If you're a regular user of After Effects or you do your compositing in other programs such as Combustion, Final Cut Pro, Avid or Adobe Premiere, you already know about plug-ins.

After shooting this short DV video, The Great Blue Yonder (see it at www.libertynewstv.com), Matt Power applied a film look and other plug-ins to add production value.

Most of the video effects you create with plug-ins can be created in the program the long way, but who has the time? Plug-ins replace hours of tricky layering work with a one-click solution. Case in point: I recently used After Effects to simulate a snowstorm in an outdoor scene of a short film. I did it without any plug-ins, by following a tutorial. The process took about three hours. Using the "Blizzard" filter from the Berserk plug-in collection, I created the same effect in about five minutes, with the added bonus of being able to instantly change the speed, amount, size and "randomness" of the snowflakes.

Of course, when you buy any set of plug-ins, you'll rarely use two-thirds of them. But if you use even one effect on a regular basis, the package will pay for itself quickly. For example, Delirium's "Muzzle Flash" plug-in creates a realistic gunfire blast. Think of the possibilities.

For this roundup, I chose seven of my favorite plug-in packages. If you're looking for a one-stop shop to pick some of these items up, try Toolfarm (www.toolfarm.com), which sometimes offers deep discounts off retail prices.

AE Hyperdrive
Nucleo Pro, $395.00
www.gridironsoftware.com
I didn't give this new version of the Nucleo plug-in a second look at first, as it sounded like something for effects geeks only. Then I realized that Nucleo is not just a plug-in. It installs like one, sure, but it acts like a hyperdrive for After Effects. Most importantly, you can continue working while After Effects is rendering. Translation: Double efficiency. Do the math. If you spend half your time waiting for AE to render, how much is each hour of your thumb-twiddling worth? It doesn't take long to add up to $500. One caveat: To run Nucleo with After Effects, you need a multi-processor, or multi-core computer, and 2GB of RAM. My machine has only 1.5GB, but I decided to gamble. I installed Nucleo and set up one clip to render with a Magic Bullet film look, while keying another clip. Result: Smooth performance all the way. This one's a winner.

Magic Moments
Shine, $99.00
www.trapcode.com
There's nothing especially mysterious about the Shine plug-in. It's possible to create similar glowing particle effects in After Effects on your own, if you're patient. But why do things the hard way? This little plug-in does the thinking for you, and you'll find yourself using it in unexpected ways. For example, adding Shine to a light source can obscure objects that weren't supposed to be in the frame, or add drama to some flat lighting indoors. The program's many presets allow you to choose the right mood lighting for your shot, from electric blue to deep green.

Faux Film Finish
CineLook2, $850.00
www.digieffects.com
CineLook has been around for a few years now, offering a way to make video look like film. The plug-in includes about 60 different preset "looks." In addition, for converting video to film, it will perform 3:2 "pulldown," converting video shot at 29.97 frames per second to 24 fps film rate. In my experience, however, even micro-budget moviemakers planning to convert to film typically shoot on newer, 24 fps DV cameras. If you're serious about going from digital to film, you might consider shooting at a higher definition, such as HD or HDV, then stepping up to CineLook's professional FilmRes plug-ins (retailing for about $1,499.00). On the other hand, if you're going straight to DVD, CineLook2 creates impressive "film look" video with the added bonus that it renders at about twice the speed of Magic Bullet, a high-quality competitor.

Ambient Drama
Berserk, $289.00
www.digieffects.com
This collection of "organic" tools includes plug-ins to make your video still images look like paintings (Van Gogh-like) and unusual ways to distort and twist images. But unless you're making music videos, or doing psychedelic dream sequences, you probably won't use those much. For my money, the two killer effects in this package are "Blizzard," which simulates a snowstorm of your making, and "Starfield," which creates that familiar effect of traveling through space. No low-budget sci-fi short would be complete without that shot. Some of the other effects sound great, but they're tough to use effectively. For example, "Fog Bank" isn't convincing as a fog effect on its own, and it takes forever to render. Use it on a scene where you have some real fog in addition to the faux fog, however, and you're in business.

Cloning in 3D
Particular, $299.00
www.trapcode.com
This new 3D particle plug-in caught my eye because it promised the ability to create large crowds of people. That claim is true, although the resulting "crowd" has a limited range of motion, because the video clip has to loop, but it raises fascinating possibilities (for a sample video clip, click the image on the left). The core strength of Particular, however, is the ability to produce virtually any particle effect--snow, rain, bubbles, stars--and position the resulting particles in three-dimensional space. Compared with other particle plug-ins, Particular offers faster rendering times and a "one-stop shop" for the look you want. The techies did their homework, too: They have included a built-in help file, which is mandatory for navigating through the many presets and controls.

The Trickster
Delirium, $695.00
www.digieffects.com
This package of plug-ins is one of the more useful sets on the market. If I had to pick my favorite effects, I'd point to "Camera Shake" (great for simulating an earthquake or gritty combat footage), "Rainfall" (very realistic), "Day to Night" (okay, it's not perfect, but it does suggest a moonlit night with the right footage) and "Fireworks," which allows you to produce bombs bursting in air, right where you want them. The software is processor-intensive, so I don't recommend using these plug-ins on an older machine. Some plug-ins grind to a crawl during rendering, most notably particle effects such as "Fog Factory" and "Smoke." The initial cost is higher than some of these other packages, but if you work a lot of post-production magic, it's money well spent.

Deep Focus
Key Correct Pro, $399.00
www.redgiantsoftware.com
I consider myself an expert on post-production keying (using a blue screen or green screen to create composites), so I'm always interested in new keying software. This plug-in set includes most of the tools found in the company's Composite Wizard set of plug-ins (which I've covered in earlier columns). Not surprisingly, Key Correct works seamlessly with the company's Primatte Keyer 3.0. Despite many overlaps with Composite Wizard, Key Correct includes several upgrades, such as 8-bit and 16- bit (for HD) per channel processing and a "prekey" tool for fixing DV footage prior to keying. The feature change I like best: Rack Focus. I applied it to a clip of an actor in a blue shirt in front of a blue sky and was able to defocus the sky behind him and (almost) isolate him from the shot. MM