Ideas for the future

Here’s the list of annoyances that I might be able to fix in the near future:

  • Widescreen – crop based on selected aspect ratio, allowing for simple horizontal or vertical offset
  • Rounded corners crop – will eventually be integrated into the Feathered Crop

Want to add something? Put your request in the comments below. As usual, donations could speed up the release.

Your suggestions

  • 4, 9 and 16-up PIP effect
  • Transitions: blur, directional blur – take a look at transitions from FilmImpact.net
  • Glow effect
  • Timecode display with clip name
  • Shaky cam

76 Responses to Ideas for the future

  1. Wouldn’t it be handy if we had a Crop tool that allowed for rounded corners?

    • BartW says:

      Awesome idea. It would require more complex algorithm, than either one used in Vignette or Feather Crop, but is doable.

      • Pierre Louis Beranek says:

        Yes, +1 for a Crop with rounded corners! The important thing here is to make sure the rounded corners keep the same aspect ratio whether applied to a perfect square or to a rectangle. The distorted round corners we get in the Titler are uuuugly!

  2. strypes says:

    A “format clip” plugin that works on an adjustment layer so you can quickly reformat spots between 4:3 and 16:9. Mask, pad, resize with presets.

    • BartW says:

      I assume you mean cropping to a selected aspect ratio. This is already on the road map of feathered crop.

      • strypes says:

        Format would be quite useful. Ideally it can work over adjustment layers, and you can use it to format to any sequence formats (eg. Dvcpro HD, PAL, NTSC D1, NTSC DV, 1080 fulll raster, etc).

        Eg. for Up Conversion

        Input format: 720×576 4:3 (list of formats)
        Interlace: No
        Output format: 1440×1080 16:9 (list of formats)
        Resize Option: Center Crop (or Pillar box or Stretch to Fill)
        Pan and Scan Offset: X = -20
        Y = 0
        Pre-Scale: 100%
        Post Scale: 103%
        De-interlace= No

        Or Cross Conversion:

        Input format: 720×576 16:9 (list of formats)
        Interlace: Yes

        Output format: 720×576 4:3
        Resize Option: Letterbox (or Stretch to Fill [FHA], or Center Crop)
        Pan and Scan Offset: X = 30
        Y = 10
        Pre Scale: 100%
        Post Scale: 110%
        De-interlace = Yes

        Or Down Conversion:

        Input format: 4096×2160 1.9:1 (Red 4K)
        Interlace: No

        Output Format: 720×576 4:3
        Interlace: No
        Resize Option: Letterbox (or 16:9 FHA, or Center Crop).
        Pan and Scan Offset: X = 10
        Y = 0
        Pre Scale: 100%
        Post Scale: 103%
        De-Interlace: No

        • BartW says:

          Actually, there are already multiple more effective ways to accomplish this. For one, you can use “Scale to frame size” checkbox in the preferences which will automatically scale your footage when it is brought to the timeline. You can also right click the clip and choose the same option, if it is already present on the timeline.

          You can also create presets of motion controls with proper scaling (right click on the “Motion” effect and click “Save preset…” and then apply it to the clip or to the adjustment layer.

          If you want to upscale or downscale the whole sequence, it is best done during export in Export->Media. When you select different formats, you can also choose how to crop your footage (in the “source” window above the source picture. And then you can also save it as a preset.

  3. strypes says:

    A directional blur transition, blur transitions, easy 4 up PIP effect.

    • BartW says:

      Good idea, although I have not dabbled with the transitions yet, it’s a different beast altogether. 4, 9 and 16 up PIP is an interesting idea, and relatively uncomplicated I think.

  4. cmbrougham says:

    Bart,

    Thanks for the excellent additions to the Pr toolkit; I’m very much looking forward to the border option/plug-in, as this is another one that Adobe has never seen fit to provide us with.

    This is perhaps a bit of a departure from the creative effect plug-ins you’ve created, but what I could really use is a modified Timecode filter that would actually read the name of a clip it is applied to and display it as a burn-in. This would be especially helpful with tapeless media sources. Additionally, having user-specified text fields that could be displayed (for descriptions, watermarking, whatever) would be tremendously helpful. There is another Pr plug-in that works somewhat in this vein, but it’s forte is date/time, which is of not much use to me, personally (and I think it only works with DV/HDV, anyway).

