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APRIL 18, 2003 Magic Bullet Suite 1.1
Speed issues The main problem with Magic Bullet Suite is that it does take quite a while to render. I decided to compare a couple of clips processed with Magic Bullet Suite. [an error occurred while processing this directive]The first clip was 4:11 long and is the clip used above for the Look Suite presets demonstration. I used three of the plug-ins in the collection - Magic Bullet, Look Suite (Basic Cool), and Letterboxer.  The second clip was 5 seconds long. I used only Magic Bullet and Look Suite (Punchy) on this one.  The third clip was 10 seconds long. This clip had to be rotated slightly and enlarged to compensate for a bad camera angle. I used Magic Bullet, Look Suite (Miami), and the Letterboxer on this one as well.  For these tests I used a Dell 2.4GHz machine with 1gig of RAM running Windows XP (Faye) and a Dual Gig Mac with 1Gig of RAM running OS X 10.2.4 (Nadia). All of the clips were rendered out as QuickTime movies at full resolution using the DV/NTSC codec.
The reason why it takes so much time is that Magic Bullet runs everything in 16-bit, so if you are working with an 8-bit image, it converts the 8-bit to 16-bit, then back to 8-bit. The good news is by using The Orphanage’s Deepcolor Technology, Magic Bullet Suite prevents images from being dithered when it is converted back to 8-bit space.
Improvements and Final Thoughts What would I like to see in a future release of Magic Bullet Suite? This is a plug-in that is just screaming for a Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or even Avid Xpress DV treatment. Being able to do all of these amazing things inside your editing application of choice would be so sweet! According to Red Giant Software (the distributors of Magic Bullet), the 1.2 version (due any day) is supposed to be twice as fast as the version I reviewed. When I talked to them at NAB, they also showed me a sneak peak at a stand alone Look Suite for Adobe Premiere. This plug-in does everything the company says it will do, and is worth looking into. Even though it may take a while to render, the results are well worth the wait. The plug-in is a bit pricey at $995, so you might want to download the demo first and see if it fits into your workflow. For more information on Magic Bullet visit www.redgiantsoftware.com  Related sites: • Animation Artist • Animation Supplement • AV Video • Content Mastering • Corporate Media News • Creative Mac • Design Supplement • Digital Animators • Digital Media Designer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • DTV Professional • DV Format • Film and Video Magazine • Film Imaging • Hollywood Industry • Mac Supplement • Production Supplement • Siggraph News • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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