Black and White Point:
Adjusts the black point and white point of the image from one plugin. Note raising the black point makes the image darker, you are raising the colour values that are mapped to absolute black. Similarly lowering the white point makes the image lighter.
Blur Luminance:
Blurs only the luminance (grey scale portion) of the video and leaves the chroma (colour) information untouched.
Blur RGB:
Blurs the red,green and blue channels of an image by separate controllable amounts.
Camera Shake:
Simulates shaking the camera. Adjust the Frequency and amplitude for different types of effects. To simulate an impact, eg a heavy object hitting the ground near the camera animate the amplitude value over time.
Channel Swap:
Allows you to route colour information from one channel to another. Each of Red, Green or Blue can receive colour information from any of Red, Green, Blue, Y (Luminance), U, V or Alpha (transparency).
DepthBlur Circle:
Allows you to blur a circular area of the image through an adjustable soft mask. Can be used to simulate Depth of Field effects by blurring a portion of the image. Use the "show mask" check box to see the area of the image that is being affected by the blur. Use the "show mask" check box to see the area of the image that is being affected by the blur.
Depth Blur Gradient:
Blurs a portion of the image through an adjustable gradient. Use it to simulate a Depth of Field effect on a portion of the image going into the distance.
De Wrinkler:
Use this to soften blemishes, mole or wrinkles on the talents face. This is done using a combination of a diffusion filter to soften high light areas and an edge detect to protect large features. By adjusting the hi lo threshold values, mix back of the diffusion and strength of the edge detect it is usually possible to remove only the desired wrinkles without destroying detail. Use the matte input with a large soft circle mask if necessary to avoid removing background details.
Diffusion:
Simulates shooting through a diffusion filter or using a silk stocking on the camera. You can adjust the high low threshold amounts and amount of mix back of the original image to control the amount of diffusion.
Detect Motion:
Finds moving areas of the image by subtracting the previous frame. Adjust high / low threshold values to ignore small amounts of movement, eg slight camera movement of the background. Note this will only give a good result with a locked off shot.
Godrays:
Creates beams of light shining from behind the image. Can be used to great effect on titles and packshots to create dramatic effects.
Glow Motion:
Glows moving portions of the image using the Motion Detect technique of subtracting previous frames.
Glow Edges:
Glow the edges of the image, has adjustable separate red, green, blue offset amounts and breakup control.
Distort Cellular:
Warps the image by applying a moving cellular displacement pattern. Either a glass effect or a displacement effect can be chosen. Use the "show texture" check box to see the pattern that is being applied to create the warp effect.
Distort Liquid Vision:
Warps the image through a constantly flowing liquid texture. Either a glass effect or a displacement effect can be chosen. Use the "show texture" check box to see the pattern that is being applied to create the warp effect.
Distort Pond:
Warps the image through continuous random ripples coming from one center. The center can be moved or animated and the speed and softness of the ripples can be controlled. If you need precise control over timing and size of each ripple then instead use the "Distort Water Drop" effect. Either a glass effect or a displacement effect can be chosen. Use the "show texture" check box to see the pattern that is being applied to create the warp effect.
Distort Rain Drops:
Warps the image through continuous random drops that appear in random locations all over the screen. Either a glass effect or a displacement effect can be chosen. Use the "show texture" check box to see the pattern that is being applied to create the warp effect.
Distort Shower Door:
Warps the image in a similar to looking through a textured glass screen. Either a glass effect or a displacement effect can be chosen. Use the "show texture" check box to see the pattern that is being applied to create the warp effect.
Distort Water Drop:
Creates warping ripples with precise control over the position size and timing of each ripple. You could use this effect to create for example the illusion of a ripple appearing when someones hand came forwards and touched the screen. Either a glass effect or a displacement effect can be chosen. Use the "show texture" check box to see the pattern that is being applied to create the warp effect.
DV Compensator:
DV cameras have more precision in luminance information than they do in chroma information. This can create a diagonal stepping effect that can destroy attempt to create chroma keys and is sometimes visible in unprocessed video. This plugin attempts to compensate for this by blurring slightly only the chroma information in the horizontal direction only.
Edges Thicken:
An edge detect that allows you to control the thickness of edges with threshold and thicken controls.
Eighties Music Video:
Simulates video feedback effects similar to what was created by hardware video synthesizers and effects units in the 1980's such as the Fairlight CVI. Try the various presets to get an idea of the effects you can create.
FastBlur:
A faster gaussian blur that stays the same speed even when blur strength increases. Use the "repeat edges" option if the black bleed at edge of image is a problem, however rendering speed will be much slower.
Night Vision:
Simulates looking through night vision goggles with various noise, magnify and overlay options.
Optical Glow:
Creates a glow effect that simulates seperate red, green and blue bleed, breakup and threshold controls. The looks created can have a soft optical quality more subtle than simpler glow effects. Note this effect can be slow to render as it has to go through a large number of processing stages....
Pixie Dust:
A simple controllable sparkle particle system with glow and spread parameters.
Pseudo Color:
Remaps image colours to three false colours to create highly stylised colour effects.
Scanner:
Creates a moving rectangle that magnifies and pixelates the image with different overlay options.
Threshold Hi Lo:
An adjustable threshold control that allows you to create a very soft luma key. Useful as a matte input on many effects.
Vignette:
A telecine style graded vignette with adjustable soft mask. Use the presets to get common looks very quickly.
Tips and Techniques
How to apply an effect through a matte or alpha channel
(isolate an effect to only a certain part of an image).
Eg let's say using the Optical Glow effect you want to glow only the red in an image.
1. Add the clip to be effected on the bottom layer.
2. Add a chroma key or other key on to the clip in the bottom layer.
3. Select the colour to be isolated and otherwise adjust the key as necessary, refer to the Avid documentation on keying techniques if necessary.
4. Select "show alpha" in the key effect.
5. Add a new video track to the edit.
6. Add the desired effect, eg optical glow to the video track.
7. Select the "use matte" check box in the optical glow effect.
8. In the "matte image source" options select "source: video" and "video: 1 track below"\
Your effect is now being applied only to the isolated area. Most organoptics fx plugins have a matte input option. Certain effects don't either because they have a built in mask generator (like vignette) or because they are designed to be applied to the whole clip (like DV compensator).
You can then adjust the strength of the entire effect by using the "matte image opacity" slider. This can be useful when for example creating a fade on/off of an effect.
Using the distortion textures as alphas.
The Distortion effects can be used to generate a texture for another purpose, eg for a matte effect or wipe. In these effects select "show texture" checkbox. This allows you to see the pattern that is generating the distortion effect. Using the above technique these textures can be used as alphas for any effect to create interesting transitions or other effects.
Notes about "Fast Blur" and "Repeat Edges"
Fastblur uses a method of blurring the image that results in the same speed blur no matter how strong the blur effect is. The tradeoff is that if you animate the blur value, the resulting clip may not animate smoothly. If this causes you a problem, disable fast blur to get the best and smoothest animation when rendering the final output of your effect.
"Repeat Edges" option prevents black from coming in at the edge of the image when blurring or applying glows to your video. In some cases repeat edges does not work when "fastblur" is enabled.
For best possible image quality disable fastblur and enable repeat edges. Your rendering times will increase considerably so this should only be done where necessary.
For Technical Support updates, new fx and new tutorials and techniques:
http://www.eskatonia.net/organoptics/
Known Bugs Version 1.1
Some plug-ins will render black at "Smoothest" quality setting/full resolution. This is due to a bug introduced by Apple in 10.4.3 core image processing. Workaround: lower quality setting.