    Anyway, keep up the good work–looking forward to what the future brings!

    • BartW says:

      Thanks.

      I think the border option is something that I’ll add to the Feathered Crop – this way it will have a bit more versatility.

      I’ll investigate the timecode thing. It is completely different from simple per-pixel alteration, but it might prove interesting as well.

      • cmbrougham says:

        Border in Feathered Crop would be fine–personally, I’m a fan of more options in fewer plug-ins. Do you think it would apply before the feather or afterward (as they would obviously have different effects)? In my mind, afterward makes the most sense, as you could potentially use the border property post-feather to add a glow, of sorts.

        Feature request for Vignette: instead of the effect defaulting to fixed pixel values for width and height, would it be possible for these values to be calculated as a percentage of the dimensions of whatever clip they’re applied to? For example, a 300×200 vignette on a 1920×1080 clip is not that useful; however, a starting point of something like 90% of those dimensions (i.e. 1728×972) gets you an immediately more useable default. For what it’s worth, I think you could go all the way to 100% of the clip’s dimensions–that might make even more sense.

        Also, I assume by “Full Graphical UI” in the forthcoming 1.2 release means that the effect will have similar live manipulation handles as the Feather Crop plug-in does, correct? If not, add that as a feature request too :)

        • BartW says:

          I hear you about the sensible defaults. Percentage is an interesting idea, I will think about it. For the time being I suggest creating presets for various footages (right click on the effect and choose “save preset”). I think the GUI will address it as well.

          Border – before feather (feather eases into the border color). Mostly it would be like another crop put on the crop filled with color. I’m not sure how the after would work.

          • cmbrougham says:

            Thanks for considering the percentage–and to be clear, I’m referring to only using percentage to calculate the pixel dimensions of the vignette. Hope that makes sense…

            Now that I think about it, border-before-feather makes more sense. Let me adjust my feature request: add an option to the border parameter that allows the border color to be applied ONLY to the feathered region. So, the cumulative effect would be like this:

            1) Border + no feather = hard-edged border, inside and out
            2) Border + feather = hard-edge border inside, soft-edge outside
            3) Border + feather + “Border only in feathered area” = soft-edge border, inside and out

            Basically, what I’m hinting at is that occasionally I like to create more of a “glow” effect on a photo/PIP, rather than a border. That’s hard to do right now with the built-in Pr effects. Essentially this option would create something like a 0-100-0 opacity ramp for the specified border color.

            Another feature request for Feathered Crop: I’d like crop and feather value “locks” like those that exist on the Motion:Scale effect with the “Uniform Scale” checkbox, so that dragging the one unlocked value crops/feathers equally for all sides. When the user unchecks this to manipulate each side/value independently, I think the value should be applied to all sides. Moreover, I personally think this should be the default state, as I typically will want a fairly equivalent crop and feather on all sides. This lack of a uniform crop is something that’s always driven me nuts about the built-in Crop effect.

          • BartW says:

            Thanks for your input about border, it’s something else to consider. Glow I think is an idea for another plugin altogether.

            Proportional crop is already available – just hold alt/option + shift while dragging one of the corners. For feather, if you use the joint feather control (upper left corner circle), you will get symmetrical crop. I might add the use of shift for the joint feather control, if it is necessary.

            Thanks for your generous support as well!

          • BartW says:

            Come to think about it, you can achieve the border effect by piling two feathered crops on each other, one filled with color, another filled with transparent. I’m going to add border anyway, this is pretty simple, but I don’t think that I will be adding outside feather to it.

  5. cmbrougham says:

    *sheepish* A-ha! I’m not much of a “direct manipulator” in Pr, as I’ve typically found the method of accessing the controls a bit odious. However, your solution is very nice, and I think that will suffice.

    Glow as a separate effect would be great, and actually, I did think of an instance where having a separate Border plug-in would be helpful: whenever you have something non-rectangular defined by an alpha channel. Maybe Glow and Border could be bundled together as something like “Edge Effects” so you could build presets for cool compound looks; think of Layer Styles in Photoshop. Heck, if you could replicate most of the Ps Layer Styles in a Pr plug-in, you’d have a winner on your hands.

