[Gary Oberbrunner]

Hi Allan — what particular effect are you using? There are a few, such as LensFlare, which render over the top of their source. Those naturally overlay the whole image including the background. For those, if you want (say) the flare to be cut off at the edges of the text, you can just step into the title and apply the effect directly to the fill.

Hope that helps!

— Gary Oberbrunner

[Gary Oberbrunner]

(Shameless plug!) Try Sapphire S2_FilmEffect; it can do the simulated pulldown you want as well as color correct/exposure/grain to help you match the look you want.

— Gary Oberbrunner from GenArts

[Gary Oberbrunner]

You mean for the downloadable sample projects? Not right now, as far as I know. Still you can learn a lot just by reading the HTML version. It has some FCP-specific advice as well. Most of the sample projects are dead simple anyway, and you could build them up yourself in FCP with no trouble. But I’ll mention the possibility of doing a set of FCP examples to our demo/training folks here.

— Gary

[Gary Oberbrunner]

We have an online free AE tutorial, most of which applies to FCP as well; though the downloadable sample projects are for AE only. Check it out at https://www.genarts.com/sapphire-ae-tutorial.html; hope that helps!

— Gary

[Gary Oberbrunner]

Hi Robbie — all the major vendors (including GenArts, who I work for) give you a free trial. Sapphire has a very nice and fast FilmEffect for making video look like film, as well as a beautiful glow. There’s even a little optional glow built right into Sapphire FilmEffect so you can soften it up a little to hide imperfections and video noise without having to nest multiple effects. Hope you don’t mind the plug!

— Gary Oberbrunner (GenArts)

[Gary Oberbrunner]

Hi Nikhil. Please email support@genarts.com and we’ll help you out.
— Gary

[Gary Oberbrunner]

Hi Carlos — please email support@genarts.com and we’ll try to help you out. let us know what host application you’re using, what version of Sapphire, and what type of hardware.
— Gary Oberbrunner (from GenArts)

[Gary Oberbrunner]

Hi JWinston. I’m Gary Oberbrunner from GenArts.

Sapphire 1 and 2 can coexist on your DS. If you have a Sapphire2 serial number, we will send you on request a v1 license so you can import and render sequences with v1 plug-ins in them. Unfortunately there is no automatic conform from v1 to v2; we had to make a bunch of changes in v2 to add new functionality (such as multiple-input effects, and effects that work automatically with titles on non-DS Avids) and new effects, and Avid doesn’t provide a way to do the mapping automatically.

— Gary

[Gary Oberbrunner]

Disclaimer: I’m from GenArts. That said, most vendors including us give you a free trial period so you can check them out and see what they can do for you. You can download our Sapphire trial here: https://www.genarts.com/sapphire-ae.html
and we have a free online tutorial here: https://www.genarts.com/sapphire-ae-tutorial.html which can show you some nifty techniques.

— Gary

[Gary Oberbrunner]

Since the plug-ins are the same between AE and PPro, you might find our AE tutorial useful:

https://www.genarts.com/sapphire-ae-tutorial.html

There will be some differences in PPro and other AE-compatible hosts, but most of the same techniques apply.

— Gary