Product
Spotlight:
Announcing Video Essentials II
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| Tricks of the trade that elevate your production values. |
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When we introduced our original
Video Essentials package
last fall, we were astounded (and thrilled) by the response. People loved the utility, ease of use, and even creativity of
this plugin collection.
Then we began to receive requests and suggestions like
never before: "Could you give me something to remove
noise?" "I wish there was an easy way to create a faux
depth of field look." "Please - I need a good Vignette!"
"Can you remove camera distortion?" "I'd like a fish eye
look!" to quote a few.
So, after a long and careful development process, (creating plugins, trying them out, further crafting or rewriting them, throwing out half that weren't good enough, getting more feedback, further crafting the features and controls, finally pulling them together and putting on the final polish) we're
very pleased to announce the release of
NewBlue Video Essentials II. Take a look at what's included:
Chroma Key, which mixes two shots together by converting a selected color in the source shot into transparency. |
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Color EQ, which adjusts the color characteristics of a selected color range in the scene.
Color Swap, which replaces a selected color range in the scene with a different color. |
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| Lens Correction, which both corrects camera distortion to improve image quality and introduces distortion for an aesthetic effect. |
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| Letterbox, which translates film shot in a different aspect ratio by stretching the source material back to its original shape and filling in the borders appropriately. |
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Noise Reducer, which removes noise in the image, particularly useful with old analog video or scenes shot in low light.
Picture-In-Picture, which provides a very thorough picture in picture effect that includes full 3D geometry, border, shadow, and reflection features. |
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Rack Focus, which creates an artificial focus blur that mimics camera depth of field.
Shadows and Highlights, which helps correct lighting problems, providing a software fill light for underexposed areas and a dampener for overexposed highlights.
Vignette, which provides a rich set of options for creating soft edged vignettes in many shapes and sizes. |
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Video Essentials II is available for Adobe After Effects, Adobe Elements & Premiere, Apple Final Cut and Motion, Avid Liquid, Media Composer & Xpress, Corel VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas, and GV EDIUS and lists for $79.95.
Every editor needs NewBlue Video Essentials II. |
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Fast
Track Techniques
Smearing from Scene to Scene in 5 Easy Steps
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Sometimes, you may find yourself looking at an awkward cut between two scenes. There isn't enough going on in the two shots to explain why we are going from one to the next, yet the progression is necessary for building the story.
For example, we are cutting between a car travelling |
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| and the beach destination. |
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What we need is something that can pull energy out of the first scene and use it to dive into the second. But, it can't call attention to itself or it will distract from the story rather than support it.
The Smear transition from NewBlue Sampler Pack, provides an excellent solution by using a motion blur to blend between the two shots. Let's discover how: |
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| Place Smear over the transition between the two shots. |
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| A great way to get going is to test some of the presets. Depending on your NLE, click on the "p" or "presets" button to view the set of presets that ship with Smear. |
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| Since the car is moving to the right, we start by choosing "Shift Right" and it immediately gives us some half decent results. |
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| Now, we just need to fine tune to get this working exactly the way we want. Let's start with the Angle. This sets the direction of the motion blur. Currently, it's heading straight to the right and it would work better tilting a little down to the right, so we set the Angle to 10 degrees. |
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Now, let's play with the Blur control. This sets the length of the blur. If we turn it up, the longer blur implies a faster moving car, which actually would be perfect for a hyperspace hotrod, but not so appropriate here. Instead, we turn it down a notch to 15 so we see more of the car.
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| It's subtle, but when we play it back, it works better. |
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Finally, we look at the Direction control. Direction set the direction of the blur around the image it is blurring. Right now, it is set all the way to -100. When we move it to 0, the car seems to be expanding in the blur and going in both directions. When we move it to 100, the car now moves in the other direction. Unfortunately, that is backwards and it's not what we want. So we return Direction to -100 and we're done.
Smear is not only a great tool for injecting motion into transitions. It's also a great buy! It's part of the Sampler Pack collection which includes 10 great effects and transitions, all for only $49.95. To learn more about Smear and Sampler Pack, please visit http://www.newbluefx.com/sampler-pack.html.
You can also find a more full featured Smear in the Motion Blends collection, http://www.newbluefx.com/motion-blends.html. |
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Q&A
I've purchased and installed your product on my Mac, and I'm still getting a watermark! I'm fond of NewBlueFX, but I'd rather not have your logo on my movie. How do I activate it?
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To activate your purchase, place one of the effects (or transitions) from the collection on a clip, then go to the control window to set its parameters. At the top of the controls is the Options strip with three buttons: Info, Help and Activate.
Press the Activate button to open the Activation Manager. This will take you through the process of activating your product. No more watermark! |
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Now
Featuring:
Scott Spiro of KNBC Los Angeles |
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Scott Spiro is a 28 year veteran of professional broadcasting at KNBC and a NewBlueFX user. His work has won dozens of awards, including a national Emmy for the series "Beating the Odds" which he edited.
The KNBC news field-production team uses Grass Valley EDIUS for their editing. Scott comments that he has been very happy with EDIUS and the effects that come with it, including NewBlue Art Effect, Motion Effects, and Film Effects.
Recently, Scott was editing a story about newly unearthed Greek and Roman sculptures from the area around Pompeii and Herculaneum that had been nicely preserved in volcanic ash. The news video reports how some of these beautiful works are now on display for the first time in the US. |
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Scott used dissolves to transition between shots of the art pieces. But, he needed something different when going from the art to a closing shot of reporter Cary Bergland walking through the museum. He felt that since the rest of the shots were classical sculpture, a straight cut wouldn't work. He needed a transition that was worthy of a story about art.
His solution was to use Confetti from NewBlue 3D Explosions. |
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| Scott felt the confetti effect gave the story ending a smooth transition that worked perfectly. |
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To learn more about KNBC, please visit http://www.nbclosangeles.com/
Want to be featured in an upcoming "Now Featuring" column? We'd love to hear from you. Contact
us and let us know how NewBlueFX is making your work stand above the crowd. |
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| In
This Issue: |
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| Introducing NewBlue Video Essentials II |
| Smearing from Scene to Scene |
Activating NewBlueFX on
the Mac |
| Meet Scott Spiro |
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Video Tricks of the Trade!
Watch new Video Essentials II in action now!
Job Opportunity
NewBlue is looking for a bright, highly-motivated product manager with a passion for delivering great products and making sure the world knows about them. In addition to project management skills, you must possess a unique blend of creative, marketing and
technical savvy; a big-picture vision, and the drive to
make that vision a reality. If you love wearing many hats, visit http://www.newbluefx.com
/jobs/productmgr.pdf
to learn more.
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NewBlue, Inc. is more than a plugin maker. We
enable video enthusiasts and professionals alike
to customize media and stand out in a crowd. Our
goal is simple: To be competitively-priced,
aesthetically fresh, and ridiculously easy to use.
At NewBlue, we love technology. But more
importantly, we adore the arts. On our team,
you'll find musicians, filmmakers, artists and
writers, all brought together by the desire to
merge our passion for the creative with our talent
for the technical.
Our line of NewBlueFX plugins demonstrate this
arts and technology merger and so will each of our
products to come. |
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