    Always glad to support those who make great stuff for my favorite NLE!

    • BartW says:

      Have you looked at “Alpha glow” effect already present in Premiere? This one would take care of the irregular alpha. It works almost like a border, not a real glow. Except it “cuts” the corners. Literally :)

      • cmbrougham says:

        Yeah, it’s completely gross :) Not much use for it, personally.

        Adobe needs to deep six about 90% of their built-in effects, and pay innovative developers like you a handsome fee for effects that editors REALLY need.

  6. Thanks for this usefull plugins!
    My idea for a plugin:
    a plugin that imports encore subtitle txt files and burns them with a nice font in the video.

    Greetings, and good luck with your projects.
    Christiaan

    • BartW says:

      Thanks.

      This kind of plugin is unfortunately out of my league – I’m not even certain it can be done as a plugin in Premiere – although I understand perfectly why you would need it.

  7. Peter Tours says:

    I’d love it if somehow TC could be displayed while hoverscrubbing a clip in a bin

    • BartW says:

      This is something that can only be accomplished by submitting a feature request to Adobe.

  8. Dennis says:

    Hi Bart, thanks for your excellent plug-ins !!
    They are very useful !
    My proposal (don’t know if it already exists, if so could you tell me where to find it?), a camera-shake effect similar to the one created by vfxbro for AE.
    Because I like to shoot my footage using a tripod and add the shake when my composition is finished.
    Now I add the shake by key-framing and alter the image “second by second” and, obviously, this takes an incredible amount of time.
    Really hope you can fix this !!
    And continue your great works !
    Greetings from Amsterdam,
    Dennis

  9. cmbrougham says:

    Got a new one for you, Bart–and I think drawing on your expertise with masks and matting, and might not be too much of a stretch…

    I have a lot of documentary project I work on that utilize old, decaying Betacam SP footage–that means a one-way ticket to Dropoutsville. Presently, there is no easy on-clip method to fix these in hits and dropouts in Pr; it involves duplicating a clip, stacking it above, trimming it and slipping it forward or backward a few frames, and then cropping the “patch” file above. It’s ugly, but it works and it saves a lot of work in Ae.

    What I’d love to see is a Pr version of something like the Avid Scratch Removal effect (if I’m remembering correctly–been a long time since I’ve been in front of Media Composer); essentially it was a specialized version of Animatte. With it, you could slice your affected clip around the hit, apply the effect, matte/mask around the hit, and then select either a temporal or spatial offset to patch over the hit. It worked a treat back in the day and I got really fast with setting it up. I could patch up otherwise unusable video and make it look almost as good as new.

    I think you have almost all the framework there for such a plug-in in Pr. Your Feathered Crop plug-in is the starting point; it really just needs the capability to composite over the clip it is applied to, and then fill the cropped region with replacement pixels from either somewhere else in the current frame (spatial offset) or from earlier/later than the current frame (temporal offset). Avid worked in fields, which was usually where hits were found (they were rarely frame hits), but I don’t know if Pr offers up this kind of information through the plug-in architecture. Even if it doesn’t patching a frame is what I do know and it works well enough.

    I’ve got a few documentaries currently in process that rely almost solely on Beta footage, so… who do I need to bribe? :)

    • BartW says:

      Well, the answer is pretty obvious, you need to bribe me :)

      It’s certainly feasible. Drop me an email, we’ll talk details.

      • cmbrougham says:

        Haha! Yeah, that’s what I thought 😀

        It obviously seems like a “plug-in out of time,” but my thinking is that there are still a gazillion hours of footage on old, disintegrating tape stock that will be increasingly moved into the digital realm over the coming years. In the past two years, I’ve worked on two projects alone that have involved more than 1000 BetaSP tapes, moving them from the analog world into the digital one. And through that, several completed (or at least work-in-progress) projects have come out of those libraries that are still relevant. The decay of tape, however, is a constant.

        I’ll shoot you an email and we’ll talk. Thanks!

