Lyric's Final Cut Effects is a plugin kit of over 50 powerful video effect filters. It includes 15 new matte filters, updated versions of common built-in effects that can be controlled by mattes or alpha-channels, and a range of 30 special-effects filters for image-correction, photographic effects and other stylized effects.

The 15 Matte Filters produce and manipulate mattes, also known as alpha-channels, that control the transparency of areas within a clip. You use these when layering several clips to form a composite, or to limit the effect of other filters to certain areas within a clip. Several of the filters produce mattes based on the content in each frame, such as color or saturation or luminance levels or object edges or frame-to-frame changes. Others let you construct geometric or gradient or grid-based mattes. Yet others can be used to modify and blend other mattes. The Matte Filters include:

Areas Matte • Edges Matte • High Saturation Matte • Low Saturation Matte • Color Matte
Fleshtones Matte • Highlights Matte • Midtones Matte • Shadows Matte • Motion Matte
Matte Operations • Gradient Matte • N-Point Matte • Polygon Matte • Oval Matte • Grid Matte

The Masked Effects kit includes special versions of several standard Final Cut filters, enhanced so their effects can be masked by a Matte filter or existing alpha-channel. This lets you exercise fine control over the application of these effects within areas of the frame, such as applying a graduated tint across the frame or a noise-softening blur to the stationary areas in a clip or a saturation bump to just the low-saturation areas, and so on. The Masked Effects Filters include:

Masked Blur • Masked Sharpen • Masked Color Correct • Masked Brightness & Contrast • Masked Tint

The Special Effects kit is a set of 30 video filters offering a range of effects, including image correction, photographic effects and stylizing special-effects. Advanced effects include sketching & watercolor effects and a mask-based time-warping effect that delays individual pixels in a scene based on a supplied mask. The Special Effects Filters include:

Contrast Mask • Fill Light • High-pass Luma • Local Contrast Enhancement • Luma Brightness & Contrast
S-Curve • Vibrance

Black and White • Bloom • Color Degrade • Composite with Self • Dark and Grainy • Dark Shading
Glow • Levels Bandpass • Luma-masked Grain • Soft Blur

Bad Reception • Channel Mixer • Convolver • Edge Detect • Edge Work • Emboss Overlay • Gradient Map
Masked Time • Super Posterize • Tri-Tone • Vignette / Burned Borders • Water Color 1 • Water Color 2

More info on Lyric's Final Cut Effects...

Lyric's Pan Zoom Pro plugin is designed to radically simplify the task of achieving smooth and even pans and zooms within high-resolution photos, the so-called "Ken Burns" effect. Instead of manually keyframing scale and center controls in the Motion panel and estimating keyframe timings to achieve controlled pixel velocities, you draw framing rectangles on an overview of the whole photo and let the plugin handle all the timing and motion automatically. This can reduce the time to set up such moves to matters of seconds and practically eliminates the need for repeated experimenting with keyframe & ease settings to achieve consistent results.

The plugin includes the following features:

• rapid set up of complex pans and zooms in hi-res photos
• supports moves with up to 5 separate framings, each with its own pan, zoom, rotation, hold and ease settings
• full auto-mode sets timing of intermediate framings to give consistent pixel velocities between framings
• on-screen display of landing & hold times and pixel velocities allows interactive adjustment of pan/zooms/durations to easily achieve desired motion
• automatic zoom compensation to avoid apparent speed changes common in simple linear scale keyframing
• integrated flicker filter that is proportional to zoom level
• global and individual ease controls with synchronized pan and zoom ease

More info on Pan Zoom Pro...

Lyric's Drawing Tools plugin kit provides a set of generators for drawing all kinds of graphic elements in Final Cut.

The kit includes:

• Polygons such as triangles, squares, rectangles, pentagons and hexagons
• Lines with up to 8 segments
• Spline Curves with up to 8 control points
• Circles and Ovals
• Arcs and Wedges
• Grids

Many of the generators come in several variants that support different drawing methods, such as:

• center point and size sliders
• bounding corner points
• freehand placement of all points

The drawing tools include comprehensive controls for:

• independent frame & fill color or fill clip
• line thickness
• rotation and scale
• frame & fill opacity and softening
• variable-size start and end arrow heads
• corner-rounding
• fill beveling
• integrated drop-shadow
• automatic fade in/fade out

Lyric's free Shadow-Highlight plugin filter provides functionality similar to the Highlight/Shadow function in Photoshop CS, revealing detail in under or overexposed footage by lifting shadows or reducing highlights. In the following before-and-after example, details in both the shadows and the highlights have been recovered.

The filter is particularly useful for correcting footage shot with the film-like gamma settings common on the current crop of camcorders, such as Cinematone gamma on the Sony HVR-Z1U HD camera, which was used for the above shot.

The control panel for the filter is shown at left. Shadow Lift determines the amount of shadow area lightening. Shadow Range controls the range of shadows lifted, set it low for lifting only the darkest areas or high to lift more of the image. Highlight Drop and Highlight Range work in a similar way for the highlight areas, setting the range of highlights to affect and the amount of highlight easing. The default settings apply a moderate shadow lift and no highlight drop.

Often, lifting shadows will reduce apparent saturation and contrast, so standard Saturation and Contrast adjustment controls are provided for compensating these effects.

Download here and enjoy!