Hi guys

Just wondered if there are any whispers on the underground grapevine as to when we might expect magic bullet looks for Vegas?

Cheers

Well, Fergus I just wrote their Pre-Sales Dept and if I get an answer I'll post it. I am anxious to know also. I must take this opportunity to say I really like Vegas. However, I just had a second friend in the business switch over to Final Cut Pro. What is particularly unfortunuate about this is that they were both seemingly seasoned, die hard Vegas users a year ago. Their reasons were largely based on plug-in availability.

And there's really nothing to be done about it. When Vegas gets a large enough share of the market, if it ever does, I suppose things will get better. I

thanks Jeff - look forward to the repsonse!

Yes it is a shame about certain plugin availabality - I still have high hopes for Vegas though, especially hoping that RED will make available a 3K raw windows workflow which Vegas can be the centre of!

Hi Jeff

Magic Bullet Looks for Vegas is in it's last few weeks of
testing...maybe even its last week. I've got no exact date but I
would expect to see a release soon this month.

Thanks

what are you guys talking about? MB2 has been out for Vegas now for well over a year.
Ive been using it today actually.
Running through my 6800AGP as well as my 8800GT.

excellent news - can't wait

I hope I am allowed to say this - I am a beta tester for the new Looks and the official opinion on 1st May was indeed "next few weeks" (although that did follow a statement of "next few months" a few hours earlier!).

Either way, the product exists and is in good shape.

Ian . . .

One suggestion would be to use Ultimate S from VASST and their Reelpak plug-ins - Isn't a look you couldn't get from this that you could get from Magic Bullet IMO.

mike

Isn't a look you couldn't get from this that you could get from Magic Bullet IMO.

mike

There is now. This is waaay more than just film looks. How about spot exposure adjustment, rack focus simulation, vignettes, swing/tilt lens simulation, shoulder adjustment, fill light, star filter, etc etc.

This has developed a lot from the old Look Suite.

Michael, I have the reelpacks and they are nice, but Magic Bullet presets are gorgeous. I personally don't have time to play with endless combinations of gradient filters, etc to find the right look.

Well, I still don't see what you can do with Magic Bullets you can't with Vegas' basic filters (specially with secondary color corrector and color curves).

Robin, keep in mind this thread is about the NEW Looks, not the old Looks Suite.

Also, Jeff's comment hits the mark - some people just don't have the luxury of time and have no choice but to rely on preset looks.

Not that Looks is all about presets - far from it: there are 81 tools within the new Looks that have tons of adjustable parameters for precise control.

I absolutely agree, much of what Looks does can be achieved with the Vegas filters - but not all and most certainly not in the same time.

what are you guys talking about? MB2 has been out for Vegas now for well over a year.
Ive been using it today actually.
Running through my 6800AGP as well as my 8800GT.

Just spotted this (for some reason the email notification only arrived a few minutes ago).

Peter, we're talking about the new, as yet unreleased Magic Bullet Looks v3 for Vegas. It's very different to MB2.

Yes, and MB2 isn't available any longer, at least from Red Giant.

I've been using the beta and the new looks is truly amazing. I feel like I'm on the set fine tuning the lights and cameras. And the render quality as usual with MB is superb. With a recommended card the rendering is not bad at all compared to how the MB that comes with Vegas renders.

I agree Marc, it is pretty impressive and a joy to use.

Couple of niggles though, chiefly the inability to view changes made in real time (ie you're working on a still frame, rather than your actual footage as was the case with the previous version - I know this is something they are looking at for a future version). Secondly, it would be nice to have a masking facility WITHIN Looks to allow for changes to specific regions. Of course that can be done using duplicate tracks in Vegas but this would be a welcome addition.

These aside, the new Looks is great. I personally absolutely love the spot exposure and grad exposure. There are too many other aspects to mention but those grabbed my attention straight off.

Latest breaking news is that the most current beta (4) has just been released in which they have now implemented 32-bit processing support. Let's see what it can do!

How does it affect rendering times? Is is as bad as the Bullet HD that came with Vegas 7? Please tell us it is faster!

Well I'm guessing 32 bit support won't increase rendering speed!!

As far as I know, MB HD did not support GPU acceleration (may have got that wrong) but MB3 will ONLY work with GPU acceleration so that might make comparison difficult. MB Looks 3 still doesn't support multithreading (not sure if there are actually any third party fx that do - I certainly don't possess any) but in any event it's quite difficult to make a call about rendering speed comparisons as there is so much more to MB3.

There are a whole load of additional tools in MB3 that are guaranteed to slow you down, such as Swing Tilt (a joy to use!).

One additional niggle (which I also believe they are keen to address soon) is the inability to preview via firewire. In other words you have to wing it when tweaking a look and apply the changes to the media before you can view it on a production monitor.

Again, I'll stress that this is generally a great set of tools and that I believe Red Giant is addressing all these issues for future releases.

As far as I know, MB HD did not support GPU acceleration (may have got that wrong) but MB3 will ONLY work with GPU acceleration so that might make comparison difficult.

I loaded MB HD plugin to see; there is a checkbox for GPU. Perhaps it only appears if there's a graphics card that supports it?

Could well be Rob. My recollection is obviously not good!Your suggestion sounds likely.

Cheers,

Ian

ooh great news! I'm using MB Looks with AE n itz nice. Really hope it will be a great product for Vegas.. We really need more plugins man!

. . .Not that Looks is all about presets - far from it: there are 81 tools within the new Looks that have tons of adjustable parameters for precise control.

