Red Giant launches Magic Bullet 11, announces FCP X support
Randi Altman
June 27, 2011

Red Giant launches Magic Bullet 11, announces FCP X support

PORTLAND, OR — Red Giant, makers of plug-ins and apps for visual effects, is offering Magic Bullet 11, a big release that includes Looks 2 and the new Cosmo.

Looks 2 features a new UI that encourages users to make use of the controls as well as the presets — of which there are 64 — all designed by professional colorists and designers. “Some are new and some are updated to make them look more appealing,” says president/co-founder Andrew Little.

There are new tools like lens distortion, offering a more broad set of effects and integrated Colorista technology. For those who are more technical, the tool now has scopes, including hue/lightness, skin scope, hue/saturation and memory colors. Little says it’s faster and handles higher resolutions, even up to 8K for those Red users out there. And it’s backward compatible to Looks 1.

Little reports the most requested feature from users is now inside Magic Bullet 11 — video out. “So you can now preview your looks on a video monitor, and we support Blackmagic, AJA, and any card using QuickTime.”

It also offers Cosmo, a new application designed for cosmetic cleanup, blemish removal, smoothing skin tones and softening problem areas.

Little reports that Cosmo came out of a need that Magic Bullet creator Stu Maschwitz had on a production. “He just comes back and says, ‘I just need X,’ and Cosmo was one of those things.”

He describes the tool as “very skin tone aware. We worked to get settings as close as possible to what users would want. When video comes in, it uses some Colorista and Mojo technology, and we get it at least 80 percent close to done in step one.” There are only six controls, making it easy to tweak the work, and it renders very fast, according to Little.

In related news, Red Giant has redesigned its Website, which is now found at www.redgiant.com. It offers three areas of interest, Products, Support and RGTV.

During a chat with Little, I asked him about Apple’s Final Cut Pro X and what it was like to get their hands on the SDK just as users were getting their hands on the redesigned software. 

“Apple is supporting plug-ins with Final Cut Pro X, so we are thrilled,” he reports. “We love Final Cut, and it’s a big business for us, and we will continue to support Final Cut, no question. We are just figuring out the technology involved.” 

He says they are still going through the process. “Of our 55 products, 25 support Final Cut. We are a plug-in company and we port to everything under the sun, and they are continuing with fxPlug 2.0 SDKs, in fact they just upgraded it.” 

He adds that Red Giant is “not worried about the effort, and hopes in the next few days to be much more specific about when Magic Bullet will support Final Cut.” 

He also adds that all compatibility upgrades will be free, as that is Red Giant’s history.