I’ve been playing with FxFactory Pro from Noise Industries for the last 10 days and I’ve hardly scratched the surface of what you can do with this amazing visual effects tool.
Let’s start at the beginning. FxFactory Pro is the big brother of FxFactory. FxFactory is a free software package that lets you install and try hundreds of visual effects. Some effects are absolutely free. Others are available in trial mode and may be purchased as needed. FxFactory powers hundreds of visual effects for Final Cut Pro, Motion and Adobe After Effects. (I reviewed Callouts for FxFactory here.)
- FxFactory Pro includes 176 filters, generators and transitions for Final Cut Pro, Motion, Final Cut Express and Adobe After Effects. 145 of these effects are also available in Final Cut Pro X.
- FxFactory Pro plug-ins ship with many built-in presets, a time-saving feature to try new looks with minimal effort. Save your own presets to disc and recreate the same look later. Presets created in one host can be reused in all other supported hosts.
- FxFactory Pro is the first visual effects package that lets you customize and create your own plug-ins for Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Express and Adobe After Effects without writing a single line of code.
- A single license to FxFactory Pro unlocks its powerful plug-ins in all supported hosts: Final Cut Pro, Motion, Final Cut Express and Adobe After Effects.
- FxFactory Pro effects are accelerated using the graphics card, plus, its high-precision rendering engine supports more than 8 bits per component, guaranteeing the highest quality when effects are applied to digital media with film-like resolution and color fidelity.
What types of visual effects are included with FxFactory Pro? There are tons of different blur effects, Color Correction, Distortion effects, Generators, Glows, Halftones, Sharpens, Stylize, Tilings, more Transitions then should be allowed, and even upscaling in video. Plus, keep in mind, you can alter and change any of these effects and save them as new effects in just minutes. This is truly one powerful application.
Trying to explain what each effect is or does is easily accomplished from the Noise Industries web site. For example, clicking on the “Blur Edges” effect will tell you this about the filter…
“A gaussian blur filter applied only to the edges detected in the original image.
Effect Parameters
Frame Margin
The margin available around the frame. It is useful to increase this value when the effect renders pixels outside the area of the input frame. This parameter is only available in Motion and After Effects, since variable-sized output frames are not supported by Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express.
Presets
Presets contain a snapshot of the plug-in parameters. The Presets control lets you choose among one of the presets built into the plug-in, save current parameter values to a preset file, or load an existing preset file from disk.
A preset file saved to disk via the “Save As” button can be loaded from another instance of the same plug-in by clicking the “Open” button. Presets generated in one host can also be loaded from the same plug-in when used in a different host.
Edge Intensity
Controls the strength of the edge detection algorithm.
Radius
The radius of the gaussian blur.
Repeat Edges
Controls whether pixels that are accessed outside the edges of the frame have the value of the closest edge rather than black. This option prevents transparent black pixels from bleeding into the picture when the effect is applied. This option may negatively affect rendering times on older hardware configurations.”
Considering there are 14 different blur filters alone, you understand the depth and power of FxFactory Pro. There are YouTube tutorials available for using and applying these effects to make certain you understand how to reach their true potential. They are basically located and applied just like the standard FCP and Motion filters. Simple, I was playing with different effects in minutes after installation.
The cost of FxFactory Pro is $399.00. You can find out more about this amazing video tool and other products from Noise Industries at their Web site, http://www.noiseindustries.com . FxFactory Pro is very powerful while maintaining a simple UI, a solid winning formula for any application.
Tags: adobe after effects, fcpx, final cut pro, FxFactory
