Rehan's ShaderTFX
The first question I got in my YouTube inbox
about one of the sample clips was 'what is ShaderTFX?'. I
responded 'it's a pack of 116 transitions developed by Rehan'. Many on
the forums at windowsmoviemakers.net have been drooling over it since the beta
phase started.
I should have noted that it has 6 effects too.
Downloading and
Installing
The setup
file is SetupShaderTFX.msi, version 1.0.30. Double-click it and
it'll go through a usual windows
installation. The
installation adds 4 dll and 4 xml files to the Movie
Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX folder, which make for some good study files for anyone
wanting to dive into the making of custom items like these.
the c:\Program Files\RehanFX folder has subfolders and
contents of:
ShaderTFX
Wipe
folder
50
jpg files (study and replace with our own pictures if you're
inclined)
9
png files (another group ready for study and tweaking)
Shader.fx -
9/17/07
ShaderCommon.fxh -
9/3/07
ShaderTFX.dll -
9/20/07
Trial period and registration
The new transitions will be there when you restart
Movie Maker 6 after the installation.
When first clicking on any of the new transitions
you'll get a popup notice that you have 14 days to try it
before purchasing.
Use the 'Continue Unregistered' and it'll work fine
without embedding a logo, big X, or whatever...
After the trial you'll need the purchased code to
continue.
The Features...
Transitions - ShaderTFX
adds 116 new ones, which fall into four groups... starting
with 10 blue and 10 green screen choices.
Then 23 for Picture in
Picture.
14 colorful gradients.
59 wipes that use .jpg and .png files in
conjunction with a standard wipe transition.
Samples
Bluescreen
I previewed them all, and made a few
sample clips.
For a chroma blue
sample (bluescreen), an aquarium tank provided a
nice blue background for a couple jellyfish in the
foreground...
Picture in Picture
I got myself pretty confused
keeping track of this sample clip made with just 2 source files. The
skiing clip is a standard aspect ratio one, and the jellyfish is a
widescreen story.
I toggled the MM6 project
settings between standard and widescreen. Then I saved them to
custom profiles that I use when heading to YouTube, the standard project
to the widescreen profile and the widesceen project to the
standard profile. Got it?? No reason beyond testing to see what
happened.
These two frame snapshots were
taken in Movie Maker 6. The only difference is the
setting being standard 4:3 for the above one and widescreen 16:9
for the below.
The skiing clip is full windowed above and with black
left/right borders below, a bit hard to see with the overall black
background.
The jellyfish story is 'letterboxed' above and full
windowed below.
Note how the text differs in each, adapting to the
different amount of space available to stretch into.
Gradients and
Wipes
The gradients and wipes use
the .jpg and .png files mentioned above... making it so easy to swap them out
with your own images... or add new XML files that do the same
thing.
Effects
The package includes 6 electric color effects. I didn't make any
sample clips with them.
Conclusion and Closing... and What's
Next?
The installation was easy, registration worked, and all the
items performed well. I'm not the first to say it, as that's the feedback
from forum users who have been following the development all the way
through.
Get the package and try them yourself.
Have a great week!!
PapaJohn
