This week on MacBreak Studio, Steve Martin from Ripple Training shows us an unusual application for the SliceX plugin for Final Cut Pro X.
SliceX and TrackX are plugins from CoreMelt that work inside Final Cut Pro X and are powered by Imagineer's Mocha planar tracking technology. They allow you to track objects in your footage for color correction, screen replacement and more. In this earlier MBS episode, Steve demonstrated using SliceX to color correct a cupcake.
For today's footage, we have a beautiful shot created with a Phantom 2 Vision remote-controlled flying camera. With the attached gymbol, the shots are incredibly smooth. The only thing I don't like is how the exposure changes suddenly as the light conditions change. But the smoothness of the shots is quite amazing.
SliceX includes a handful of different effects, and today Steve uses two of them on the same shot. First, he removes a shadow created by the Phantom 2 with the Object Remover. If you have ever cloned pixels in Photoshop, then you will have no trouble understanding how to remove an object from your footage.
After the shadow is removed, he uses a depth-of-field effect (also part of Slice X) to blur everything in the shot except for the main subject – in this case, a group of horses. The result is a tilt-shift type of effect, where shallow depth of field creates the illusion that we are looking at a miniature model of a scene, instead of the scene itself.
As a final touch, he uses Final Cut Pro's color board to increase the saturation of the entire scene, which helps sell the tilt-shift effect by making everything look hand-painted.
SliceX and TrackX are $99 each or $149 for both. Steve and I have both been impressed with how they allow you to track objects directly inside of Final Cut Pro X. By the way, all the interface elements can be easily dragged anywhere on the screen.