Performance
I tested a few different renders within Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 using my homebuilt Athlon 64 3200+ machine with 2GB of RAM. For the “Wild Shaking” preset, which I assumed would be one of the more intensive motion presets, I came up with a very fast speed of 10 seconds of rendering time for 240 frames of footage. Not bad at all! In fact, most of the motion plug-ins could be pretty well previewed in realtime without a render. It’s a bit jumpy, but definitely clear enough to give you a good idea of what the final product will look like. Applying the Angled Blur preset to some footage took a little longer, with 360 frames taking 60 seconds to render. Still not too shabby at all, however. I’m quite impressed with the performance of these plug-ins!
Just in time for any upcoming campaign spots, the "Flag" preset in Wiggle will add a patriotic flair to any candidate's commercials.
Value
For $139.95 there are definitely some worthwhile effects here that I haven’t seen duplicated in other plug-in packages. In theory you could manually replicate the motion effects by keyframing the position of your video, but this would take forever. The blurs and warps are a nice bonus and could be very useful for transitions and some action/sci-fi special effects. But I think the real value here is the time you’ll save by using the Active Camera/Earthquake filters and their accompanying presets.
The "Angled Blur" preset in Shear Energy adds a cool prism-esque effect to your video, and seems to change dynamically depending on the brightness in the scene.
Final Comments
Despite a few bugs in Adobe Premiere Pro, NewBlueFX’s Motion Effects is a high-quality, utilitarian tool that will easily make your video jump around the screen in a wide variety of ways and in a very small amount of time. The presets are great, the parameters are self-descriptive and intuitive, and the render times are phenomenal. For anyone who needs to simulate movement in their video, this plug-in is going to be a huge timesaver.
Ease
of Use
7.0
Depth
of Options
8.0
Performance
10.0
Value
8.0
Overall
Score
8.3
Ryan Graham is the director of Livelihood, a critically acclaimed ultra-low budget zombie comedy. He also runs 37.5 Productions, a post production company specializing in giving a Hollywood sheen to independent films. In his spare time he is the lead guitarist for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.
