Section 6.8. Installing More Effects


6.8. Installing More Effects

The effects that come with iMovie certainly aren't the only ones available. For $25 or $30 you can buy dozens of additional effects like Mosaic, Emboss, X-ray, and so on. A quick Google search for iMovie plug-instrument will reveal to you a full array of companies that sell these effects online, but here's a sampler:

  • GeeThree. This is the same company (www.geethree.com) that makes additional transitions, as described earlier in this chapter. Its eight packages of iMovie add-ons come with effects like film grain (attempts to make your video look more like film), various vignetting effects (which frame your footage inside the cutout shape of a heart, oval, star, and so on), and Rotate & Scale (which let you rotate your footage, say, 90 degrees, or resize it within the frame).

    Two of the most interesting volumes are Volume 4 (picture-in-picture and compositing effects, which let you create special effects using blue screen or green screen backgrounds, just like they do in Hollywood) and Volume 8, which offers a unique image-stabilization fixer , a more powerful Ken Burns effect for photos, morphing, warping, and 100 animated backgrounds.

  • Stupendous Software. This company (www.stupendous-software.com) offers an absolutely enormous array of effects plug-ins, from color -adjustment to video overlays, smoke, glass refraction, scratches and dirt, time effects, and many more. The Web site offers a number of free plug-ins to whet your appetite, as well as demo movies that show what all the other plug-ins do. (See Figure 6-13.)

    Figure 6-13. These samples, from Stupendous Software, show you the power of plug-ins.
    Top: Bluescreen is a common technique in Hollywood, and now on your own Mac. Shoot one image against a blue backdrop, and the plug-in superimposes it on any other clip you like.
    Bottom: These plug-ins let you draw or type right on top of the video.


  • Virtix. Visit www.virtix.com to see a complete list and illustrations. Among them, various effects let you add thought bubbles to the characters in your footage; add heat waves, lightning, or laser beams to your footage; create simulated rain, smoke, or snow; tweak colors in various ways; create an artificial zoom into a piece of moving footage; and superimpose " witness protection" rectangles on people to protect their identities.

    Virtix also offers an "effect" called 16x9 Converter, which is designed to convert footage taken ( accidentally or not) in widescreen format and convert it to fit a normal 4:3, squarish TV screen.

  • cf/x. At www.imovieplugins.com, you'll find a staggering array of effects plug-ins of every sort : picture-in-picture, zooming, cropping, color correction, snow, "witness protection" blurring, annotation (you can write right on the picture), and so on (as well as transitions and title effects). One of them actually lets you paint onto your movies, frame by frame, to eliminate unwanted background elements, for example.

    The nice part about the cf/x effects is that you can apply them to only a part of the screen; you just drag across the area you want the effect to affect. The other nice part is that you can buy only the plug-in you want (at prices like free, $1.50, or $10) without having to buy a whole package.


    Tip: If you have more time than money, you can create a number of fantastic special effects in QuickTime Player Pro, including picture-in-picture effects, "video wall" simulations, and so on. See the end of Chapter 14 for an introduction to this concept of multiple video tracks in a single clip.Note, too, that QuickTime itself offers a wealth of special effects, including blur, color balance, emboss and edge detection, and many more. They all await in the Filter box that appears when you export a movie from iMovie, as described in Chapter 12. If you're aching to use one of those filters in your iMovie project, export the clip as a full-quality DV QuickTime movie, process it with those Filters, and then reimport it into your iMovie project.


iMovie HD & iDVD 5. The Missing Manual
iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596100337
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 209
Authors: David Pogue

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