Pro Editing @ Home

by Kevin P McAuliffe

One of the best aspects of my job is working with plug-ins. Plug-ins can take an ordinary project, and make it extrodinary. When it comes to talking plug-ins, there are few better companies to look to than Red Giant Software. Not only do they have a stellar line-up of plug-ins themselves (Magic Bullet Suite), but they have recently aquired effects powerhouse Digital Anarchy, and as of recently, are the publisher of all of Trapcode's suite of plug-ins. I had the chance to talk to Sean Safreed, Director of Product Management and Co-Founder of Red Giant Software about their plug-ins, their company and what they can offer us, the user, that other plug-in companies can't.

PE@H: Red Giant Software has not been around very long (founded in 2002), but has made leaps and bounds to move to the forefront of 3rd party plug-in developers. What would you attribute to Red Giant’s success?

SS: Well, a lot of our success comes down to focusing on two things:

Building products that suit the needs of real users. We listen to beta testers’ feature requests and really respond to make sure that the tool has little extras to solve real world production problems.

Try to be customer friendly ALWAYS. Here are some of the things we do. We answer the phone and always get back to customers within 24 hours. We don't release products until they really work. A production can come to a grinding halt if a bug stops a user from using a tool. Provide lots of video resources to make sure users can get the most out of our products. We also license our products so that users pick the host and operating system--we don't dictate where and when the user can install the software.

PE@H: Red Giant Software has a large family of plug-ins. If you had to pick a "flagship" plug-in, which one would it be?

SS: That is tough because so many of our tools are leaders in their category. The flagship product is probably Magic Bullet Suite. This product encompasses several tools. It really is a comprehensive set of tools for making a film look its best whether shot on Mini DV or a 2K cinema camera.

Magic Bullet Looks, part of the Magic Bullet Suite 2008

PE@H: What do Red Giant’s plug-ins offer users that other plug-in packages don't?

SS: Where to start? We have acquired and built a lot unique tools. Magic Bullet Looks is the only desktop plug-in that uses the GPU to deliver tremendous speed and quality. Trapcode Particular offers unique force, and gravity features along with true 3D particles that you can't find outside of a multi-thousand dollar 3D app. Red Giant Psunami offers award-winning water simulations. Primatte Keyer Pro delivers fantastic keys in Final Cut with a unique custom sampling UI and controls for dealing with compressed media. I could go on and on.

PE@H: Where would people unfamiliar with Red Giant’s plug-ins have seen them, and not even known it?

SS: Well, a lot of extra sand effects in Spiderman III were generated with Trapcode Particular. The big budget effect houses did the simulations but sometimes the best trick is the fastest trick and Particular is much easier to control than a "sand simulator" so some of the end sequence effects with the giant sand man used Particular to add dust and extra sand that added to the impact of Sandman's fists striking the buildings.

On television if you watch the Daily Show, The Colbert Report or Myth Busters, a lot of Trapcode tools are used to create the light rays and explosions that appear in the segment openers in those shows.

PE@H: Adding Digital Anarchy and Trapcode to the Red Giant family was a pretty big deal around the 3rd party plug-in world. What do you think that theses two companies’ products add to Red Giant Software’s already stellar lineup?

SS: The addition of Digital Anarchy and Trapcode tools significantly added to Red Giant’s line of motion graphic effects. We now feature 18 different products for motion graphic artists. These tools were a great fit as well because we prefer to sell individual tools that solve a creative problem.

PE@H: From a competitive and creative standpoint, do you think that it hurts the user when a company like Red Giant acquires two competitors?

SS: Hopefully, all of our acquisitions increase the value to the user, but I think I need to clarify a couple of things. Red Giant did NOT acquire Trapcode. Trapcode tools are still owned and developed by Trapcode. Red Giant is the exclusive publisher of those tools. We do have rights to port the Trapcode products to Final Cut Pro but the plug-ins all still belong to Peder. Digital Anarchy was a true acquisition. Jim Tierny came to us to sell the products so he could focus on his Photoshop business. We spent almost six months to update and do bug fixes on the Digital Anarchy products to make them more stable and useful. In addition, we cut the prices or combined multiple products to give users a better value. For example, Text Anarchy now includes Geomancy and Anarchy Toolbox effects for the same price as prior to the acquisition because we felt they worked well together.

PE@H: When looking for a color correction plug-in (for example), why should users look to Red Giant Software first?

SS: Our tools are production proven and built to deliver the highest quality possible. Magic Bullet Colorista tool delivers Lift, Gamma Gain color manipulation like a Da Vinci system and has a unique shape masking feature not found in the Final Cut Pro color correction tools. In addition, our Looks tool offers completely unique looks that very closely mimic the look of movies and TV shows while using the GPU to keep render times to a minimum. No other Look tool combines an easy and fun interface, HDR ready 32-bit pixel quality and accelerated GPU rendering in an affordable package. Red Giant also recently launched a light version of Magic Bullet Looks called Magic Bullet Quick Looks that delivers the same quality, speed, and 100+ looks without the editing tools for $99.

Magic Bullet Colorista, part of the Magic Bullet Suite 2008, running in Apple's Motion 3

 

PE@H: Every plug-in package seems to have a plug-in that takes standard definition footage and converts" it to HD. Red Giant has "Instant HD" as a stand alone plug-in and as part of the Magic Bullet Suite 2008. What differentiates your upconversion plug- in from the rest?

SS: Instant HD delivers a high quality spatial algorithm plus smoothing and sharpening in one tool with presets for easy conversion for SD to HD or 2K. Last year we also launched a pro version with technology licensed from Topaz Labs called Instant HD Advanced that delivers deinterlacing, super resolution scaling, noise reduction, and chroma smoothing that does the best job possible of scaling because it constructs frames pixel by pixel from up to nine fields or 5 frames of information.

Magic Bullet Instant HD, part of the Magic Bullet Suite 2008, running in Adobe's After Effects CS4

 

PE@H: Up until a few years ago, Adobe After Effects was one of only a few ways to do higher end effects work, and most "great" plug-ins were for After Effects only. Do you think this has changed with Apple's push to FXPlug (and similar technologies)?

SS: Definitely, FX Plug in Final Cut has really expanded what is possible in a plug-in. Most plug-ins (outside of those that work in 3D) are now easily ported from After Effects to Final Cut Pro. As of January 2009, we ship 15 of 26 products for Final Cut Pro and plan to add more in 2009.

PE@H: How much does user input contribute to the development of new plug-ins, or upgrades to current ones?

SS: User input is probably the greatest differentiator of Red Giant's tools. In fact, a large set of our tools have come straight out of the professional production community:

Knoll Light Factory was built originally by John Knoll at Industrial Light + Magic. Magic Bullet Suite came from Stu Maschwitz at The Orphanage. PlaneSpace was built from an idea that Scott Frizzle (an award-winning broadcast designer) had for automating animation in After Effects. A dozen users helped us design the features in our latest package Warp, contributing ideas like shadow bending and helping us to perfect the multi-distortion corner pin interface to make it work in complex visual effect shots. Finally, Peder Norrby has worked closely with Mike Goedecke at Belief Design (a design and post house in Los Angeles that provides innovative visuals for many networks) to create Echospace and other tools based on Mike's creative input.

I want to thank Sean for taking the time to talk to us. Red Giant Software makes some of the premiere plug-ins for post production effects work, and you can check them out at www.redgiantsoftware.com .