I have the Nattress demo film filters, and I'm trying to figure out how to get a preview of what the filter will do without having to render the whole clip. I'm using Final Cut Express HD 3.0.

What I've done so far: opened the filter's control panel, dragged the filter onto my clip, and then tried to preview it. I get a green "demo" on the video, but it doesn't actually look any different.

Is it just a subtle effect, or am I doing something wrong? I was mainly using G Nicer to start...

G nicer does chroma/color "upconversion" so to speak. DV records 1/4th the color resolution compared to brightness/luminance/luma resolution. The way the Apple codec decodes DV, it doesn't smooth out the color information.

That's not a very good explanation, so just check out
http://www.nattress.com/filmEffectsGNicerTests.htm

You probably don't see any effect because:
A- Your eye doesn't have very good color resolution. This is why DV can get away with having 1/4th the color resolution (to be more accurate, it's the 4:1:1 color sampling).
B- If you have the FCP window set to <100% zoom, the effect will be even more subtle?

Thanks! So the way I'm doing it will provide a preview of the effect then, right?

I'll also try upsizing the window. Now I see why a lot of people prefer 2 monitors...

Although G Nicer will help with keying in FCE, as FCE can't edit uncompressed video, or output to digibeta etc. it's not going to help you much. It's a very specialised filter, but a rather useful one for when you need to bump up DV in FCP to a higher format.

I'd try the presets explorer and see what you make of that and it's looks.

Graeme

Yeah, I should have read more about what the various filters do. I thought G Nicer did what G Film Plus does (had them confused).

BTW, the filter pack was highly recommended to me by my friend Chip E...

Thanks!

Thanks Justin! Chip E is a great bloke!

Graeme