Cool plugins built right in to Vegas

wwjd wrote on 6/14/2013, 3:36 PM
just poking around plugins to see if there was anything else buried in there, and was very pleasantly surprised at stuff that was buried!
Discovered that SOFT CONTRAST does way more than a soft contrast. In nutshell, it does some coloration tricks, softening, brightening, also helpful vignetting like soft blurs or just standard darkening or white vignetting.

Then GRADIENT MAP, which I though would do a simple fade darkening the top, has these color scheme setups in the presets that looks handy.

Any other plugins that have misleading names that do way more that you suspect?

Gradient preset examples:

Comments

ritsmer wrote on 6/15/2013, 3:23 AM
Agree.

When on a sun-and-beach vacation I always bring a laptop with Vegas installed for - during the midday heat - patiently trying out the corners of all the plug-ins and all the surprising results you get from twisting the settings.

There are so many possibilities that I can not decide for a favorite to mention here.

Sometimes you may get some unexpected ideas from watching Youtube videos about Sony Vegas tips and tricks.
dimipapa wrote on 6/15/2013, 3:40 AM
I never really used soft contrast it is pretty cool, I'd show you some of what I made but I have no idea how to post pictures here.
Grazie wrote on 6/15/2013, 6:02 AM
dimipapa: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=521496&Replies=0"I'd show you some of what I made but I have no idea how to post pictures here."[/link]

Grazie

Arthur.S wrote on 6/16/2013, 2:39 PM
Why use the free plugins when you could spend $399 on Magic Bullet Looks?? (sorry for my cynicism) :-)
wwjd wrote on 6/16/2013, 3:56 PM
heh! :D
or... why spend $399 when Sony gives you a free version? ;)
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/updates/vegasfamily
Pete Siamidis wrote on 6/16/2013, 6:11 PM
Soft Contrast is pretty cool but I tend to avoid it as it's not a gpu accelerated effect. Normally my timeline frame rate is real-time even with color correction, sharpen, etc filters on there thanks to gpu assist but when I add Soft Contrast my frame rate plummets to around 4 fps even on my overclocked 4770k, which makes it very difficult to work with.
HyperMedia wrote on 6/18/2013, 4:30 PM
SOFT CONTRAST is perfect to add the film look.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/18/2013, 8:48 PM
The biggest reason to use a plugin & not vegas is more options & quicker to implement. I've used Vegas for a lot of stuff but I'm sure other here would use AE or Magic Bullet to achieve the same thing in less time.

I've noticed with MB (never used AE) that their plugin & Vegas work differently. IE I can simulate the look for a particular scene but when the scene changes the Vegas plugin needs more tweaking, the MB one does not. So, I would figure that the extra $$ paid would be so that the plugin uses some math to get the look you want automatically vs you tweaking every different camera angle/location/lighting situation.
Rory Cooper wrote on 6/19/2013, 2:04 AM
Remember Sony Vegas Gradient ramp works well for matts and images with an alpha channel

If I have rendered out a logo sequence and changed the back image of logo I can bring in colors from the image into the logo
So left of ramp will be highs and right for lows pluss you have the option for blend and add composite with amount = very cool.

http://goo.gl/ClNfe
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/19/2013, 6:48 AM
That is cool!
Byron K wrote on 6/19/2013, 1:46 PM
Nice tip Rory! Thanks!