New to us, the Danish software company Irudis has launched a photo style colour correction plugin for FCPX, Final Cut Pro 7, Motion and Final Cut Express.
Another day, another colour corrector for Final Cut Pro, well it has seemed a bit like that over the last month or two. We will still take a look at Tonalizer from Irudis which has been released this week, it's slightly different from your average 'grades' package.
What makes the $179 Tonalizer plugin special? The product is being sold as the first plugin that enables photographic style grading for video.
"Tonalizer|VFXTM is created to meet the demands of videographers and post-production pros. The result is a powerful and intuitive plug-in tailored to correct video footage for inescapable shortcomings due to adverse capture conditions such as poor exposure, lack of contrast, blocked shadows and highlights, improper white balance etc."
Our vision is to create a new category of video editing products whose solid foundation is built on our advanced photographic software expertise, explains Kenneth T. Laerke, CEO of Irudis. We consider our primary audience to be post-production pros although we anticipate that our solutions will be of serious interest to photographers embracing video.
Our initial impression is that it contains one feature that many editors have been asking for in FCPX, noise reduction.
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Reading through the website, the plugin is actually smarter than just a levels balance and contrast control. Adjustments are performed not only on a frame by frame basis but also across frames too, taking the dynamics of the footage into consideration.
Skin tones can be protected, edges can be protected so they don't over sharpen and aliasing can be controlled. Quite a lot going on under the hood, or should that be under the inspector? Sophisticated as it might be, the price will be seen as a stumbling block, FCPX users seem to baulk at plugins priced over $100 these days. Please checkout Tonalizer on the Irudis website, they have lots more detail on features, a getting started guide and many color correction examples.
We always welcome new products to the FCP ecosystem and we would be very interested to find out if anybody has tested Tonalizer out in a real world situation.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
