Pro Editing @ Home

by Kevin P McAuliffe

I love plug-ins. Plug-ins make not only my life as an editor easier, but they help me speed up my workflow, because I don't have to sit around tyring to think up a look. A few clicks and nested effects later, I have a new look for whatever show I'm working on. Probably my favorite effects package is FXFactory Pro from Noise Industries, and I caught up with Niclas Bahn from Noise Industries to find out what about their new plug-ins MoType and Decimal Counter and what we can look forward to this year from Noise Industries.

PE@H: Before I started using Final Cut Pro, I had never heard of Noise Industries. Can you give us a brief history of the company?

NB: Noise Industries was founded in December 2004 with the intention of leveraging modern Mac OS technologies and GPU acceleration to create products for the professional video / broadcast and post production markets. We were hoping to create plugins that were faster than anythings that anybody had seen before, and at a price that would allow a large user base. Furthermore we felt that the only way we could really revolutionize the plugin marketplace was to open up our toolbox so that others could easily create plug-ins that would run on the architecture.

We released our first product, Factory Tools for Avid AVX, in September of 2005. Factory Tools was bundled with all Avid AVX hosts (Avid Xpress, and Media Composer).

Things started to heat up the year after when we released FxFactory when Apple introduced FxPlug in FCP with FCP 5.1.2. FxFactory at first supported Final Cut Pro and Motion. When Apple added FxPlug support to Final Cut Express, FxFactory plug-ins also worked on that host. Along the way we have been improving FxFactory with every point release, and have found numerous partners that create amazing plug-ins with FxFactory that we help distribute. In 2008 we then also added After Effects support free of charge for all FxFactory plug-ins.

We currently have 6 companies (on four continents) that have sprung up alongside Noise Industries, that create FxPacks with FxFactory Pro and sell them:

Industrial Revolution - http://www.idustrialrevolution.com/
SugarFX - http://ilearnfast.com/sugarfx_index.html
Core Melt - http://www.coremelt.com/
Futurismo - http://www.zugakousaku.com/quartz/
Yanobox - http://www.yanobox.com/
DVShade -http://www.dvshade.com/

 

 

PE@H: Point upgrades to software or plug-ins normally fixes bugs, but with FX Factory Pro you add new plug-ins for each point update. Is there a reason for that, or are we the users just lucky?

NB: We add a few new plug-ins with every point release because we feel that users really appreciate the effort of being part of an ever expanding toolset. We are not the only company in this space, but our architecture allows us (and all of our users) to create hardware accelerated plug-ins quickly. The fact that FxFactory is not a simple combination of "hard-coded" plug-ins, but also a full scale plug-in development and distribution platform, makes this possible.

PE@H: Version 2.0.4 brought a surprise with it, and that was the ability to use all your FX Factory Pro plug-ins in Adobe After Effects. If you had purchased FX Factory Pro 2 for Final Cut Pro, and happened to have After Effects CS4, you got this upgrade for free. Why did you decide to do this, and how long did the implementation process take?

NB: We surprised our users, and everyone else with this move. We always felt that it was a strange concept that companies charged multiple times for multiple host applications. For FxFactory to be a viable plug-in platform for a large user-base it was a necessary step for it to support more host applications. Users can now use the same FxFactory plug-ins in the following host applications: After Effects, Motion, and Final Cut which often times are used together at different stages in the creative workflow. Instead of charging for it, we decided to make it a free upgrade for all users.

 

PE@H: Avid editors probably don't realize that Factory Tools is available for Media Composer and Express. How similar is Factory Tools to FX Factory Pro?

NB: Factory Tools for Avid AVX was our first product. There are lots of small differences between how our products for Avid / Final Cut Studio / After Effects work. This has to do mostly with what is and what isn’t available in the host application. For the Avid product for example, we added easy blend modes and geometry controls for all of our plug-ins, because this feature simply wasn’t easily available on Avid. Other aspects of the product differ because of the different UIs of the host applications.

Generally speaking however, our product offering for Final Cut Studio / AE and Avid are similar. The idea that people can and will create their own plug-ins, and the idea that people do care for faster rendering due to GPU acceleration, carries through all our products.

PE@H: Noise Industries just released two new effects, MoType and Decimal Counter. Can you tell us a little about them?

NB: Motype is a visually stunning text animation plug-in by Yanobox, our new development partner. It allows the user to create amazing text animations very easily, and is full of cool presets to get you started. It is probably best to have a look at the demonstration video to see what it's all about.

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Decimal Counter is a plug-in that allows the user to create a counter in FCP / Motion and was designed by another development partner, idustrial revolution.

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The two plug-ins are very different in nature, which clearly shows the power of FxFactory. The different FxPacks solve wildly different problems, and users/development partners from different backgrounds create very different solutions with FxFactory. We currently have a total of 24 commercial FxPacks developed with FxFactory by our partners.

Alongside the commercial FxPacks we also create, and encourage our partners to create Freebies which help introduce users to the FxFactory platform. These include useful tools such as a free Pan and Zoom plug-in, which allows users to easily create "Ken Burns" style animations on stills directly inside FCP/Motion and AE.

PE@H: Aspiring effects creators can try their hand at effects creation with Quartz Composer and FX Factory Pro. Do you need a degree in rocket science to figure out how to do it?

NB: I would have to lie if I said that it was super easy. However, developing plug-ins with FxFactory has made the process easier than it ever has been before. You can realistically create a plug-in with FxFactory without writing a single line of code. Also, all the plug-ins that are part of FxFactory Pro are open to be dissected by users, so users can improve upon them, and use them as examples for further development. We also have a great tutorial which is intended to get you started in the help section of FxFactory.

PE@H: If you had to pick your favorite effect in FX Factory Pro, which one would it be?

NB: I am a big fan of some of the "simple" plug-ins that create a lot of value and are very popular with users. One that comes to mind is the Random Crop Filter, which many users seem to really enjoy, even though what it does is really quite straight forward. You can have a look at the following video that shows the use of Random Crop.

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Other than that, the filters/transitions/generators that made it into our demo reel are there because we really like them.

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PE@H: Why should FX Factory Pro be the backbone of your effects arsenal?

NB: Really there are three reasons:

Speed: FxFactory uses the graphics card in your system to provide hardware-accelerated previews and rendering.

Quality: A high-precision rendering engine allows you to apply effects to higher-quality sources (such as 10bit YUV) without loss in quality.

Choice: FxFactory powers over 300 effects for Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, Motion and After Effects, and the list is growing fast as we and our development partners continue to develop plug-ins with FxFactory.

PE@H: Can you give us a sneak peak at what we can look forward to in 2009 from Noise Industries?

NB: 2009 will be the year of FxFactory 3 and many new 3rd party FxPacks developed by our partners. That is all I can say right now!

I want to thank Niclas for taking the time to talk to us about Noise Industries and their new plug-ins MoType and Decimal Counter. Look for reviews of them coming soon to Pro Editing @ Home. For a free trail of FXFactory Pro or any of their plug-ins, head over to Noise Industries website.