review

TrackX Review For Final Cut Pro / SliceX Review For Final Cut Pro

Gear, Multimedia, Tech stuff, Thoughts, Video

(Can you spot where an object was removed in the frame grab above? And no, I would never use this for a documentary project, but it could be useful otherwise!)

 

The creators of TrackX and SliceX recently sent me copies for review, and they seem like quite useful products. Developed by Mocha, the TrackX/SliceX combo of plugins for Final Cut Pro X offer some great effects without ever having to leave FCPX. The bundle runs $149 or $99 each. Normally, to achieve some of these tricks, you might have to open another program like After Effects, which also happens to require a subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud. With this TrackX review and SliceX review, you can learn a bit from my experience testing the two products out and see if they are right for you.

SliceX Review

First off, SliceX has a lot of features, which is nice. In the video below, you can see a little demo of the Object Remover function. In the first clip, try to see if you can notice anything missing. The removed object will return later in the clip.
 

 

SliceX tools include: Blur Shape Mask, Color Correct Shape Mask, Depth of Field Shape Mask, Object Remover, Pixelate Shape Mask, Shape Mask Layer, Skinfix Shape Mask, and Vignette Shape Mask.

The tools in this plugin are quite easy to use, as it only took me about two minutes to install the plugin and start removing objects with the Object Remover function. They probably aren’t going to be as robust as After Effects and other competing stand-alone visual effects programs, but they are still nice and worth the $99 price of SliceX. I’m pretty excited to use some of these tools in upcoming and current video projects. I had a great time learning how to use Slice X; review it for yourself though and let me know if you think it’s right for you.

(Below: The SliceX Official Tutorial)

 

TrackX Review

TrackX is pretty awesome and straight forward. I’ve been wanting to do this for some time, and now I have a simple plugin that lets me track text to a moving object in the frame. It’s great.

Another effect that I’ll mention in this TrackX review is that, using the same technology, you can track a video clip to the surface of a screen. Imagine you have a computer screen or an iPad in one of your clips, and you want to make it look like a certain clip is playing on that screen. TrackX makes it easy to add any clip onto that screen. See below for an example in a video provided by the TrackX creators:
 

All in all, I have to say that these plugins are a good deal at $149 as a bundle. They accomplish very targeted goals, which means that a more robust stand-alone program might be a better choice for general visual effects creation; however, for a couple of quick solutions, TrackX and SliceX work great for quickly elevating your productions to a high level.

FxFactory Pro 4 Review

Gear, Multimedia, Tech stuff, Thoughts, Video

Noise Industries was kind enough to send me a copy of the new FxFactory Pro 4.0 for review, and it’s a great toolkit for the  video editor looking for relatively easy-to-use and affordable plugins that will make a video project stand out. In this brief FxFactory 4 Review, I’ll tell you a little bit about the platform, what it has to offer, and how to use it. It is a free update for current owners of previous versions of FxFactory Pro.

(FxFactory’s introduction video is below)

 

First off, it is packed full of features. FxFactory 4 contains a variety of plugins boasting more than 170 filters, transitions, and generators. New features with this update include support for Adobe Premiere, and of course it still works with Apple Final Cut Pro and Motion, as well as Adobe After Effects.

Using FxFactory Pro 4 is a breeze, as were previous versions, at least in my experience using Final Cut Pro X with FxFactory Pro. Once you install FxFactory Pro, simply open Final Cut Pro X and find the plugins automatically installed in the Effects Browser (Command + 5 will also open the Effects Browser). See below.

 

 

All of your new plugins will be categorized by the type of effect, so if you want to find a pattern or a sun flare image, just click the Generators icon in the Effects Browser and scroll through the multitude of options. Or if you want to experiment with some new transitions, just browse through the Transitions tab, etc.

Without going into detail about every single feature, I’ll highlight what’s new with this most recent update to FxFactory Pro 4.0. Photo Montage is a quick, slick way to animate photos for a slide show with various animation style choices. Motype 1.3 by Yanobox offers some cool title effects. Callouts 1.3 has a lot of nice animations for explaining ideas with text and clean line and dot animations. PHYX Cleaner 2.0 repairs footage to make it look crisp and clean. Split Animator 1.1 has several updates for its split screen features.

 

 

Overall, I think if you read this FxFactory 4 review you’ll know that I’m quite happy with the software. I think FxFactory is a great addition to Final Cut Pro X’s built-in features, and FxFactory 4 brings a lot of easy-to-use plugin features that will keep your projects looking sharp.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.

 

 

Final Cup Pro X Plug-in Review: Rolling Credits

Gear, Multimedia, Tech stuff, Thoughts, Video

Rolling Credits by SUGARfx is a Final Cut Pro X plug-in that generates some really nice credits to add at the end of your film projects. In full disclosure, I recently tried out this plug-in for a new project I’m working on thanks to a free license from SUGARfx. In this Final Cut Pro X plug-in review, I’ll be telling you a few of the quick pros and cons about the plug-in so that you can decide whether or not you’d like to drop the $49 on a new FCPX plug-in, or just continue to create credits with the built-in generators that come with FCPX. (Read more Final Cut Pro X reviews here).

First off, I like Rolling Credits because the credits look sharp. Aside from price, user interface, etc., the credits simply look good. See below for more detailed pros and cons:

Pros:

  • 12 layouts offer a diversity of visual options.
  • Each layout is highly customizable, allowing for changes to motion, color, gradient, motion blur, etc.
  • As I mentioned, these Final Cut Pro X credits just look good.

Cons:

  • The interface is a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.
  • Importing your credits text also seems more complicated than it needs to be, although this may be the fault of Final Cut Pro X and its limitations. I have to type [TTL] before the title, for instance, which isn’t a huge pain, but seems a little bit old school for a 2012 version of a Final Cut Pro X plug-in.
  • For what you get as a user, I think a $29 price point would be a little better than the $49 sticker price.

 

 

 

Below is the video tutorial for the plug-in, produced by SUGARfx themselves: