Blink: Can you supply some recipes of combo Vegas filters to equate to a certain MB look to test?

I use it often and love it.

Tried installing it twice and twice it killed Vegas. Anybody else having problems of the sort?

The new magic bullet looks is an amazing program. The only thing I don't like is that you have to be inside the interface when making adjustments so you can't see instant changes on your external monitor until you click ok.

You can re-light a scene now by adding spot and gradient exposures. With the proper graphics cards it render reasonably as well. The "light" version that came with older versions of Vegas while it looked good was unbearably slow on rendering.

How is the rendering speed of the new version? Is it GPU accelerated, and if it is, does the GPU acceleration work even with an old fashioned VFW host like Vegas?

ReneH,
I just purchased Looks, and it initially gave me trouble also. I had downloaded the demo, then inputted the serial #, and tried using it in Vegas, and it locked Vegas up. I ended up uninstalling the demo, restarting my system, then re-installing the program with the serial number right when it asked. It worked after that.

Edit: It's working for the most part, but I'm finding a number of things that still lock up the program (e.g., just adding Looks templates, then removing them, then putting back/changing parameters).

Yes with the right card MB is much faster than the free version that came with Vegas. I'm using a NVidea 8800 and it uses the onboard acceleration (so did the MB editors version). The only problem with that card however is that it messes up After Effects. MB is supposed to use the ATI cards with the latest version of Looks (I think). Check their site they have info on it.

been playing with the trial version for a while.

If you light an actors face is there any way to key frame the change if the actor moves? Like motion tracking?

Sami

"Blink: Can you supply some recipes of combo Vegas filters to equate to a certain MB look to test?"

Well, not really. It was mostly trial and error stuff that I did (and do). But it's easy enough for any one to do. MB for example has a "Night Time" filter and that's mainly color corrector. Turn down your overall saturation, and your gain, maybe increase the black level just a hint, and add just a hint of blue saturation and you'll end up with the equivalent of MB's Night time filter. Most of the MB filters that we got in the Vegas 7 bundle can be duplicated in this fashion. It's just simply faster using MB than creating it from scratch. For that reason I would probably be willing to pay $50 or $75 for MB.... but no more. (That's just my opinion though).

Don't want to open a can of worms here but the new version of Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate (available in a few days as a download or physical purchase) includes Magic Bullet Looks, ProDad Vitascene, Boris Graffiti and a Montage feature for video or picture montages as well as full motion menus when creating Bluray discs, output to Flash, PSD import, native HDV and AVCHD editing....for the upgrade price of $89 USD. (Full price appears to be $129 USD.) I think $89 is a great price to get MB Looks.

"If you light an actors face is there any way to key frame the change if the actor moves? Like motion tracking?"

No you cannot. That is the one thing about the previous version (MB Editors 2.0) you we're able to keyframe because it did not go into it's own interface. No lights or many of the other effects in the old version however. You can create a duplicate of your clip and keyframe a Vegas mask which gives you some control.

BTW I already owned two Red Giant products (MB Editors and Instant HD so I was able to upgrade to the suite (MB Looks, Colorista, Frames and Instant HD) for only $200. The rest of the suite only works in Adobe, etc. Worth it's weight in gold to me. I'm editing a 4-camera round table discussion and the ability to tweak the lighting among other things is really cool.

"Don't want to open a can of worms here but the new version of Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate "

I normally pre order Pinnacle and save a couple of bucks, but not this time I think I'll wait for the reviews.

Yes, you just change it and add the keyframe in the vegas effects timline like you do with a normal vegas fx. Tracking is going to be added in the next version.

I'm glad I read this thread. We have Looks for FCP, Premiere, & After Effects. I just downloaded the Newst Trial Version which includes an install for Vegas and it noticed it was already licensed on my computer. It installed No Problem and seems to be working exactly as it should. - I guess I've gotten used to using it's external interface so that doesn't bother me.

I think you could get the same looks using a Chain of Vegas Filters (after numerous attempts and lots of time) but here you can do it in just One Click.

Wow, with all that... Pinnacle Studio 12 does sound like the Ultimate.
The only thing with Pinnacle is: The only place I ever see it is Online and in the Forums. I've NEVER seen it in a studio so I tend to stay clear.

I think TIME is the key word. You could do a lot of things without Excalibur or VASST Ultimate Pro scripts, but it would take you a lot more TIME, so we buy them. You could put together looks that rival MB Looks, but the TIME it'd take would reduce the money per hour you'd make on a project. If you're going to be wanting those looks for more than 1-2 projects, you might as well buy Looks.

CClub,

I check the demo install option and thats where Vegas encountered problems starting. Are we supposed to get a demo serial number for the app?