo montage tools and many more. Recently they announced their new Volumetrix 2.0 and HUD plugins. Here is a quick look at what these new products offer.

This plugin offers the psuedo-volumetric lighting look, ever prevalent in film trailers. There are both straight filters which can be applied to text or footage, and transitions. All parameters are fully keyframeable and even though the presets are a little cheese-ball with a little tweaking you can create some great looks. Personally I love volumetric lighting so this is a great plugin for me. Volumetrix 2 is pretty configurable, in fact you can do light rays, glows, glints and distorts. One element missing for me was the ability to map gradients to light as opposed to simple colors. This Plugin is also well suited for building light wipe transitions and such. This was a fun one to play with and really felt at home in my After Effects tool kit. Existing volumetrix users can upgrade to 2.0 for free. For new users the license is $49.

Looks like Red Giant just tapped Stu Maschwitz as a consultant to help direct the Magic Bullet product line. It’s pretty clear to me that Stu has a good pulse on the needs of indies and the larger production community, so I’m excited to see him getting involved in a product line that is so useful for the independent video producer. Congrats Stu! Now put down that champagne glass and direct us up some more killer software!

 Glue Tools 5D MKII, DPX, and Phantom plugins [7:21m]: Download

At the Glue Tools Cine Gear 2009 booth, Bob Monahan showed us a preview of the forthcoming Log and Transfer plugin for Final Cut Pro that allows simple ingest and seamless transcoding of Canon 5D MKII footage. He also showed off their Phantom camera plugin that enables realtime playback of RAW files from the Phantom high-speed camera in any Quicktime aware application. Finally, he demonstrated their DPX import tool that simplifies importing and using DPX files in FCP. Very cool stuff.

Watch the attached video below and subscribe to our podcast feed. You can also conveniently watch our Cine Gear video coverage all in one playlist here.

Got an e-mail from CrumplePop about a price increase for their CrumplePop plugin package, a collection of Master Templates for FCP and Motion that offers a hand-drawn text flavor. They are raising the price from $49 to $69, but are offering a $20 off coupon for the next 24 hours. Well, it was 24 hours, but I believe that the email arrived in my inbox yesterday. So by my estimates, you’ve got a few more hours today to get it at the $49 price tag. Coupon code is CRUMP3406, just add the package to your cart here and apply the discount code prior to checkout.

CrumplePop has a few free plugins on their site for Final Cut Pro users. The first is a text effect/lower-third plugin that automagically creates text overlays that look like the kind used at Vimeo. The second free plugin is a polaroid picture effect for photos. You can watch example videos and snag a copy of both plugins here. While you are there, check out their $49 hand-drawn text effects package.

Studio Daily has posted an excellent video tutorial by Ross Shain that shows how to use mocha for FCP to track a blank business card held by talent and replace it with a logo. He even shows how to garbage matte around the talent’s fingers on the card, and quickly apply tracking data to that filter in FCP to make the logo replacement even more convincing. If you aren’t sure what mocha for FCP can do, or would like to get up and running quickly with the $199 software package, this video is a great start. Watch below.

 Red Giant NAB 2009 Video [11:31m]: Download

Red Giant Software showed their new Particular 2 and ToonIt 2 After Effects software at NAB 2009, here’s a demonstration of the featureset offered by both plugin packages. Watch the attached video below, subscribe to our podcast feed, or watch all of our current NAB 2009 videos in one playlist here.

Yanobox Motype Review
by Kendal Miller
www.yanobox.com
$99 USD

Yanobox Motype software is designed to be a motion titling application that piggybacks on the FX Factory framework within Final Cut Pro, Motion, After Effects, or Final Cut Express. The first step in the process is to download and install the FX Factory framework on your system. After the installation of FX Factory is complete, you may then install Motype through FX Factory.

Motype offers twenty-six different presets to get you started on the right foot. With several quick clicks you can access Motype through your host application and select a preset and voila! Your custom text is fit into the preset and instantly animated. Beyond the custom presets Motype offers several parameters for further customizing your motion graphics; 3D Camera movement, Motion Mixer, Per Letter Particles, Cyclorama, and Random Characters as well as a full range of color, font, and timing parameters ensure you can tweak to your hearts content. All parameters are keyframeable allowing even further animation. After Effects gurus with experience will probably find the parameters to be somewhat limiting. However in the event you need just a quick and dirty title Motype will get you there quickly. My personal opinion is that Motype offers several nice graphics packages although a few of them feel rather basic and could be easily replicated in After Effects, or Motion. There are a number of presets that with some minor tweaking can look very good. It terms of usability the process for customization is very easy.

I do have a few minor complaints about the software in general. My first titles in FCP rendered out all the text as white blocks when exported through compressor. I re-exported as a QuickTime file from FCP and they all rendered correctly. This problem only occurred one time and subsequent efforts to render through compressor worked flawlessly so I’ll chalk the initial error  up to the software gremlins. Secondly the user interface only has a single field for text input which can make it rather difficult to properly layout multi-line text elements. This is a pretty big limitation in my opinion and near impossible to work around, for multi-line text.

While Motype offers a pretty strong suite of tools, it appears to be aimed mostly at those with weaker motion graphics backgrounds. At a price tag of $99, power users will probably prefer to spend that money on other plugins more suited towards their skillset. However, those looking to quickly and easily create motion titles that can be customized with very little effort will find the money well spent. You can find more information and download a trial version of Motype at www.yanobox.com.

 CoreMelt NAB 2009 Video [4:12m]: Download

CoreMelt recently released their CoreMelt Complete V2 plugin package for editors, and they were showing it off at NAB. They also are offering their ImageFlow package for quick and painless photo (and now video) montage creation. Watch the attached video below, subscribe to our podcast feed, or watch all of our current NAB 2009 videos in one playlist here.

Imagineer Systems will be launching mocha planar tracking for Final Cut Pro users at NAB this year. Very cool. As an FCP user, I’m looking forward to seeing this one in action.