Software Preview:     Magic Bullet Editors 2.0    Publisher: Red Giant Software    Genre: FCP Effects Plug-in Software    Release Dates: October 22, 2005    Website: Red Giant Software    Examples: Click Here    Demo Downloads: Click Here    Cost: $395.00      Review Date: October 15, 2005    Reviewed By: Jeremy Hanke

We got a chance to check out the beta version of Magic Bullet Editors 2.0 and it's pretty darn slick. While there are still some kinks to be worked out, it's definitely looking to be an excellent application for the video editor who wants to be able to deal with everything in Final Cut Pro or Sony Vegas, without exporting stuff out to After Effects.

Here is some of the information Red Giant provided us with about their new plug-in package. A few of the new additions include:

DeepColor RT™ render engine
Our new DeepColor RT™ render engine is the world's first real-time filmlook product. It was developed to utilize your computer's graphics card processor (GPU) to deliver the same high-quality results with up to realtime preview and render speeds. DeepColor RT is a proprietary technology that processes pixels at four times the precision of similar applications and applies floating point imaging processing to ensure the highest possible output quality.
(Note: Magic Bullet Editors 2 will work without a supported graphics card but will revert to CPU rendering and therefore not utlilize our DeepColor RT rendering technology.)

10 New Look Presets

• Crime Scene mimics the main look in the original CSI TV series.
• Echo Blue mimics the look in the movie The Island.
• Soft Screen
• Bossy Pink
• Big Country Use on a clean image for tremendous outdoor punch.
• Night Time 2 A day for night look.
• Paper White Inspired by gold tone movie posters.
• Red Light A warm red tone makes the red hotter and the blues move to purple tones.
• Bleach Bypass Light A variation of our original Bleach Bypass for low key images.
• King of Pain mimic the look in the movie Lord of War

Compression Correction™
Magic Bullet Editors 2 Compression Correction™ deartifacting tool is designed to repair the damage caused by video compression and video formatting. Our proprietary engine does chroma reconstruction that smooth the edges of outlines and objects to provide better looking output (see example below). This tool can also be used to pre-process video material for better chroma-key results from DV and HDV formats.

3 Compression Correction options

• DV/HDV - 4 sample chroma reconstruction to compensate for 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 sampling
• HDCAM - 3 sample reconstruction to compensate for 3:1:1 sampling
• Broadcast - 2 sample reconstruction to compensate for 4:2:2 sampling

	Before Compression Correction	After Compression Correction

Closing Thoughts
Obviously there's a lot to look forward to with the new Magic Bullet Editors 2.0 coming out later this month. In our November 15th issue, we'll do a complete review of the software and show you how it stacks up.

-Jeremy