I tried the Instant Sex trick with the following understanding:

Start with track
Duplicate track, set property to screen, multiply, etc.
Set opacity of dupe track.

Is this supposed to have instant results? I can't see any effect, even on a still, unless I render.

Am I missing something, or does this sound correct?

Thanks!

what platform are you on, Mac or PC?

This is on FCP on a Mac. The last description I had read about the look specified the Mac. Is this typically an after effects trick?

Do a search on sex and you'll find several threads dealing with this technique. This thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3997&highlight=sex) will get you started.

Thanks Jeff. Actually, I have heard of this technique, just not by this name.

Off to After Effects for some tinkering.

It can be done in almost any NLE or a program like AE. Good luck, if you have some sucess consider posting some stills or a short clip etc.

I tried this technique last night, then tried a straight magic bullet test.

"Instant Sex" ran very quickly. I used the "Darken" mode, as I found that it most closely matched the original image qualities after it had been applied. I forgot to time the effect....I'll do that tonight and add the info and some stills.

Now, the interesting bit is that Magic Bullet, which runs extremely slow with a tailwind, looks only marginally better. On my monitor running at 1280x1024, and zoomed into the DV image 400% so that only the top of the head to the upper lip of the image was in the frame, could I begin to see the difference. Also, it did not deartifact at all, compared to the source file.

I'll post some stills with burned in render times for the 555 frame sequence to my empty website. Video footage would be worthless, as compression would invalidate the test.

Post a DV Quicktime at the original 29.97 720x480 (no need for sound), which would not invalidate the test and we'd be able to watch it on our monitors to see for ourselves.

Unless I'm doing something wrong, I get a 127MB file for the 15 seconds of footage.

I use animation compression. Should I recompress with DV compression?

Yes, DV NTSC. The same exact type of file that is made when you capture footage, etc. Animation is pretty much uncompressed.

animation is a compression codec, but doesn't give as much compression as DV.

Well, the files are still too big for my limited webspace. 67MB apiece.

What I did find is this:
Magic Bullet, when rendered with the DV codec, is really...I don't know...I guess blurry. You can see it when you look at the entire image, but it's harder to pick out the blur when you focus on a small area.

I was wrong about the speed...the renders are comperable. It was the look suite that was the killer.

However, if Red Giant ever releases the Look Suite as a separate app, I think Instant Sex could readily replace MB.

Tomorrow I'll look at getting some screen caps of the different renders and maybe a few five second clips to post.