Antler Post's Blackmagic Film to Video plugin for FCPX

I've uploaded a little blog post and demo of the beta version of Antler Post's (http://antlerpost.com/) Blackmagic Film to Video plugin for Final Cut Pro X. This is being developed by Nick Shaw.

This plugin is designed for use with Blackmagic Cinema Camera ProRes Film Log footage in FCPX. It applies the same Rec.709 LUT found in DaVinci Resolve to your ProRes Log footage all with out leaving the FCPX timeline.

It's still in beta but it's close to release.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
There is a serious bug in FCP X, which causes random flash frames in renders. Adjusting any parameter, or deleting a render file, will make FCP X re-render, and may remove the flash frame. Or, since it is an intermittent bug, it may just cause it to appear on a different frame. Although this bug was widely discussed after the release of FCP X 10.0.6, Apple did not include a fix in the 10.0.7 update. The only known work around is to render your final file in Compressor 4.

http://www.adamroberts.net/blog/blackmagic-film-to-video-plugin-by-antler-post/

Thanks Adam. Great demo.

The only thing I want to add is that although the blog says "Many of these adjustments can be done with the built in Colour Correction tools in FCPX", in fact because FCPX built in colour correction happens after the Effects, there is information my plugin can dig into that a colour corrector applied after the plugin can't. Most significantly, the exposure adjustment in my plugin gives a very close match to actually changing exposure in camera. What the FCPX colour corrector loosely refers to as "exposure" will not do anything like the same thing, and cannot pull back highlight detail like my plugin can. If I get time I will put together a quick screencast showing this over the next few days.

Pleasure Nick.

That is why I said, many... not all.

I have been noticing I can pull back more from the exposure, especially slightly over exposed shots when using the plugin rather then just using the built in tools.

I hope to share some other shots later in the week that compare the in camera Rec.709 Video mode with Film mode footage and the plugin applied.

This looks awesome and I want to buy this plug-in so bad, but I'm just afraid that I will never actually receive a camera. So I guess I'll hold off. Looks like you've done some great work to make this, too bad you can't really start getting paid for it yet, until production actually speeds up that is...

Really looking forward to the release of the plugin. Looks great!

As promised, I have uploaded a screencast showing the difference between adjusting exposure using FCPX's built in colour correction, and doing it with my plugin.

It is just my unscripted rambling, so to bastardise a quote, I'm sorry I didn't have time to make a short video…

I hope people will find watching it is four minutes usefully spent!

http://bit.ly/12tUSs2

Hi Nick,

How would one get their hands on this very cool plug-in that you've developed for FCPX? I couldn't seem to find a readily available link on your web site.

... then again, I may have missed it.

Thanks,

How would one get their hands on this very cool plug-in that you've developed for FCPX? I couldn't seem to find a readily available link on your web site.

The plugin is currently still in beta testing, but I hope to have it ready for release soon.

Hey Nick - do you ever plan on making this so that you can load in other LUTs besides the Rec709 one. Like I'd love to choose another look that I've built in resolve or something, but then easily be able to apply it and still adjust the image with your plugin, which seems to do an amazing job.

Hey Nick - do you ever plan on making this so that you can load in other LUTs besides the Rec709 one. Like I'd love to choose another look that I've built in resolve or something, but then easily be able to apply it and still adjust the image with your plugin, which seems to do an amazing job.

That would be something completely different, that I couldn't implement with way the current plugin works. It is not using a 3D LUT, it is doing a series of hard coded transforms, matching what is done in the camera.

How would one get their hands on this very cool plug-in that you've developed for FCPX? I couldn't seem to find a readily available link on your web site.

The plugin is currently still in beta testing, but I hope to have it ready for release soon.

Thanks Nick. Do keep me posted.

I would love to have this plug in for Premiere. Any chance of that?

Around what time should we expect a release?

Around what time should we expect a release?

Very soon I hope, but I can't give an exact date I'm afraid.

The actual image processing aspect of the plugin I am happy with, but there are a couple of other things I need to sort out before I can release it.

The testing of the plugin is going well, so I hope I am very close to a release.

I feel I ought to give people advance notice that although I initially hoped to sell the plugin for $30, the same as my existing FCP7 plugins, the differences with the FCPX version mean that it is not financially viable for me to do so. I plan to charge $49.95 instead.

I hope people will think that this is still a very reasonable price for what it does.

My FCP7 plugins are limited to 8-bit processing, so are only suitable for dailies and editorial use. The FCPX plugin renders in floating point on the GPU, so can be used for finishing.

The exposure, colour temperature and saturation adjustments in my FCPX plugin enable film mode shooting on fast turn around jobs which don't have time for a full grade, so need to be finished in FCPX. You can add the plugin at default settings to all your material, and you have an image that looks as it would have done if you had shot in video mode. And without the storage and rendering requirements of RAW, you still keep a lot of the ability to make adjustments in post that shooting RAW would have given you.

Nice! When release for FCPX?
Beta version can try?

Thanks!