        • BartW says:

          It’s not that “out of time”. Think about rig removal. It’s basically a primitive clone tool in the form of a plugin…

  10. It seems that with just a little bit of added code, you’d be able to make your Power Window effect into an Anonymizer effect – for witness protection etc. That effect is used by hundreds of people in news and documentary cutting every day.

    • BartW says:

      Hi Jarle,

      Thanks, it’s a good idea. I’ve been toying also with adding blur to the Power Window. I’ll keep that in mind.

  11. Colin Smith says:

    Just an FYI that law enforcement is moving away from blurs to hide faces due to the fact that the pixels in a blur can be de-blurred and they expect software to get better at this over time. Blurs are still good for reality TV to hide logos on hats and shirts, etc. but solid black blobs are going to be standard operating procedure.

    • BartW says:

      Interesting info, Colin, thanks. In that case, CI Vignette is perfect for solid black blobs :)

  12. Greg says:

    A half grad filter for Premiere the same as you get in the Photoshop RAW file import window.

    Cheers

  13. Tai Shan says:

    Been getting a lot of mileage out of 8 and 16 point garbage mattes… one with a feathered edge would save a lot of time going to After Effects!

    Thank you for your excellent plugins, I just found them this week and they’ve already saved a shot!

  14. Evil Edison says:

    +1 on the request for a “Shaky cam” effect in Premiere Pro. Something like the wiggle expression in AE would be awesome!

    • BartW says:

      Noted. Wiggle expression should be quite easy to implement, but the shaky cam that would look like a real-world shaking camera is considerably harder.

  15. Santanu says:

    Quick implementation of Reflection plugin using Crop. As of now this can be created with a copy of the layer. Flip it vertically and add CI crop vignette to the flipped layer. If copy and flip features are added to the CI crop vignette this could be done easily using a single effect.

    • BartW says:

      Very interesting idea. Not easy, and possibly expensive computationally, but interesting.

  16. Jon says:

    Would there be a way to:

    1) Stop Premiere from maximising whenever it autosaves even though it’s in the background. (Mac OSX)

    2) Set a default “Source Range” to sequence in/out?

    3) Sync a bin in Premiere to a folder on your computer, so as you add assets to the folder they automatically import into Premiere?

    4) I know how to choose a default transition but to adjust the default transitions frame length?

    5) Copy and paste transitions?

    Cheers!

    • BartW says:

      1, 3 and 4 not possible.

      2 – disable work area bar in the timeline panel menu and it will be the default option on exporting.

      5 – select a transition in the timeline, copy it, select the edit points where you want to paste it and paste it.

  17. Jon says:

    Would it be possible to have a colour picker with your Temperature plugin? to select white in the frame. Also, would a kelvin scale be possible? so you could add or minus kelvin instead of just numbers? Cheers

    Love your plugins by the way, I’ve just moved over from Final Cut Pro 7, and Premiere seems to be missing a few bits I usually use, which you’ve addressed!

    • BartW says:

      Thanks. I think the colour picker might be possible. But the Kelvin scale would be meaningless, and misleading in this case, because it’s not linear, and impossible to properly determine without knowing the original white point temperature.

  18. zan says:

    Garbage Mattes with feather and invert would be amazing!!

  19. Sudharsun says:

    Anamorphic look plugin?

  20. Fernando says:

    Hi!
    Would it be possible to add independent crop transform points to the Feathered Crop plugin addition to the four corners? It would be like a selectables 4, 8, 16… crop transform point for acurates crops
    Your work is amazing, thank you very much.

  21. Daniele Ghisi says:

    Hi, your work is amazing, the feathered crop and the simple mask are extremely helpful, thanks.

    I’d like to add my +1 to the selectable crop transform points…
    Like a 4-, 8- or 16-points garbage matte with feather. That would be awesome!

    Thanks again.

  22. Christiaan says:

    Yes indeed, a 4-, 8- or 16-points garbage matte with feather. That would be awesome!

  23. Dmitriy says:

    I dreamed about filter working like Selective Color in Photoshop. I know about AE filter, but I think it will not be superfluous in Premiere )

  24. Nick says:

    A matte plugin that would allow for creation of colored mattes (black primarily in my application) that can be varies shapes, graduated and opacity controlled. Also the ability to have several mattes applied to same image and the mattes have the availability to animate/track. If possible contact me I’ll donate to get it done.

