To Plug-In or Not to Plug-In...

[kai]

Let's hear it:

[Dan_Lahav]

I love plugins. Sometimes they make life soo much easier! ...But they are definately not necessary ALL of the time. *;D

[Caveman]

Some plug-ins are a must have !!!
I am very fond of trapcode products! SHINE baby !!!!
My big beef with plugins is this.. you have to buy a whole lot of useless ones just to get one thats decent. More often than not its just not worth it.

Must have plug-ins....
SHINE and 3D stroke by trapcode.
RE:FLEX for morphing
Digital Anarchys text anarchy is pretty cool(more just time saving stuff)
and also psunami and aurura sky by digital anarchy.
and the biggest must have if you're on FC4 is
AUTOMATIC DUCK (though pricey it's really cool!!)
and lastly for time manipulation.. RE: TWIXTOR.
More affordable than others and works great!!

Thats my 22222222 cents

;D CAVEMAN

[skettalee]

hey caveman do you have automatic duck? cause im an avid editor and i was thinking about gettin it but dont know anyone with it to tell me how cool it works !

[Jive]

I don't really even have any plugins installed, but I do definitely see the uses for them in my everyday use of AE. But if you think about it, a lot of the effects that are "stock" in AE were once plugins for it that were later integrated. Would a purist not use those either? Pulling a key would be exceptionally diffucult in such a case ;D

[Caveman]

True DAT JIVE ;)
Skettalee. I'm sure A. DUCK works the same for AVID as for FC4.
In which case....HOLY ____!!! It's incredible. It imports EVERYTHING! It converts all the dissolves and transitions into Opacity keyframes where you can alter them in the timeline to tweak them out just right. Everything is keyframed in layers... position, rotation, scaling, PIP. All that stuff is so much easier for me to manage in AE. Plus it imports all the source footage too, so you don't have to re-export everything just to adjust a few cuts. It's quite cool. But pricey.
:D CAVEMAN