Theimagingfactory has released Debarrelizer 1.0 for iMovie. It’s a free iMovie plug-in for correcting “barrel distortion” in digital video shoots and can also be used for adding wide-angle effects.
When capturing an image through a lens, the light representing the image hits the curved lens surface. For non-fisheye lenses, the image at the curved lens surface is then supposed to be projected rectilinear at the film or capturing surface. Most high-end, expensive lenses will do this correctly. However, for non-high-end lenses and zoom lenses (especially those used in the point-and-shoot digital cameras) this usually is not completely corrected. The distortion resulting from too little correction is called “barrel distortion.”
“In our effort to adapt our plug-ins to applications such as Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro, we came up with this little variation and thought it would be nice to make it available to iMovie aficionados,” said Oscar Rysdyk of Theimagingfactory.
Debarrelizer requires iMovie 2 or newer and Mac OS X 10.1 or higher.