'Renting' plug-ins?
 

Might be an odd question but can you rent a plug-in or buy a one-off use license or something? There are a couple of plug-ins I'd like to use if I can on my little short but they are a little pricey (not by proffesional budgets of course) and I would most likely never use them again.

Does anyone know if there are other options than shelling out for the full licenses?

Thanks,
Jay.

Well I know of some software packages (nothing to do with
our video work) that you can get a license with for a couple of
days, or number of uses etc. I've never seen a plugin use such
a techinque though.

Keep in mind that most of the things you do with plugins can
be done without them as well (not always). The downside is
that it usually costs a lot more time and manual labor to get
the same end result.

One solution that works quite well is to outsource.

For instance if somebody on this board owns the magic bullet plugin ($1,000) and you only wanted your 20 min short converted from 25fps to 24fps or so.

They could process your footage & send back a dvd for $50?? $100??

Jed, you're a genius! Thanks for that. That is the perfect solution. I know a post-production facility with at least one of the plug-ins I want to use and I'd imagine they'd do me a favour on it. If they can't, I'll ask on the board.

Y'know, that should have been really obvious to me. Thanks very much for that suggestion.

Rob, you're right that I should be able to do it myself but I've been colour correcting and tweaking my contrast etc for months and I've got to say it's killing me. I love it and I'm having a great time playing with effects but there are some things I simply don't think I'm skilled enough to do on my own at this stage. I'm learning so much (you wouldn't believe just how differently I'd do things the next time!) but I'm going to have to hand over some things to the experts who make these wonderful plug-ins like Cinelook and Magic Bullet.

Thanks guys. I really appreciate the help.
Jay.