Those of you who remember this plugin from Scott will be pleased to know that he's finally made a 64-bit version of it.
If you've never heard of it, it's a plugin that blends from one shot to the next based on either:
a) the luminance of a bitmap, or
b) the luminance of the incoming & outgoing shots (which simulate a film-like optical dissolve).

His cube transition has been updated too.
It divides the screen into cubes and 'explodes' them outwards spinning them around and recombines them back to the transitioned shot.
The number of cubes can be changed in the transition properties.

Get them both at http://www.endor.demon.co.uk/

edit: someone on the Sony Vegas forum asked "Into which directory should the DLL's be placed? I tried installing both the 32 and 64 bit versions, and both tried going into the x86 directory (on my Windows 7)."
Scott's response was:
They can be placed pretty much anywhere ... the plugins get 'registered' which tells Windows their folder location.
The installers for both 32-bit & 64-bit plugins just pick a suitable location as the "Video Plug-Ins" sub-folder off the Vegas installation folder. There is, however, a slight quirk with the 64-bit installer where, if you've got both 32-bit & 64-bit versions of Vegas installed, the plugin installer is picking the 32-bit version's installed location (I'll try to improve that by having the 64-bit installer look at the Vegas 64-bit install location). In the meantime, there is a 'Browse...' button on the installers so you can point the plugin .dll somewhere else if you wish.

I saw the announcement on another forum but am very hesitant to download it. His web site does not offer any pictures, let alone videos, on what these plug-ins do, so I have no idea why I would want them.

Normally, I would just download them and try them, but for the words “There is no uninstall.” Why on Earth would I would to install some software I know nothing about if I cannot remove it from my system? I would have to be quite sure it was some software I really really wanted before I would commit my system to it forever.

Adam, I have had these plugins installed on my home computer as well as 3 machines at work for a number of years and have never had any problems with either of them.
As far as what they do, I thought that his explanation was pretty good.
The cube is another effect and the dissolve is very much like a film-style optical dissolve which a lot of folks think is far batter than the basic Sony dissolve.

Thanks for your efforts Mike. Are these written to take advantage of the 32bit float mode?

Adam, I have had these plugins installed on my home computer as well as 3 machines at work for a number of years and have never had any problems with either of them.

That’s good to know.

I would still have to see what they do to get interested in them. The description alone does not make me feel I need them. Perhaps the luminance one if I saw it. The cube one sounds like something I would never use.

So, where can I see a video that uses the luminance transition?

P.S. I see he has listened to me and now has a new version with an uninstall. So I will take a look at the luminance transition.

OK, tried it (the luminance one). It was pretty nice. Alas, after I told Vegas to quit, Windows showed a message that Vegas stopped working. So I uninstalled the plug-in. And Vegas is working fine again.

Thanks for your efforts Mike. Are these written to take advantage of the 32bit float mode?

I asked Scott and here's his response.

I'm afraid they only process in 8-bit mode. I'll have a think about if and how I can add support for 32bit float mode.

Thanks Mike. Nice little additions to our kit of tools. I had forgotten these plug-ins, used them ages ago. Nice to have them for 64 bit.

Shout out to Scott!

NOTE: The built-in "Gradient Wipe" in Vegas is very similar to the SM Luminance plugin.

More news on these plugins from Scott.

Added support for 32-bit float pixel format.
Added installer support for Movie Studio.
Enabled multi-threaded rendering.

Cool, thanks!

An update from Scott this morning (Oct. 7).

Hi everyone,

My apologies but there is a major memory leak with the plugins I released earlier this week (the version where I added support for 32bit float mode - i.e. v1.5 of SMCubes & v1.3 of SMLuminance - both 32bit & 64bit)

I'm at work right now but will upload a fixed version later on this evening.

Again my apologies if you've suddenly been experiencing memory problems since using my latest plugin.