  25. LukeR says:

    I see the request for Blur/shakeyCam/and transitions may well be already offered for FREE via RedGiant Universe plugin just launched. Some of the universe plugins are free others u pay subscription for http://www.redgiant.com/store/universe (I in no way represent redgiant but I downloaded the universe plugins and they work well – no reason to reinvent the wheel on your part here) BTW not trying to push another product AS I LOVE your plugins esp simpleMask and powerwindow. Keep up the great work! Thank YOU!

    • BartW says:

      Red Giant Universe is a great product. I have tremendous respect for the Supernova programming environment that they showed. And I do not intend to reinvent the wheel. I believe NAB will also bring some other interesting developments.

  26. LukeR says:

    ohh btw I just saw that you are from Warsaw!!! Awesome! I was born in Świebodzin but now have lived in the USA for almost 30years (since I was 5yo so I cannot write polish well but do still speak it!) thank you for the amazing work and really outstanding to see a fellow countryman keep the progression alive! Thank you for your gifts and sharing it with the world!

  27. Rahul Shetty says:

    It’s fabulous to see all this plugins in action.. I am an engineering student. I am really interested in visual fx and want to enter this field to build my career.. My knowledge on this subject is quite average and this i came to know by reading the comments on this particular site.. Sounds quite knowledgeable.. Well i am not from a very financially strong bacckground but i just love this field.. Also i wanna learn how to code for such plugins but I’ve really no idea from where to start.. If anyone can pass me info on sites, materials and video tuts that could lead me to be a professional vfx artist I would really Thankful.. You can pass all the info at shettyrahul8june@gmail.com.. Thank you very much

  28. Ad Evertz says:

    Hello Bart, I missing in Adobe Premiere CS5.3 Radial Blur or Spin Blur, Adobe removed this video effect, Thank you very much

    • BartW says:

      I was thinking about just that the other day, and made preliminary inquiries, but implementing Radial Blur correctly is harder than it looks at first sight.

  29. Your feathered crop is better than any of the others. I used it with PproCS6. Will it work with PproCC2014?

  30. Joerg Schiele says:

    Hi Bart, I don´t like to copy Titles, rename it,and put them in another timeline again ;-( In FCP 7 it was so easy to open existing titles in the timeline and just change it. Example: For different languages… This would be nice for PremCC 😉

    • BartW says:

      Hi, Joerg. I recommend you take a look at After Effects template workflow, which was added to CC for this reason. Unfortunately there is no text box control exposed to programmers in Premiere SDK so far.

      Although judging from the fact that these controls appear now in Premiere itself, chances are it will change at some point in the future. I would expect quite a few text plugins to appear on the market then.

  31. Joerg Schiele says:

    Hi Bart, thank you for your fast and competent answer… the AE workflow might be a good alternative at first…I´ve seen a free text plugin at coremelt.com…maybe also practical?

  32. Is there a way to set a Mark in PP and immediately be able to annotate rather than having to click in description box?

  33. I have to create closed captions for all projects here in Canada. Presently I make captions for CAE608 captions and repeat all timings and content for CAE708 captions. It would be great to be able to just duplicate the 608 captions and change setting from 608 to 708.

  34. Hi there – I just upgraded to Mac OS Catalina and I’m hating it so far lol. Lots of software is broken now, including yours. Any plans on updating Power Window? I ask because I still like it, I use it all the time, and no one has come up with something similar. But Catalina doesn’t like it. It didn’t give an error, just said it couldn’t verify it or something. Wish I had more info for you. Thank you for the great tools!

    • BartW says:

      Hi Jeremy. Unfortunately, this is not something that I will address anytime in the foreseeable future. I have since switched careers and I am no longer supporting the plugins. Thank you for being their user and sincere apologies for leaving you like this. The required effort goes beyond my current capabilities.

  35. I just wanted to say thank you for making these plugins available. I was looking for a nice clean easy way to add a border around a CROPPED clip. Took me a minute to figure out how to use Feathered Crop to do it, but it worked perfectly. Thank you so much. –mouser

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