Class of 2012: New and Improved Plug-Ins Expand Your Editing Arsenal

Creative Planet by Oliver Peters

Plug-in developers have had their hands full in recent months. Not only are they rolling out refreshed versions of their products, they have also had to adapt to a range of new hosts, including Apple Final Cut Pro X and Apple Motion 5, and updates to Avid Media Composer and the Adobe Creative Suite applications. Here’s a look at some of the newest plug-in options.

Boris FX | Boris Continuum Complete 8

Boris Continuum Complete is truly the Swiss Army knife of filter packages, with a wide variety of effects covered by its more than 200 filters. At the NAB Show, Boris Yamnitsky (president of Boris FX) pointed out that the focus of the BCC8 upgrade was not simply to add more filters but to improve the quality of all the filters—for example, adding 3D depth to effects like lens flares. Filter categories have been regrouped slightly into more logical combinations.

New features include improvements in particle effects, lens flares, glows, lights and image restoration tools. There’s better integration with After Effects and support for 32-bit floating calculations. Best of all, BCC8 adds new filters including videoscopes, film glow, a 3D particle emitter, 3D lens flares, wild cards, organic strands, stage lights and a flicker fixer. read more...