#Hollywood FX
Fred,
As discussed, we have finally started to play around with Hollywood FX. We have
examined in some detail about eight of the effects. We just did them in low
resolution but they seemed quite nice. The casual observation makes it appear
that they simply are especially fancy toaster effects. But it does appear, at
this early stage, that they do a few things that you cannot do in Toaster. For
instance, one effect enables you to move a number of "boxes" across the screen.
The boxes can contain, I think (and in one example we did) moving images. So,
you can create a feel of layering and movement. (The reason I seem so vague is
that the guy who works for me, Russ, did all the work and I just saw a video of
it and we didn't have time to talk too much about it).
The rendering time seems fairly quick – maybe 3 minutes a frame depending on
the effect. We have a warp engine so maybe that is speeding things up. But it
does appear you can produce several good seconds overnight.
Anyways, I will give you a more thoughtful assessment in a couple of weeks. We
are hoping to get our hands on a beta flyer soon and see how the two products
interact.
PSS
As we start exploring, I would love to hear about others experiences.
I think they are coming out with some new effects.
So far the company has been very responsive.
To me, the step to make it a real powerhouse program, something that would be
worth hundreds of dollars (maybe more) would be to widely increase the number
of effects, but give the user control over a broad range of parameters – in
effect providing a poor man's Pinnacle , albeit with rendering time.
(I should add that I could not tell how bad the pixelization was because we
looked at low resolution and my VCR was jumpy. But first impressions were that
the quality was pretty decent, although someone else did indicate they didn't
think the quality was professional enough. We have done a couple of
"professional" videos (not broadcast) and I would use the stuff assuming the hi
res will produce some improvement)
Anyways, enough rambling…
Michael