GenArts Inc. has announced the release of its Sapphire Plug-ins version 1.1. The collection of plug-ins now supports Avid Media Composer and Avid Xpress systems on Mac hardware. The new version also contains new effects and feature enhancements.
The new version of the Sapphire plug-ins contains a FilmLook effect, which makes video footage look like it was shot on film. DissolveLuma is also new — it’s a transition effect that makes one clip appear to emerge through the other in interesting ways. A Resolution parameter is now available in all effects that allows render resolutions to be reduced for faster testing, and the processing speed of many effects has been improved.
The Sapphire plug-ins collection now contains 193 different effects including standard fare like glows, edge rays, lens flares, rack defocus, matte ops and blurs to more exotic offerings like lightning, flys’ eye, “JpegDamage,” textures and kaleidoscope effects.
GenArts said that all the Sapphire effects are OMF-conformable, so project started with Sapphire plug-ins on Composer or Xpress can be finished on DS or Symphony-based systems.
Sapphire plug-ins cost US$2,800 for Avid Media Composer or Xpress-based systems.