CORRECTION on my earlier post: There are indeed 81 buttons for tools but some of the tools appear in more than one of the tabbed areas (Subject/Matte/Lens/Light/Post). There are 36 Look tools and over 100 presets.

any more news chaps?

thanks

Beta 5 just released. Still a few expected teething issues but a release looks imminent!

Thanks Ian

I'm sure everyone will know by now, but Magic Bullet Looks 1.1, with support for Vegas, is now available.

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-looks/

No, hadn't heard anything from RedGiant. Thanks Ian.

Richard

Great News!

Now....what is the cheapest route to getting it?

This is simply incredible!

I just installed MB 1.1 for Vegas and I really LOVE it!
My question is, after adding the effects to the timeline, the preview becomes slow like frame by frame (not too slow, choppy) - I have a quad core, wondering if this is normal. I am having difficulty with syncing sound because of the choppy images.

On my Quad Core preview is fine on Best Auto with the screen at the smaller size (double click on the blu bar of the preview window). Best Full is choppy as you describe at either size.

It's REALLY good. This is kinda like Photoshop for video.

Not sure what the cheapest route is but I think it's a good investment at even the list price!

Regarding the slow down in performance, there are certain tools which have a significant impact and could well cause the slow down you're experiencing. I will look through the beta testers notes and report back.

It's a shame that the Vegas version doesn't allow you to use masks or keyframes like the After Effects version, and the inability to view the results of an effect in real time or preview via firewire to a production monitor are also minor niggles, but overall I think this is a stunning toolbox.

I wholeheartedly recommend every Vegas user to take a look at the demo.

Re performance - things that affect focus, eg the swing tilt tool, will have a much greater impact. Try the simple black and white preset looks and see how that differs from the Focus Left Cool preset.

I'm rendering out a complex 18 minute project right now and I have MB at track level on all video tracks and then further instances on roughly 20% of clips at event level (plus a similar number of Color Curves). The render is around 3 hours on a quadcore 6700 (although I just noticed that CPU usage averages around 50% and peaks at 65% on all four processors - am I right in believing I can force it to use 100% of the processors?).

And good news for Photoshoppers. Red Giant is building a version for PS!

The lack of keyframes is a HUGE omission. I found myself instantly wishing it had that. Do you think it will be added or are us poor Vegas users doomed to have a crippled version?

I'm afraid it looks like that is a limitation of Vegas rather than something Red Giant forgot to put in. Not sure exactly what the limitation is but that's how they described it to me. I guess keyframed masks could be created on a duplicate copy of the track but it's a shame not to be able to keyframe the values of the effects.

Even so, pretty bleedin' nice, innit??

I just installed the Looks for Vegas demo version (XP, single core CPU, Vegas 8.0b).
But when inserting Looks in the Vegas effects chain and clicking on edit I get an error message starting "An OpenGL error ocurred ...". Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.

Yes Ian, it is very nice....beautiful stuff.

I know this depends on many factors - such as CPU speed, etc... - but how much time in average it would take me to render a 100 minutes project (with Magic Bullet effects all the way) into MPG2 and/or QT using Vegas 8?

I understand Magic Bullet slows rendering time a lot, but how much more. A few days ago I rendered a 40 minute project without using Magic Bullet, and I believe it took me a couple of hours, with good preview, easy. Now this current project (with MB) has been rendering for 3 hours and there's no preview (I am assuming MB has something to do with it) and still 0%.

Thanks!

A 100 minute project with MB effect all the way through, if you have an old processor will take a LONG LONG time. There is no average speed that is documented. Processor speed is everything.

I have a"Intel Quad Core" 2.40GHZ - so I think its pretty fast.
The render now is at about 7 hours - and still shows 0% - the aproximate time left goes up to around 24hrs then down to 5 hrs then back up... Is this normal?

Doesn't sound right to me. What does the cpu activity look like in your task manager?

Ctrl/Alt/Del then performance tab.

I agree with Alastair - looks like something has gone wrong.

Great News!

Now....what is the cheapest route to getting it?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=123627 Is this any good, Alastair?

Darn an Blast!!!!!!

Too late! I jumped almost immediately. Maybe an e-mail to Dave will work?

It is just a whole new chapter in what you can do with video though, so, I'm not grumbling.....too much!

Guile, I notice you said that it took a couple of hours to render a 40 minute project without MB the other day. With a Quad core just like yours my workstation would render out a 40 minute project in 18 minutes or so. Is there something else going on in your project that is slowing it down?

Hey my CPU usage is at 2% ... it shows Vegas 8 is running. Now 16 hours and 0%.
Any suggestions?

Hey my CPU usage is at 2% ... it shows Vegas 8 is running. Now 16 hours and 0%.
Any suggestions?

i didn't see any mention of the frame count in your preview window but from your description i'm guessing the answer is it hasn't increased.

i'd suggest canceling the render (CTRL-ALT-DEL if necessary), closing Vegas, re-booting, and trying again.

also: are u rendering in 8bit or32bit? i've had glitches like the one you're experiencing rendering in 32bit mode... it'd hit a certain frame and just stop... in 8bit it rendered fine.

I'd suggest trying a render of a video with no effects, say dragging video of 20 minutes onto the timeline. It should take no more 10 minutes to render. That will narrow down things a bit. Check your CPU usage as well. I'm still bothered about the 40 minute video that took two hours to render that you mentioned.

also: are u rendering in 8bit or32bit? i've had glitches like the one you're experiencing rendering in 32bit mode... it'd hit a certain frame and just stop... in 8bit it rendered fine.

Likewise, had the same here.

Hey I made a few tests.
I tried rendering short projects with MB effects, and they rendered just fine. The frame count was slow but steady.
In the feature project the frame count stops at 587 which is where the effects begin, and stays there. Weird. I appreciate your help.