Ease of Use
Installation is easy, with two separate installer packages available on the PC (one for After Effects, and one for Premiere Pro). The manual is included as an HTML file, and while it is fairly descriptive, running the “Frames Plus” plugin for pure 24p output can still be confusing for a newcomer. This isn’t a simple drag-and-drop plugin.
Essentially, to convert your footage to 24p in After Effects with “Frames Plus”, you create a 24p project and import your 60i footage, making sure to tell AE not to de-interlace the footage. After placing the footage on the timeline, you apply the Frames Plus plugin and hit the “auto setup” button, which almost always works as long as you’ve setup your project properly. You then set your “detail pattern size” and “motion detection” parameters (these affect both render quality and render speed, and should be adjusted to taste depending on the source footage). You can also choose to add de-artifacting at this point. When you’re ready to render, you can export as pure 24p or as 60i with pulldown (Red Giant recommends a specific pulldown cadence for this option). While this process sounds relatively easy, forgetting just one step can lead to really horrible looking footage.
The new “Frames” is a little easier to use. You import your footage and apply the plugin. Then select “24p De-interlace” and adjust the “field interpolation type” and “field smooth” until you come up with a result that you find pleasant (I found that the “blend” setting with 75 on the “field smooth” produced the best results). The plugin then automatically converts the footage to 24p and then back to 60i (24p with pulldown). “Frames” works equally well in either Premiere Pro or After Effects.
Opticals is also a little confusing to get a handle on at first, but once you get the hang of which way to adjust the sliders, and which layers need to be selected in the A/B boxes to get the effect working, it becomes pretty painless to operate. Likewise, Letterboxer, Deartifacter, and Broadcast Spec are all extremely easy to use; each really only has one self-descriptive option to choose from.
Depth of Options
You actually get five different programs in this one package, and none of them are filler, so you have a lot to work with here.
The one with the least amount of options, that I use all the time, is the Letterboxer plugin. Slap it on an adjustment layer in After Effects and pick the letterbox ratio you want (anywhere from 4:3 to 2.76:1). When used in this manner you’re able to move your original footage up and down behind the letterboxing, effectively allowing you to reframe your shots in post. It is very cool.
