Friday Freebies - FCP Plugins
Everyone loves free stuff. When that free stuff is cool and useful and good then the world is a better place.
But
before we get all excited about what we can score in a fit of
techno-selfishness it's worth asking what frameworks in the creative
media industries suppourt the prolification of free good and useful
stuff...? The answer is open plug-in architectures.
Any
software developer that thinks that they can internally produce an
application that achieves all desired targets, that is everything to
everyone is out of their mind. Ay software developer who thinks that
their software is ?better? without the contributions of developers
external to the company is completely out of their mind.
The
grand collective consciousness of the external tech-savvy universe will
always exceed the humble internal directions of the development team.
And
there is a trail of highly successful software tools that are so
because of their openness rather than their insularity. Adobe learned
long ago this lesson the open plugin and scripting system for tools
like Photoshop and After Effects became the benchmarks for all other
developers. The internal engine itself of Adobe?s editing system
Premiere Pro is also open to 3rd parties and so we?ve seen the
mind-blowing HD ?real-time with effects? performance of Premiere when
mounted with the Cineform Prospect and Aspect plugin systems - systems
that effectively replace Premiere?s own engine with one tuned
specifically for the Cineform codec. The results make all other
software-only editing systems weak at the knees for real-time
performance.
Despite an oftentimes archaic and overly convoluted
interface and working paradigm ProTools remains the most popular pro
DAW on the market largely because of its plug-in architecture that has
such huge and widespread suppourt form 3rd party developers.
Final
Cut Pro is an NLE that has built up a head of steam to broad
professional popularity and acceptance in a very short time. Final Cut
is effective and very functional but it?s also got a great many flaws.
Its success is arguably not through innovation or outstanding quality -
FCP is tied to neither. But FCP has got two things going for it that
have made it such a massive success.
1) The most dynamic, profound, all encompassing, overbearing marketing campaign of any creative software ever.
and
2) An open scripting and plugin architecture.
The
former is a no-brainer. No body markets like Apple and the marketing of
FCP over the past 5 years has been nothing short of superb. Lots of
money, lots of glam, lots of total white washing hyperbole, lots of
bullshit. Absolutely superb.
But its the later, once the
bullshit has been wiped away, that gives FCP lasting value. Lots and
Lots of plugins - big ones, small ones, funky ones and earnest ones.
And best of all FREE ones.
So you could jump into your Google
toolbar and type ?free fcp plugins? and see what shows up or you could
just use this list below compiled by Oliver Peters
Most
of these are FCP plugins; a very large proportion of them are free and
there?s some links here that arent FCP plugins but are cool none the
less.
The old adage of the sum of the parts being greater than
the whole is an absolute truism when it comes to creative software -
open architectures make for applications that exponentially exceed the
vision of the development team.
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Posted at 12:00AM Jul 11, 2008
by Mike Jones in video |
