Vegas Pro Plug-In ideas for developers

Coursedesign wrote on 1/22/2009, 10:39 AM
Some of these plug-ins are not available for Vegas yet.

I can't help thinking that some of these plugs would have a very good market in the Vegas community.

The "Assistant Editor" concept I presented here last year probably doesn't have enough of an audience among Vegas editors to justify the substantial development effort.

But some of these ideas:

"Electronic Makeup Artist" (recently used extensively on E! Entertainment's Excellence on the Red Carpet series) - wrinkle remover that doesn't lose too much detail.

"Digital Coverup" aka "Electronic Clearasil" - fixes blemishes, changes eye color, tones down the highlight on a bald spot, etc.

"Mr. Fixit" footage rescue using HDR photography techniques to build the brightest possible shadows and the darkest possible highlights and allow you to mix them back into the original image without affecting the color.

"Vibrance+" familiar to Photoshop users

"Glamour" - the final polish, "sprinkling gold dust on everything" through a combination of sharpening highlights and softening shadows. Brings dull DV footage to life.

"Video Painter" creates a cartoon-like look, but it's so subtle that it can be used to make DVD covers, marketing materials, and transitions.

"Graphic Novel Toolkit" - creates a slightly heavier look that is still not cartoonish, similar uses as Video Painter.

See the link above for actual samples.

Perhaps some of the plug-in developers here would be interested in pursuing some or all of these, I believe they could make money on it.

And before somebody posts "You can do all of this in Vegas already," the answer is "No, you can't" and "What you can do takes waaaay more time than using this type of plug-in."

Comments

farss wrote on 1/22/2009, 11:43 AM
The 'before' looks better than the 'after' to me.

Bob.

Coursedesign wrote on 1/22/2009, 12:16 PM
Which one?

Wrinkles?

If so, it's just a matter of what the producer ordered, really the same for the rest.

I'm not generally in favor of treating age as a disease, but sometimes today age gets in the way of the message, because age is not respected at this time (it used to be, and it will be again, but currently it isn't).

A professional makeup artist's advice for making someone look like a crook:

Don't put any makeup on them.

farss wrote on 1/22/2009, 12:33 PM
"Which one?"

All of them.
The first one makes the girl look like a plastic doll. That's just in the low res thumbnail. I dread to think how that'd look on a biggish screen in HD.

The rest have either blown out highlights that my eye was immediately drawn to or wrong skin tone that made one of the subjects look like they had a bad fake tan.
Maybe if the the FXs were dialled back from 11 to 1 they might be of some use. Maybe it's just my view from seeing too much of this obvious digital manipulation.

If they had plugs that can go from the 'after' to the 'before' they might get my money.

Bob.
Coursedesign wrote on 1/22/2009, 12:43 PM
Can't argue with someone's taste.

Video worked on using these plug-ins has been sold to the top networks here, apparently they disagreed with your assessment.

It is of course even possible that the taste in Oz is different, but I would bet against that being valid across the board.

And I think no one should assess video based on very small photos on a web page. That was the reason the photos were clickable to see them much larger (and with cycling through the options).

On top of that there is a web cross platform issue that makes these Mac-only intended images look darker on a PC than on a Mac. For an explanation of this, see http://www.cgsd.com/papers/gamma.web.html.

farss wrote on 1/22/2009, 11:42 PM
"Can't argue with someone's taste."

Indeed.

"It is of course even possible that the taste in Oz is different, but I would bet against that being valid across the board."

There does seem to be some differences in how old school TV studio shoots were done between here and the USA. So actually, yes, I think there are some differences in taste. We seem to have always used less makeup and less lighting. I recall someone explaining the technical reasons for this but don't recall the details.
That has changed. High budget U.S. series shot on film look the same as great work from anywhere. HD has been a bit of an equaliser.

No doubt in skilled hands these plugins could be used to good effect however I see a lot of live TV coverage which for my taste has skin detail wound up too high. My gut feeling is that somethings that work well for still images don't work so well for moving images.

Bob.
jetdv wrote on 1/23/2009, 5:58 AM
You realize some of these already exist?

for "Video Painter" - look at the Cartoonr from newbluefx

for "Electronic Makeup Artist", they also have a "Touch Up" tool.

etc...