Cool Effects for Final Cut On The Cheap

One of the common tasks when creating video…especially for the web…is adding special effects like transitions, filters, generated media and things of that sort.

And while Final Cut (both Express and Pro) offer a nice suite of built-in special-effects, I usually find myself wanting more.  And that means…I usually end up key framing my own effects or jumping over to other tools like Motion 3 or LiveType.

But sometimes I’m in a hurry when editing video (well, actually a lot of the time) and I’d like to just drag something quickly down to the timeline.  There are a lot of custom effects plugins available for Final Cut that allow you to do this…ranging from the really nice ones (that are expensive) to the inexpensive ones (that are really cheesey).

A good, intermediate effects plugin I’ve found is called SlickFX from GeeThree. In their package, you get around 60 plugins for transitions, titles, text, media generators and filters.  And while some of these effects are decidely on the “cheesey” end, there are actually quite a few that are useful and I find myself routinely using.  What’s more, the price of SlickFX is right…just $99.

I was originally going to put together a demo video showing everything you can do with SlickFX.  But it turns out, GeeThree beat me to the punch by putting together videos demonstrating every effect you get in their package (I wish more companies would do this…you know…instead of just showing static screen grabs of their software).

You can see the types of effects available in SlickFX…and watch their demo videos…by clicking here.

Also, I know I’ll get special effects questions from Sony Vegas users…and for Vegas, NewBlueFX is a good intermediate source.  You can check out their web site here.