On top of the organization issues, there's a bit of a learning curve for using this set because, despite the fact that nearly all of the footage is designed to overlay over top of other footage, almost none of it has a transparent background. Instead, to save space, the footage is composited on a completely black (or white) matte. This means that you will have to use the 'Screen' (or 'Overlay', for white mattes) Transfer feature in AE, Motion, or whatever program you happen to be using to make the matte vanish. (This also means that this set is not perfectly compatible with editing programs that don't have Transfer functionality. While even basic editing programs will let you Luma Key footage, the results are decidedly less satisfactory than using these Transfer features.) Unfortunately, this isn't mentioned on the DVD cover, so there will likely be a number of new users that will feel quite confused when they lay an effect over their footage and their underlying footage vanishes. It would be a smart edition to add a notation that the footage needs to use the 'Screen' or 'Overlay' Transfer functions in most effects programs on the back of the DVD.
(Left) Older AlamDV particle generated footage may be useful for certain animations and games. (Right) However, new HD footage like this wall of flame will heavily augment your new live action film.
Variety
With 1650 clips, there are a lot of different options here. From HD video quality clips to clips that would be more suitable in cartoons and video games, there's a little something for everyone. They vary from cinematic augmentation effects like fog and fire, to graphic overlays that allow you to cheat a film-style flicker and damage effect (without requiring a plugin generator like Magic Bullet Looks), to stills of certain weapons and body parts to litter your scenery with, to cinematic bullet hit animations and still bullet holes, to those great and corny Batman-style 'Pow!' and 'Boff!' titles. The one thing that's strangely not included in this volume is HD smoke. (Now, they do have HD Fog which can replicate smoke in most cases with a little creativity, as my demo video shows, but it would have been nice to see a designated smoke option to go along with the fire options.)
Remembering their fan-film accessorizing origins, numerous popular film franchises have still graphics in this set, including ones reminiscent of Star Wars, Stargate, Batman, and Terminator.
Now, although there are a lot of options here, I would say only about ½ of them are actually animations, with the rest of them being stills. And with the HD video clips, half of them are in NTSC and half of them are in PAL, so that further reduces the number of different animated choices. Nonetheless, this is still a plethora of options that are available. As I mentioned earlier, I just wish the organization had been better. An additional hierarchy folder structure would have been a big help. Even just having three main folders (PhotoRealistic Cinema-quality Effects, Cartoon/Game-quality Effects, and Still/Background Graphics) would have been a great aid.
