Final Cut Pro X Film Grain Plugins

Here's a short list of film grain plugins for FCPX. Some are renderable plugins while others are video files that you overlay your base video layer. If I've missed any please comment on this post.

Final Cut Pro X Film Grain Plugins

	PRO8MM by Pixel Film Studios Create the hip or edgy film that you always wanted to with PRO8MM by Pixel Film Studios. This collection of 25 professionally made grunge effects for Final Cut Pro X allows you to add moving textures and color burns to your film to give it that aggressive look. $34.95
	Cinema Film Grain by FCPeffects Make your digital film complete with some real, high-quality 35mm film grain. Quickly & easily add real 35mm film grain to your next film! $39
	cineLook for HDSLR’s with GORILLA GRAIN by Color Grading Central Instantly add a filmic look to your HDSLR! And NOW featuring GORILLA GRAIN film grain, film grain from real 35mm film scans! A purpose-built plugin for HDSLR’s that imitates the characteristics and look of film called cineLook™. $99
	Rgrain Realistic Film Grain Loops by Rgrain Make Your digital footage look organic and analog with realistic film grain plates from Rgrain. Choose from subtle 35mm to gritty 16mm and nostalgic 8mm film grain looks. $30-90
	FCPX 35MM PRO PACK PLUGIN by Gorilla Grain Instantly add cinematic 35mm grain to your footage! Featuring REAL 35mm film grain! The FCPX Gorilla Grain 35mm 1080p Pro Pack features 9 different REAL 35mm film grains to achieve that precise 35mm film look that you are going for! $69
	Grain35 by CrumplePop Grain35 is real 35mm and 16mm film grain that you can easily add to your own footage. Just drag and drop Grain35 onto your clips to add the beautiful texture of real photochemically processed film. $199

ThinkEastern 2012

Here's an image piece I created for EWU's Res Life. It was shot in a similar style to the 50 People One Question videos.

New Residence Hall

Here's a video I created for EWU's Residential Life. It promotes a new residence hall under construction on campus.

Canon 5D MKII CineStyle Test

Shot on a Canon 5D mkII using the Technicolor CineStyle picture style. I used the log and transfer function in Final Cut Pro 6 to import the footage to Apple ProRes 422 (HQ). After dropping the clips to the timeline I exported the timeline to Apple's Color.

In Color I changed the LUT (look up table) to the CineStyle S Curve I downloaded from Technicolor which dramatically added contrast and chroma. I then tweaked the primary grade for a more vibrant look.

Final Cut Pro 6 and Compressor Problems Resolved!

I recently received a new Mac Tower here at work. It replaced an older Mac G5 Power PC that was definitely showing its age. As with all computers you develop preferences on applications as you work. These preferences allow you to work more efficiently by recording your preferred method of getting things done. In my case they turned out to be a huge headache.

When I got my new Mac I loaded Final Cut Studio 2 and copied over all of the preferences for the applications. The first problem occurred when I tried to render a FCP sequence using Compressor. Due to the imported preference files, Compressor wouldn't recognize the new computer as a location to render to. That is very bad.

The way I finally got both FCP and Compressor to work harmoniously together was to de-install both applications entirely- every single preference and accompanying file. I used AppCleaner from Free Mac Soft to easily delete all the corrupt junk. I then reloaded FCP and Compressor and then did a software update to bring them up to the current version.

The Trouble with (Apple's) Color

I am a big fan of Apple's Final Cut Pro video editing application. I have used FCP since its first version that I bought installed on a close-out G4 that I bought in 1998. Since then I have bought two other updated versions and a third for work. Since version 5 FCP has come bundled into a "Production Suite". The suite includes FCP, Compressor, Soundtrack, Live Type and Motion.

With FCP version 6 there came a new potentially ground-breaking application bundled with the suite- Color. It is a stand alone color corrector that is touted to rival expensive Black Magic's Da Vinci. This application could possibly revolutionize the way film and high-end video were produced and color corrected.

Problem is... it isn't all that good. Color's UI is still unfamiliar to me after 2 years. It bears no resemblance to other applications with the FCP suite. Navagating it is more like using Shake than FCP. The cool things that Apple has done with other apps within the suite have no relevance to Color.

One thing that really kills me is the lack of an eye dropper color picker to select a point of color for white balance. FCP has one in its Color Corrector filter... why did they not think it was important for Color? Another gripe is the lack of sliders anywhere. Motion, Soundtrack, FCP all make use of sliders. Color uses a scrollable positive numeral that is accurate to six positions after the decimal point. This is probably a hold over from the professional color-grading application that it originated from.

Overall I like the concept of a stand-alone application to tweek/finesse color other than the built in Color Corrector of FCP but Color falls short. I hope in the latest version it is rebuilt to be better than the original.

Moving Keyframes in Motion

I just happened upon a strange quirk of Apple Motion 3.0.2. Maybe it's existed all along in previous versions but I just found it. When you keyframe a behavior, in my case keyframe the speed of a Motion Path, and move the behavior on the timeline the keyframes don't move. They stay rigid to the time of their creation. This causes problems when you want to move a layer with a behavior to a different spot on the timeline because all that beautiful motion you just created has to be redone.

But, I found a work-around!!! Simply slide the behavior to the new time you want in the timeline. Place the play-head on the first frame of the moved behavior and then select the clip the the behavior is attached to. Simply press the letter "i" to set a new In-point. The clip should start at the same point as the behavior. Now go to the end frame of the behavior, be sure to left arrow key back on frame select the clip again and press the letter "o". This sets the Out-point of the clip to the same as the behavior.