Over the last several years a few users have experimented with using CycoreFX (“CC”) plug-ins built into After Effects inside of Premiere Pro. The current version that ships with AE, the only supported host app for the product, is CycoreFX HD (AE Bundle Only). CS6 saw an upgrade of dozens of the effects to 16-bpc and 32-bpc color depth.

These plug-ins originated as Final Effects (the first 3rd-party effects), Next Effects, and Studio Effects, which combined as Final Effects Complete, sold through Metacreations (the maker of Kai’s Power Tools). They were such an integral part of the AE experience that they had their own Total Training series, Total FE Complete, but were sold and resold to BorisFX until being reincarnated by their creators for Adobe.

There’s documentation and sample projects available from Cycore, as well as other resources and some video tutorials around the web. Check out CC Time Blend FX at Motionworks for an original video tutorial from Brian Maffitt and Nunzilla.

Here’s Todd Kopriva on these standard effects in CS6, and Arcane Chest Checking Out The Cycore FX CC Effects.

Currently, you have to do a little file management to enable these plug-ins inside Premiere Pro. Perhaps because of piracy it’s become trickier to use these plug-ins in Premiere – you need to use the older AE CC version (not CC 2014, version 8, but the ones from CC, Premiere Pro 7).

For an example of the use of these effects, see Eran Stern’s recent take, White Balance in Premiere Pro CC. Instead of using the Fast Color Corrector, Eran showed how to use the Cycore Color Neutralizer effect to white balance inside Premiere Pro. Eran also showed how to move a copy of the AE plug-ins (locations) into Premiere’s effects folder (not the “Common” folder).

Earlier, the Cycore filters were discussed in “Exploring Cycore Effects” in the ‘Best of Premiere’ training from Eran Stern, released in Feb 2011. The year before, Pierre Louis Beranek tested the 8-bpc CycoreFX plug-ins inside of Premiere Pro CS5 to find out which ones worked.

Below are some simple pass/fail results from a test with Premiere Pro CC 2014. Conclusions are provisional, and in any case usage is not supported by Adobe. There are 73 CycoreFX HD plug-ins, and 30 seem to work on Mac OS X. Previous tests have slightly different results. Be forewarned that many of the CC plug-ins may not load, or have any effect or work completely, and might crash Premiere!

In the end, it might be easier just to use Dynamic Link, or copy and paste tracks into After Effects, where the Cycore effects are fully functional. And they’re not GPU-accelerated anyway, which can really ruin a day (or mood).

Bender -YES
BendIt -YES
Block Load -YES
Color Neutralizer -YES
Color Offset -YES
Cylinder -YES
Environment -YES
Grid Wipe -YES
Image Wipe -YES
Jaws -YES
Kernel -YES
Light Wipe -YES
Line Sweep YES
Particle Systems II -YES
Pixel Polly  -YES (no textured objects)
PS Classic  -YES (Particle Systems)
PS LE Classic  -YES (Particle Systems)
Radial Fast Blur  -YES
Radial Scale Wipe -YES
Rain -YES
Scatterize -YES
Slant -YES
Smear -YES
Snow -YES
Split -YES
Spotlight -YES
Threads -YES
Threshold -YES
Threshold RGB -YES
Toner -YES
Twister -YES

Ball Action -No
Blobbylize -No
Bubbles -No
Bubbles -No
Burn Film -No
Composite -No
Cross Blur -No (crashes app)
Drizzle -No
Flo Motion -No
Force Motion Blur -No
Glass -No
GlassWipe -No
Glue Gun -No
Griddler -No
Hair -No
Kaleida -No
Lens -No
Light Burst -No
Light Rays -No
Light Sweep -No
Mr. Mercury -No
Mr. Smoothie -No
Overbrights -No
Page Turn -No
Particle World -No (crashes app)
Plastic -No
Power Pin -No
Radial Blur -No
Rainfall -No
Repetile -No
Ripple Pulse -No
Scale Wipe -No
Simple Wire Removal -No
Snowfall -No
Sphere -No
Split2 -No
Star Burst -No
Tiler -No
Time Blend -No
Time BlendFX -No
Vector Blur -No
WarpoMatic -No
Wide Time -No

But wait… there’s more. Here’s Exorcism Removal by Eran Stern, a tutorial on Particle Systems II, which can be used in AE or Premiere if you enable the plug-in. Eran has related tutorials, like Bend and Bend Time, on creating the illusion of bending time using CC Time Blend FX (Nunzilla’s favorite effect), which doesn’t work in Premiere.