Mercalli

One of the newest items is Mercalli, an excellent image stabiliser. This basically takes shaky footage and stabilises it. There are several variations of this kind of plug-in available, and programs like After Effects have it built-in, however what Mercalli does is to do a good job and to do it easily and well. Essentially you apply the effects to a clip, set it to analyzer the footage, which is does pretty quickly, and then return back to the timeline.

With most image stabilisers you need to define an area for the plug-in to scan, then scan, then refine etc. Mercalli does it automatically. that does not mean you do not have any control over the process - you can choose from several presets, adjust how much you want to stabilise the shot, and decide how much you want to zoom into the shot afterwards. It also has the option of dynamic boarders where by the programs zooms in a bit but also creates extra boarders based on the existing shot that you don't lose too much of the image.

There are two versions of Mercalli - Light and Expert. Expert adds more options and will stabilise HD footage as well as DV.

Mercalli plugs into Adobe Premiere Pro 1, 1.5, 2 and CS3, as well as all variations of Premiere Elements. It also works in Avid Liquid 7 and Canopus Edius 4.X. You can see more information on the Mercalli Website.

Mercalli Light is £45 inc VAT, and Mercalli Expert is £91 inc VAT.

Adorage

One Adorage collection already ships with Canopus Edius - and there 9 volumes in total. Adorage is a selection of transitions for various editing programs which includes many that you simply will not find anywhere else. It is not really possible to describe the full range here so check out the samples on the ProDAD website.

The 9 packages all need a basic installer called the All plug-ins collection, which is £22. Once you have this then you can add as many packages as you like. Each package costs £38 inc VAT, or you can buy all 9 packages for £360 inc VAT. The different packages are:

Adorage Effect package 1 "classic" -800 Effects.

Adorage Effect package 2 "particles & lights" - 1500 Effects

Adorage Effect package 3 "PIP-Fx & Splitscreens" - 2500 Effects

Adorage Effect package 4 "universal tricks" - 650 Effects

Adorage Effect package 5 "diamond composites" - 1300 Effects

Adorage Effect package 6 "Power FX pearls" - 400 Effects

Adorage Effect package 7 "CGM power" - 1600 Effects

Adorage Effect package 8 "Eyecatcher FX" - 1500 Effects

Adorage Effect package 9 "Particles & Objects" - 300 Effects

Adorage plugs into Adobe Premiere 6.5, Adobe Premiere Pro 1, 1.5, 2 and CS3, as well as all variations of Premiere Elements. It also works in Avid Liquid 7, Canopus Edius 3.x & 4.x, Lets Edit and Rex Edit, Sony Vegas 4 upwards, Ulead Media Studio 6 upwards and Ulead Video Studio 9 & 10. You can see more information on the ProDad Website.

VistaScene

VistaScene is a collection of additional effects for your editing program. It includes filters similar to those available elsewhere, but all designed by ProDad and included in one package. If you have the right kind of graphic card they are accelerated by the card as well. There is a test utility which will confirm whether your graphic card is suitable.

The filters include:

Movie Looks - these are similar to the kinds of looks you get with Magic Bullet.

Sparkles and glows - generate sparkles based on the light areas of the image, all fully adjustable. Add that magic look to any scene. You can also use these as sparkly boarders for scenes.

Old Movie filter - complete with all the usual nonsense.

Shine effect - similar to the Matrox shine or Trapcode plug-in but better quality and more configurable than the Matrox. Combine it with a title and get light to shine out of the letters.

Of course everything is thoroughly keyfamable and like all plug-ins you just add the filter to the clip, adjust the settings and then return to your editing program to render the result.

There are some sample videos on the ProDad website showcasing some of these filters.

VistaScene plugs into Adobe Premiere Pro 1, 1.5, 2 and CS3, Adobe After Effects 7 & 8, as well as all variations of Premiere Elements. It also works in Avid Liquid 7, Avid Xpress Pro 5 and Media Composer 2, and Canopus Edius 4.x and Sony Vegas 5-8. You can see more information on the ProDad Website.

Heroglyph

Heroglyph is a titling program that lets you do animated 2D and 3D titles easily. It has quite a large variety of tools as well - not just for animating text but also drawing paths and even making video walls. Do you want to draw a route on a map? There is a tool for just this - you can even add an arrow or a little car at the start. Do you want to have some words drawn on screen and appear as if written - again Heroglyph has a tool for just this. Or do you want to have each letter of each word arrive and jump out at you as they do - again easy to do with Heroglyph.

Heroglyph plugs into Adobe Premiere 6.5, Adobe Premiere Pro 1, 1.5, 2 and CS3, as well as all variations of Premiere Elements. It also works in Avid Liquid 7, Avid Xpress Pro 5 and Media Composer 2, and Canopus Edius 3.x & 4.x. You can see more information on the ProDad Website.

Interestingly when plugged into Edius or Premiere it appears just like the other native titling programs - so in Edius you add it to the title track as you would with Title Motion Pro or Quick Titler, and you can even choose it as the default title program so it appears every time you press the T button!

There are two versions of Heroglyph - the full version and Heroglyph Rapid. The Rapid version is the same as the full but with less control and animation capabilities.

Heroglyph Rapid is £62 inc VAT, Heroglyph full is £170 inc VAT. There are also a couple of extra creative packs available at £77 each.