I know about these 3rd party plugins. I have already given them a try, and/but my experience is that they increase the rendering times on my system dramatically.

Still, I ask myself why it is that Vegas can't do what these 3rd party plug-ins do. You'd think that if you 'd been in the know of the 'secrets of the trade' that setting the right contrast, brightness and colour curves (with lows and mids and highs), would yield the same result, but it doesn't. So I wonder what is technically different then.

Try posting this question in the Vegas Pro forum -- that is where this kind of expertise lurks. Also, keep in mind that Vegas Pro does have more color tools in it than Movie Studio, so there are likely to be suggestions that cannot be implemented with VMS.

You need a GeForce card to use Magic Bullet. It does not support Intel or ATI graphics cards, but with Geforce it flies. I am afraid you won't be able to reproduce these film looks without that plugin.

Eugenia, thanks for the link. I think I already saw Magic Bullet before, but I gave it another go. The collection of color effects is just what I'm after. Unfortunately, there is a watermark full frontal... The pricetag is terryfing ($400 for 15Mb, that is $26 per Mb).
Again, on my machine (nvidia geforce fx 5200 go, 64Mb) it is rendering at a discouraging speed (15 sec film takes 20 minutes to render). I'd need a much more recent nvidia graphics card to take advantage of it.

Yes, it's an expensive utility because it does something that other utlities can't. In the video world, this is actually a fair price... expensive for the consumer, but the right price for those who want to do more.

>here is a watermark full frontal
I wish that watermark wasn't that big, or that green shape was transparent or something so you can see what it does better...

Weird about your geforce btw, I would have expected it would have worked in accelerated mode with MagicBullet... Maybe the culprit is the 64MB of VRAM, not the actual chipset being old... It works very fast on my recent 256 MB Geforce card, but when I had an ATI it was extremely slow.

The thing is that with some creativity and craft, you can re-create some film effects pretty well, with VMS alone. No need to splash out 400 dollars. My feeling is that these plugins just put layer upon layer of what is already in Vegas.
Here is my go at a CSI Miami look:

Ivan, what you are saying is not correct. Magic Bullet can do things that don't come by default on Vegas, e.g. diffusion, warming and applying colors via a vector algorithm without affecting other colors.

I had to use the Aav6cc freeware plugin to get close, and yet it was not possible to make it as good as Magic Bullet. I can't replicate the warming, and when I go towards "orange" the whole picture becomes orange (just like in your sample).

Sorry, but if you want something that comes truly close to the original look, you gotta shell the cash... Otherwise, you are stuck with attempts like yours and mine, which are simply not as good because no NLE comes with all the needed adjustments by default.

Please wait here. I will upload some HDV footage and Vegas project for you to test.

So, here is what is possible with Vegas.
Download the project file:
http://www.gnomefiles.org/files/vegas/miami3.vf (use "save link as")
If this doesn't work, try this one:
http://www.gnomefiles.org/files/vegas/miami4.vf (use "save link as")
Download the video file that the project above uses:
http://www.gnomefiles.org/files/vegas/Clip%20030.m2t (use "save link as", 46 MB)

To playback my project correctly YOU MUST have the Magic Bullet for Editors 2.0 plugin installed (linked above), AND the freeware Aav6cc plugin: http://www.moosehill.se/vegas/dist/aav6cc_v0.9.5a.exe

The first video in the timeline is the unaltered one, as coming out of my HV20. The second one is my take on the problem. And the third is Magic Bullet's. Notice how I had to jack up yellows/reds in order to achieve the orange look. No, if I use the "gradient" orange Generated Media, then the whole scene turns orange and it's not good anymore (like Ivan possibly did it). Notice how Magic Bullet is able to keep the blacks black and the whites white and the greens green. I can't do that with Vegas tools only. When I turn stuff into orange with the color correction tool, *everything* turns orange, not only the red-ish colors. The secondary color corrector creates bad colors too for what we need to achieve here, so it's not an option.

In other words, Magic Bullet does INDEED things that Vegas can't do out of the box. I am not saying that our efforts are not better than the original footage, but it's not as good as it should be -- especially if you want correct colors.

For those who might not be able to use my project files, here's a rendered version in the PSP size:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/images/miami.mp4 (5 MB, use "save link as")

Feel free to use the .m2t file above to upload your own efforts and hopefully project files so we can see how you did it.

