PixelConduit (Conduit v3) — now free, and with support for FCPX

[Craig Seeman]

The number of inexpensive and free plugins for FCPX is about to escalate.

It’s very good that this kind of plugin erector set become available (or more widely available) going beyond Motion.

It will spawn a new industry, PAM, Plugin Asset Management. Additionally someone will develop an online plugin search directory so I can type in the effect I’m looking for and show me the 27 developers that have a matching plugin.

[Herb Sevush]

Thanks Walter, it looks interesting.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Michael Gissing]

yes thanks Walter. I have downloaded and will see how it works with Legend and standalone.

[Shawn Miller]

Nice, I’m glad to see they’re still putting work in on Conduit. I’m bummed that the latest release doesn’t include a Windows version… but I’m glad to see it progressing nonetheless.

Shawn

[Pauli Ojala]

Hi Walter,

thanks for posting this!

I’m the developer of PixelConduit. (You could say Lacquer is a one-person team, I guess :))

Let me know if you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer.

Alex Gollner has written a nice overview of using the Conduit Effect System plugin with FCP X:
https://alex4d.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/pixelconduit-and-final-cut-pro-x-first-look/

Like Alex mentions, there are some issues with FCP X 10.0.7. On some systems FCPX will randomly render green upside down frames; this issue seems to affect all 3rd party plugins, not just Conduit. (It probably depends on the GPU. I haven’t been able to get it to happen on my own box.)

Another 10.0.7 bug is with a checkbox control that I had overridden to act as a way to open the Conduit Editor window within FCP X… This approach worked in previous FCP X releases up to 10.0.5, but not anymore. Honestly, it was a hack anyway.

So, I would recommend using the Conduit Editor only in Motion and publishing readymade effects for FCP X.

[Shawn Larkin]

Hi Puali,

Pixel Conduit is a rather impressive piece of software that was on my radar a while back. I read your blog post about your decision to give it away and I wanted to say think you for your generosity.

Since it can handle DPX (at all popular bit depths), I was wondering if you had any motivation for creating or modifying a plugin so that DPX can be read and manipulated in FCPX / M5.

I realize this is not really an extension of your current plugin or standalone app. But since you did the color science and programming to handle DPX, can that be applied to FCPX/M5 so that one can have the freedom to work off those files natively?

Thanks in advance.

[Pauli Ojala]

“Since it can handle DPX (at all popular bit depths), I was wondering if you had any motivation for creating or modifying a plugin so that DPX can be read and manipulated in FCPX / M5.”

Hi Shawn,

funny you should ask — I once made a prototype of an FxPlug that did exactly this. That was a long time ago when I first wrote the DPX code and Motion was at version 2.0, so that would have been 2005, I think…

I showed it to a few people and the response was basically “It’s pretty cool but I don’t have any need for it”, so I abandoned it… Maybe now in the FCP X era this idea might have some wings again.