Spring time is fast upon us, as is the annual tradition of the mass exodus of post-production professionals to Las Vegas. New England certainly has its share of representation on the show floor with local companies such as Avid, Boris, Facilis, EditShare, Aframe, and Axel Video. But one company with some great new offerings this year is GenArts out of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Since 1996 GenArts has been doing some of the best video plugin effects in the industry. Every time you watch a movie or television show, it is very likely that you have seen their effects. GenArts plugins have been used in at least one Academy Award nominated film every year since 1996. They have been used in films such as LORD OF THE RINGS, STAR WARS, THE AVENGERS, IRON MAN and the X-MEN series. You have seen them on television on shows such as Fringe, Lost, and all of the various CSI shows. You could argue that GenArts plugins have been on television for more hours than Regis Philbin.
GenArts is using NAB to unveil its latest offering, Sapphire 7. Sapphire 7 is looking to be GenArts’ most robust offering yet. Sapphire 7 has two tiered offerings. One is Sapphire 7 for VFX Artists and the other is Sapphire 7 for Editors. Sapphire 7 for VFX is native to Autodesk, Nuke and After Effects. Conversely, Sapphire for Editors is great for Avid, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas. Most of the tools are featured in both product offerings, but they are tailor-made for your compositing or editing software of choice.
Sapphire 7 for VFX Artists has some new effects that are exclusive to this release. Some of them includeº
S_Beauty – uses an edge preserving blur while sharpening colors. It really adds a punch to human subjects and is excellent in adding vibrancy to skin tones, eyes and hair. It also compensates for poor lighting on people. You can also key the effect to have even greater control over the quality.
S_EdgeAwareBlur – allows you to blur your image while preserving edges on your subject. It gives your video a nice subtle water color look. It can help you with grain, or even stylize your effects with a nice washed out film look.
S_Sharpen – has been revamped from the ground up. It compensates for the over contrast look that you get with other Sharpening tools in the market. There have been a myriad of new parameters added to the S_Sharpen for version 7.
S_LensFlare – Atmospheric noise, new animation options, and texture overlays have been added in Sapphire 7. You can now add atmospheric noise, texture overlays, and flicker to your lens flares. They have added a new feature in this plugin that allows you to design your own flares with the Sapphire Flare Designer.
S_Zap – This is Sapphire’s lightning effect. They have added spline controls over individual bolts of lightning. You can also animate lighting over a path giving you the ability to create your own custom lightning shapes and patterns. You can literally create your own custom lightning! They have also added a 3D perspective which also allows you to view your lightning in 3D space. This effect is also the easiest way for an editor to re-create the light sabers from the Star Wars films as straightening out a bolt of lightning and changing its color is very easy to do.
On top of all this, they have also added a motion blur to a lot of the effects, added a ton of new transitions such as S_FilmRoll, S_CardEffect, S_FlutterCut. Sapphire 7 promises to have more improved render speeds as well. More CPU processing can provide up to a 20% boost in render speeds. A feature that is subtle yet powerful is the ability to move Sapphire settings across host platforms. So no longer do you need to rely on making screengrabs or having to write down your settings. You can now move your settings across platforms. So you can create a Sapphire effect in your editing software of choice and then move it to any other editing software.
Sapphire 7 for Editors has added some effects as well. First and foremost, the biggest thing Avid editors will notice is how much, much more of the effects will play in real time. Sapphire 7 offers more green dot effects than ever before. Green dot effects are the ones that perform in real time in Avid Media Composer.
They have added Pan and Zoom for Avid. What this effect does that Avid’s Pan and Zoom does not do natively is the ability to rotate and spin in 3D space. They have added vignette, drop shadow and motion blur native to the effect. You no longer need to nest and stack those effects together. It is also more intuitive to use than the Avid’s Pan and Zoom. You drop the clip effect on the timeline as opposed to loading the image into effect onto a piece of filler.
Once you start using these plugins, only then will you realize how much you actually have seen them on television. Most effects have templates that you will immediately recognize. With over 250 effects and 2500 presets in the effects, they give you many effects without any manipulation of any parameters of the effects. It gives editors a chance to really impress their clients without too much work.
Sapphire 7 should be here just in time for NAB, but GenArts offers a water-mark free 2 week trial of all their effects, but be warnedºyou will be hooked. They truly are that good. If you make the trip out to NAB, be sure to visit GenArts at booth SL4224 or visit them from the comfort of your home at www.GenArts.com.
Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Pentagon, Powderhouse and many others. You can reach him at Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com.