Eugenia,
I seem to be missing something here. In Ivan's example, if you look at the girl in the foreground, the black and white of her dress don't at all look orange to me. I can see that Magic bullet does add some effects but when it comes to colour it is hard to see what's different to VMS. It would be interesting to see what Magic bullet could do with Ivans footage.

>the black and white of her dress don't at all look orange to me.

I explained this above. From the footage, it seems that Ivan used an orange gradient to get that look and so only the upper half of the screen is orange, while the dress is on the lower half. Using a gradient is NOT a solution though. CSI:Miami uses orange gradients only in their skyscraper and sky shots where they can get away with it. All other, normal shots use a much more targeted coloring.

For this Neo/Matrix effect, I used: contrast and brightness, gradient layer, color curves (turned down reds and blues)
The gradient should/could be left out, but it is psychological: it draws the viewer's attention to the colours.
For the sake of comparison, I have also pasted the Miami filmlook video.

You should also include the Magic Bullet render on your video, like I did. You will see that it's not just a matter of gradient or green colors applied universally. As I said above, Magic Bullet is able to apply coloring to SIMILAR colors without altering the non-similar colors. That's what's not possible with Vegas (and also their diffusion and warming feature). As a conclusion, Magic Bullet does deserve that $400. It is VERY expensive for the consumer, but it has no competition.

BTW, I made my own tests trying to reproduce MagicBullet's Matrix style, and that specific style IS reproducible by vegas almost exactly! It's their Miami look that it's not reproducible. So, here's how I did it, to resemble their "Neo" style:

Brightness and contrast: Contrast at 0.15

Color Corrector:
Low: Angle: 225.0 Magnitude: 0.263
Mid: Angle: 174.6 Magnitude: 0.327
High: Angle: 229.8.0 Magnitude: 0.264
Saturation: 0.500

Color Balance: Green on 0.0250 and the "Highlights" radio button checked.

You can put a scene twice on your timeline, use the above settings for one scene, and Magic Bullet's "Neo" style for the second one, and see how similar they are.

EDIT: More info and video sample here
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/category/filmmaking

I admit, your Neo style is much better than mine.
I have played around with your footage to produce my Miami style. Here it is:


EDIT
In this sample, I admit that the grass has an orange tint, as you predicted. But after finetuning color curves (turning green in the upper right corner up), I was able to get the green back.

I don't want to sound harsh, but this doesn't look very nice for a CSI:Miami look. It's all orange. :-)

It's good though that we have this discussion, we are all learning.

Wait till you read my scenario! Don't you worry, I can take criticism. I'm here to learn, and I have learned alot already!

BTW, off topick
Your youtube rubberband movie on your blog doesn't play as it should. It stops after 1 sec. I gave the trick a try and it is just amazing.
Here are my future investments, ordered in a budget oriented way:
1) a rubberband: 0.05 euro (to be used with my amateur tripod)
2) a fluid head tripod: 170 euro
3) the Canon HV20: 1250 euro
4) Magic Bullet: 249 US dollars (educational licence)
This is a 5 year plan...

It plays fine here... Check the .mp4 version too (just 2 MB) if the youtube one has temporary problems.

Eugenia,
You say on your site that "It indeed does things that are not possible with Vegas’ own plugins or even plugins like the freeware Aav6cc. It is able to apply coloring on specific “similar colors” only and leave the rest unmodified."
aav6cc is designed to act only on each of its 6 specific color vectors. When a change is made to one vector, other colors are not effected. How is Magic Bullet doing it differently ? ... I assume it is doing something differently but I don't understand exactly what.

Aav6cc does not do the same thing as Magic Bullet. The Aav6cc plugin only uses 6 colors to generate all others, and when you modify those it only modifies the very close neighbors. For example, I can turn reds to oranges, but I can't turn all red-ish colors to orange-y WITHOUT losing their original colors. In other words, Magic Bullet does color shifting on a wide color angle, while Aav6cc does it only for a few colors.

My final attempt on the Miami look (check the original.png, eugenia.png (my attempt), mbullet.png):
http://www.gnomefiles.org/files/vegas/miami.zip
It's about 90% there, but not quite. I guess it's good enough if you don't want to shell the cash. Complete settings on how I did it are included in the zip file.