Anyone use this plug in before? If so, how did it work for you?

http://www.digitalfilmtools.com/html/digital_film_lab.html

Martin Munthe used this plug-in in his "Camp Slaughter" flick.

check it out:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24161&perpage=15&pagenumber=2

I've just downloaded a demo, and it look pretty good - their ReTimer also looks very useful... together they look similar to Magic Bullet and Magic Bullet looks.

I'll post more once I've done some rendering and can give a comparison of the 2.

OK- I've used Magic Bullet Looks and Digital Film Lab on some test footage, and IMHO Digital Film Lab looks just as good and renders quicker.

It's also worth looking at REALVIZ Retimer as an alternative to Magic Bullet. In the quick tests I've done the results have been similar, but Retimer is a hell of a lot quicker at rendering.

That's not taking anything away from Magic Bullet - it probably does a lot funkier stuff if you get to know how to use it and tweak... but in the PAL SD unpatient world I live in, I'd suggest people look at Retimer and Digital Film Lab as an alternative.

Digital Film Lab looks to be $245 - but I hear Magic Bullet looks is shipping with Vegas now for nothing.

Realviz Retimer SD is $400 - but does lovely slow motion too, so would be an alternative to Twixtor or similar.

Hope this helps anyone, if not, I've learnt more!

Doug, I checked out REALVIZ Retimer and my question is, does this program turn interlace footage into progressive footage? Or is it just for slowing down footage?

Hi Glenn,

What I used it for was to create progressive 25fps footage from interlaced 50i footage... I believe all it's doing (as does Magic Bullet) is to create identical fields every frame (whereas interlaced is 2 different fields in one frame).

That's the great thing about being in PAL land... converting to 25fps from 50i immediately gives you a more filmic look without having to muck around with the frames too much.

Retimer also slows downs footage really well, which can be progressive or interlaced... it's quite flexible it seems.

Check out the Retimer tutorials (esp. the dolphin tute) on the Digital Anarchy site:

http://www.digitalanarchy.com/retimer/retimer_tutes.html

Cheers, Doug.

<<<-- Originally posted by Doug Turner : I hear Magic Bullet looks is shipping with Vegas now for nothing. -->>>

The version that comes with Vegas doesn't do any sort of fields conversion, it only does some looks -- five, to be exact. You can register the plug-in and download five more, but some of them are variations on the original five.

So, while it's nice to get it for free, it's not all that much. The real Magic Bullet for Editors includes 50 looks plus the ability to customize them.

Thanks Doug. On another note, those algolith plug ins look really exciting to, and they work extremely well, from what I have read.

www.algolith.com

The Algolith FRC (Frame Rate Converter) certainly looks like what I'm after - the ability to upres from SDTV to HDTV using sofisticated algorithms... the price is WAY over what I could afford though.