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It can take some getting used to, but it definitely saves some time making things look nicer.


How much of a learning curve is there for this software?

MBL 2.0 is straightforward to understand and use, IMHO. I bought it only some months ago (wish I had waited!) and was happily applying looks within an hour, as there are loads of presets & it all seemed very straightforward to adapt these presents and include additional tweaking.

Very impressive and versatile, works extremely well with Vegas Pro 11.

Duncan

Just to echo Duncan's post, MB Looks 2 is a great add-on to Vegas.

A few pluses to me:
- Stability: With all of the instability in v11, I've NEVER had an instance in which Vegas crashed due to MB Looks (oddly, I would experience crashes with many Sony color fx's).
- Speed: MB Looks 2 can and does use your NVIDIA GPU, independent of Vegas. That is, even if you have GPU render or preview disabled, MB Looks can utilize the GPU for its share of the work.
- Beautiful interface: this might be a negative to some, but for me it is a positive. You edit your look outside of Vegas in the MB Looks interface. It is a seemless transition as it launches a window from within Vegas. But, once you are in the Looks interface, everything is consistently laid out.
- Powerful, yet simple to get started: The learning curve is not steep at all to achieve nice results quickly. Even so, having used it for almost a year now, I'm still finding effects that I didn't realize were there. To be clear, this is a positive to me. It is like (the older versions of) Microsoft Excel in that someone new to Excel could easily set up a simple balance sheet, but it was feature-rich enough to allow full simulation models to be made once you discovered the right functions.

If I sound like a fan of MB Looks, well... I am.

The latest update to MB Looks fixed a bug that was resulting in gamma curves looking very different in the MB interface compared to the Vegas preview window (usually, very crushed in MBL, but washed out in Vegas). It made for a very frustrating color-grading experience, at least in 32-bit full floating color depth. Now, it's not an issue at all: the MB looks interface is WYSIWYG.

I'm a long-time user of MBL, and I still think the learning curve is pretty shallow. Click on a preset. Done. Just kidding. The interaction between filters and order applied can make a big difference on image. Even studying the presets is worthwhile, though I've found most of them are pretty strong right off the truck, requiring tweaks to tone them down.

+1 MBL.

Its my go to grading effect! Along with Sapphire Edge.

Paul.

Thanks for the heads-up and recommendations.

I've been waiting for a deal on Magic Bullets Looks. I just purchased it at the discounted price--mine rang up at 50%, too. Sweet!

Installation was a breeze and --as mentioned-- it's available in all my hosts (Vegas, Premiere and After Effects).

Another great tool in the toolkit (smile).

Me too. 50% discount. Installing it now. :-)

Just tried a dabble. First impression...no preview for before/after effect together?

No TV out???? There's an option in prefs for 'external video device' but it doesn't show either my connected TV, or other monitor.

I've got MB and it is a great tool. Great deal as well.

Just wish Red Giant would add more of their products to the Vegas platform.

I would love to see Trapcode Particular as a plugin (or even standalone), as I am not pleased that Particle Illusion is just 2D.

Peter

@Arthur.S,
There's no side-by-side or top/down comparison that I can find (although I'm still just messing around with it).

However, stacking the window to the side of the Vegas interface is working just fine on my monitor(s).

*** Having said that, there is a keyboard shortcut that is my instant best friend in Looks. Press the backslash (\) key to toggle the plug-in chain. It's a super-fast way to toggle the preview of your current "Look" on/off.

My Immediate impressions...
Pros-
The interface is really, really intuitive. The designers did a great job placing the tools logically, relative to workflow. Plus--on top of the fact that it is working in all my host applications, it's also available as a standalone application. That caught me by surprise, in a good way. I'm happy that they include the Colorista color wheels for professionally precise grading, and the Cosmo feature is available for smoothing skin and removing blemishes, which is great for fixing wrinkles and skin imperfections in HD footage. Another thing that made me grin: I have some recently shot HD footage that is overexposed. Fixed it to my satisfaction in about 30 seconds with Looks. It's really intuitive to use.

Cons-
I wish there were keyboard shortcuts to toggle each individual plug-in's visibility.
The 'Help' menu isn't very helpful. Maybe they just assume the interface is so intuitive that nobody needs a help file. I'm a tech guy. I like manuals, lol.
---Yep, it's a short list of cons.---

btw, I accidentally discovered that pressing [Tab] allows you to modify the currently selected plug-in's parameters with numeric keyboard entries, rather than using the mouse/cursor to slide the values.


Yep, this is going to be my go-to tool for color grading. Best $200 I've spent in a long time. Now I know why so many people speak so highly of it.

What is the promo code?

My interest is color grading landscapes, nature, and wildlife HD video with no actors. The examples I saw were mostly color grading of clips with actors (people). I would appreciate any comments on Looks ability to color grade clips for my "outdoor" clips (e.g., trees, waterfalls, rivers, birds, deer, elk, flowers, etc.)

I read the license gives you rights to run on one machine only, you can't install on a desktop at home and a laptop in the field, is that true?

Thanks in advance,
Rich

MBL 2.0 is very versatile - if you can envisage some particular style that you'd like to apply to your wildlife/nature films, then MBL will provide tools to help you achieve that look. Lot's of the looks include actors to illustrate the styles and some settings are specifically for situations such as smoothing skin slightly or providing just a bit of contrast & saturation for interview type situations. Having used this software for some months now, I think it is incredibly easy to use to make fine adjustments such as above, to quite extreme shifts and everything in between.

The really nice thing is that the presets help get you approximately to the style you want and then you can add & adjust the plethora of variables to make it your unique style. Given the promo price, I think its a great addition to tools, but it all depends on what you want to achieve, how often you want to be tweaking the look of video and your budget.

By the way, I have absolutely no affiliation with Red Giant, just a happy user.

Duncan

From memory, isnt there a trial download??

Duncan

Thanks for the reply and the explanation. Can I trouble you are the "CODE"?

Yes there is a free trial version, in fact I got it months ago but never triedit. I am on a 3 week vacation and can't test the trail version again. However, seems like everyone has something good to say about Looks, so at 50%, I will go for it.

Any thoughts on my question about installing on 2 machines (desktop and laptop).

Rich

Sorry, can't help you - I only use on teh one laptop, but I'm sure others might help.

Duncan

Have to say, at the moment I'm distinctly underwhelmed. Nothing in MBL that I couldn't do easily with (the much cheaper) NBFX. Add to that the crazy idea of locking down the host platform - which stops you viewing 'layered' effects live. It's also looking like no conventional TV out either. A colourisation programme that doesn't support TV out? Bizarre. RG support are looking into this. Surely they'd know one way or the other?? I HOPE I'm completely wrong on all of the above, but it's looking like $199.50 wasted.
My fault for buying without trialling. Ahh well...you live and learn.

As I feared:

"After doing some research I have found that what you are experiencing is a currently an open issue in our database. Unfortunately, it is not yet known when an update will be released to fix this issue; we are working on getting this resolved asap though. I have added you to our issue notification list so once an update has been released we will notify you."

Red Giant? More like Red Dwarf.

<<I read the license gives you rights to run on one machine only, you can't install on a desktop at home and a laptop in the field, is that true?>>

I found this on their website: "Two computer license. One for your workstation and one for your laptop."

Link: http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/redpledge/

"After doing some research I have found that what you are experiencing is a currently an open issue in our database. Unfortunately, it is not yet known when an update will be released to fix this issue; we are working on getting this resolved asap though. I have added you to our issue notification list so once an update has been released we will notify you."
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In other words, what do want for $200??

Actually you can make people look orange with Vegas Color Corrector quite easily.

John