Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite [07.2016] €? Mac OS X
Lisandra Okumoto
I was looking at my PC's installed apps and found that Magic Bullet was magically installed on my machine on December 21, 2021. I did not install it. Was it included in the recent Premeir Pro CC update and installed without notifying the user? Is there a fee for this product?? Will there be an in app purchase situation like an online game fee when I try to use it?
Magic Bullet is definitely not part of the Adobe suite. Did you by any chance buy your computer used or refurbished? It's possible and old license for that software was on there. Check to see if any software from Red Giant or Maxon is present.
My friend, I also faced this situation. What a... I installed a clean Win 11. After that, Adobe programs. And I noticed that the Win root contains the Magic Bullet folder. There is a folder structure, but only one filled with LUTs., the rest are empty. Interesting )
We've all been there. You were hired for a run-and-gun shoot only to find the location has terrible lighting. Or your shoot is running later into the evening and the sun is going down fast, without any lighting to plug in. The ISO gets cranked up, and your exposure is saved at the expense of adding unwanted noise to your image. This is where noise reduction software becomes useful, and a new product from Red Giant has changed the way it approaches this task with Denoiser III.
Denoiser III has been rebuilt from scratch, with new processes going on under the hood. New computer vision technology came from a company called wrnch, which deals in augmented reality tech. This alternative method of analyzing footage delivers much faster results than previous versions, and editors stand to benefit directly from that.
When you drop Denoiser III onto a clip, it automagically analyzes the footage to create a noise profile (rather than you needing to select one yourself) and determines how to best to remove the noise that is present. The slider controls allow the user to increase or decrease the amount or intensity of a given parameter. Below is a video with a few example clips, and I talk about a couple of them in the paragraphs that follow.
High ISO footage (3,200) from a GH4 seemed to have a lot of color blocking going on, and Denoiser was able to smooth it out some, but not completely remove it. Video recorded on a DJI Inspire at high ISO appeared to me to have a smaller, finer noise pattern which cleaned up decently after tweaking the control parameters, but I did still see some compression artifacts when I really studied the image.
In another clip that was filmed at night, I could clearly see horizontal noise patterns across all of the footage, it really was terrible. Denoiser cleaned up the more exposed parts of the image well, but the darker areas still showed a little noise, even with the reduce and smooth parameters set to 95. Lowering the shadows and midtones just a little bit also helped. In the end, this clip was saved. I would not consider using this clip in a final edit without Denoiser, so that alone proves its worth to me.
The speed at which Denoiser works is directly impacted by how high the parameters are set. The more reduction, the more work that your computer has to do to render those results. Of course clip size also plays a role, so expect longer processing times for larger resolution media.
When editing clips on my 2015 MBP with 16 GB of RAM and a 2.8 GHz processor, I found that 4K clips would play smoothly at quarter resolution with Denoiser applied at its default settings. When I went to render a six-second clip at full 4K resolution, it took three minutes to process. A five-second clip at 1080p took only thirty seconds to render a full-resolution preview.
Everyone's results will vary a bit, but I can tell you that historically using noise reduction software will make even robust systems chug. It's nice to see that Red Giant has optimized Denoiser III to work with lower resolution playback settings as needed, and can play in real-time in some cases.
This is a great tool for if you're shooting scenes in low light, even if your ISO is low. Plenty of cameras will display a small amount of noise, even at reasonable ISO or gain levels. This is where a product like Denoiser will really shine; applying a modest amount of noise reduction on clips that have a small amount of visible grain will do wonders. Like the example above with the clip shot at night, there's no way I would have used that clip without Denoiser III. Red Giant continues to be a great plug-in developer and Denoiser III fits well into their product suite. Denoiser III is priced at $199 with academic and upgrade discounts available.
Mike Wilkinson is an award-winning video director with his company Wilkinson Visual, currently based out of Lexington, Kentucky. Mike has been working in production for over 10 years as a shooter, editor, and producer. His passion lies in outdoor adventures, documentary filmmaking, photography, and locally-sourced food and beer.
At half the price, you could say NeatVideo already wins. ;-) What's also important however is how well it works with your app. Looking at some of the "known problems" over at Neat showed some potential issues, depending on the version of the app you're working with. I wonder if Red Giant is as forthcoming with known issues as Neat is. Compatibility is another one, Denoiser III is only backwards compatible to CC2014 with Premiere, for example. Neat is compatible all the way back to CS5!
I'm definitely getting Looks, but it also contains Colorista III, Mojo and Cosmo and seems to even have at least the Print part of Film. Since LUT Buddy is free, that only leaves Denoiser II, and I already have Neat Video for that. So I'm really wondering what the point of buying the Suite is.
I have the trial version installed, so it isn't like I can't see that it's sometimes a *bit* easier to choose the individual tools rather than slapping a look and having to add the other tool, but for about $400 less it sure seems to me to be worth the slight effort. But if I'm missing anything obvious I'd love to hear about it (because I'm well known for missing the obvious).
Hi there, I am big fan of RG products, I use Looks, a lot, its a valuable tool. I use use magic bullet its a great tool as well, you can color grade and apply with your own defined presets - like a lightroom room for video if you will. Denoiser I don't use as its not ready for FCPX
Since I wrote I've been playing around and clearly some of the individual tools have a bit more controls on them than you can apply in Looks. Colorista III has the auto White Balance as well as a keyer, which IS useful, and Cosmo allows more control over skin selection.
The biggest difference is you can key the results of the individual tools (and, again, see it in real time as it plays, unlike Looks which only grabs a single frame). I'm still going back and forth but I suspect that ultimately I'll end up buying the Suite if nothing more than the few hundred dollars difference means I can upgrade all the products when the new one is released (and the new one can always contain more tools than just these, just like 12 added a few).
The list of things to add to the editing suite is endless it seems. For quick color corrections there are some very useful tools like Color Finale or Hawaiki that work well too. The color temp correction can be done with a variety of software pieces, and Keyer is offered in FCPx at least and most likely Premiere too (I haven't played with Premiere but I know from people its awesome).
You can also try the free version of DaVinci resolve, which is too much for my little mind to wrap around at this point. RG is a high quality product but it sure adds up quickly. Having more tools available can help make the image you want, but there is so much already included with the NLE (with FCP and Motion) or adobe premier and after-effects, personally I like software that improves the work flow, RG products are helpful for sure.
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