Red Giant has just completed a huge update to its colour correction products. New features, better GPU usage and a new tool added to the Magic Bullet Suite 12.
Red Giant has produced some very clever and flexible colour correction tools - no doubt you have come across Magic Bullet at some point in your editing career.
Their plugins always had a reputation of being render hogs, so it is good to see that they have bitten the (er) bullet and spent time optimising them for GPU rendering. One example of this is Mojo that now renders 80% faster in FCPX than before.
“Magic Bullet Suite 12 is a return to our roots: powerful color correction with a focus on a simple and enjoyable user experience,” comments Nate Sparks, Magic Bullet Suite product manager. “We stepped back and looked at every feature introduced over the years and asked, ‘How can this be better?’ Every tool has been optimized for the GPU, providing real time rendering and so much more.”
The official press release focuses heavily on Adobe's Premiere Pro & After effects, but it does mention support for FCPX, Avid and other 'industry standard' NLEs. We think they have missed a trick in this rather nice video, after all it would only take one instance of a product to be shown running on each NLE to make the point.
Should you want to buy the whole range of tools, then Magic Bullet Suite 12 will set you back $799 or only $199 for the upgrade. If you don't need them all, you can buy each product individually. So let's have a run through of each:
NEW PRODUCT – Magic Bullet Film is brand new to Magic Bullet Suite 12 and gives your footage the authentic look of real film – emulating not just the film stocks themselves, but the entire photochemical process, from the original film negative, to color grading, film grain and vignettes, and finally to the print stock. Magic Bullet Film includes 22 Negative Stocks and four Print Stocks, totaling in 26 uniquely authentic stocks to choose from.
NEW VERSION – Magic Bullet Looks 3.0 is the easiest, most powerful way to make your video look great. Sporting a major update to its UI and UX, Magic Bullet Looks features 198 brand new, completely customizable presets based on popular film and TV shows. With an intuitive set of tools for creating your own color grade, you’ll understand why Magic Bullet Looks is voted the number one plug-in for professional editors, year after year.
NEW VERSION – Magic Bullet Colorista III brings streamlined, professional color correction directly to your editing timeline. Also getting a major UI update, Colorista’s new simplified design gives you easy access to the powerful and essential tools needed to correct and refine the color in your shot. Taking advantage of Adobe CC2014’s new masking and tracking features, Colorista III is no longer weighed down by several layers of controls, resulting in a very clean, focused experience for editors and filmmakers.
NEW VERSION – Magic Bullet Mojo 2.0 makes it easy to instantly give your footage the stylized color grade of a Hollywood blockbuster in seconds. With a few simple sliders, you can inject your footage with a customized color treatment that sets off skin tones against a cool, cinematic look. With GPU acceleration, Mojo effects render in near real time, and are 20% faster in Adobe products and 80% faster in Final Cut Pro X.
NEW VERSION – Magic Bullet Cosmo 2.0 is your secret weapon for perfect cosmetic cleanup. This simple yet powerful tool helps you quickly correct skin tones and remove age or blemishes from your on-screen talent. Cosmo is also GPU-accelerated, works 20% faster in Adobe products, and is now available for use in Final Cut Pro X and Sony Vegas.
Denoiser II is your solution for fast reliable video noise reduction – with no fuss. Just apply Denoiser and your footage instantly looks better.
The Magic Bullet Suite also includes LUT Buddy – a tool for creating, importing and exporting Look Up Tables to and from your editing timeline. It allows you to share color decisions with LUT compliant devices and software – so you can take your color ideas anywhere.
It wouldn't be a Red Giant product release without a short film to accompany the products. Old/New is the story of a guy who changes from liking new things to rather liking old ones and then.. Well watch the film, but it does of course shows off Magic Bullet and its colour grading capabilities.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
