CSI Style burn-out transition

[Glenn Sakatch]

You will probably find that most of us use the glow effects from either Sapphire or Boris FX.

You can build one from scratch using your basic color corrector. Play with the gamma settings and the gain settings. They will give you a pretty good over exposure. The glow is a nice touch to add as well, but i don’t think Avid has a native glow filter. At some point you’ll want to get into layering of effects, and add them in as a screen or additive layer. So plug ins will eventually creep into the process…which is why most of us just use Sapphire or Boris. For any kind of online editing, they pay for themselves pretty quickly.
Just the legalizing filters alone can get you through a lot of QC reports, not to mention all the toys that clients are always asking for.

Glenn

[Frank Spencer]

Hi Glenn

Thanks for that. Most of my work is stright documentary, so sfx don’t have too much interest here. I had looked at Sapphire, but at $1,600 it’s a bit much for me at the moment. I will continue to experiment with glows etc as you suggest.

I am also interested in your comments about legalizing filters. I have always used the Avid native filter for this. Does Sapphire/Boris offer significant benefits. That might make the difference for me..

Thanks

Frank

Media Composer 5.5, Win 7
PAL, UK

[Glenn Sakatch]

If you are not doing broadcast work that goes through a strict QC point, than the legalizers won’t be worth it for you. I started using sapphires chroma clamp years ago when we were having difficulty getting an illegal gamma error through an outside broadcasters QC process. Since then i have refined my legalizing with a combination of different filters to ensure legal without killing the look i’m going after. I’ll add that i typically only offline on the Media Composer, and do 99 percent of my onlines on a DS system, so many of the tools i use may not be available on MC in the first place. An interesting example would be using sapphires glow effect with the “Keep effect legal” button turned on. I’ve had that sent back from QC companies, and had to add secondary legal to it. Sometimes you just have to know your broadcaster, and your QC path. Unfortunately that is information that usually costs money at some point in either time and shipping for fixes plus the “oops” factor, or the purchase of other filters to fix the problem before it starts.

My two cents.

Glenn

[Frank Spencer]

Thanks Glenn

That is all very interesting – if a little scary.
I’ll start saving up for Saphire.

Frank

Media Composer 5.5, Win 7
PAL, UK

[Ronn Kilby]

Even if you don’t have BCC, you should have “Avid FX” – which includes BCC Glow and many other filters you can animate to achieve this look.