Sam here…

It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that we’re entering a “do-it-all-in-one-app” world for most things.

Bouncing out to After Effects, Motion, or having a dedicated GFX person who “handles all that stuff” for many clients is becoming far less common when it comes to how Producers budget for jobs.

Turnaround times for videos are faster, and editor’s with “Jack of All Trades” skill sets are becoming almost mandatory (please don’t get upset with me about that… I’m just the messenger).

Clients asking “Can’t you just do it yourself?” is becoming the norm.

And even if they’re not asking that, being able to turn around GFX quickly and having them still look professional is a HUGE value add you can provide for your clients as an editor.

The main problem is that most people don’t have time to learn everything… and when it comes to things like Motion GFX, for the most part, especially for corporate/branded work where you’re expected to do everything yourself, having some great looking templates/design elements in your arsenal becomes the difference between a profitable vs. too-time-consuming-to-be-worth-it job.

For FCPX users, Plugins like XEffects Snapshots, Cineflare’s Kinetic Badges,and Ripple Callouts (recently updated) are part of the solution.

I’ve actually done a video about Ripple Callouts in its previous incarnation, but it just got a great new update (free), and the video on the link above will tell you more about what can be done with it than I can. In terms of creating quick, professional looking “callouts” for things going on within a frame, there simply isn’t a better plugin package on the market.

If you need something that’s going to add a bunch of style to your typical freeze frame, you’re going to want to look at Snapshots… which is a series of Freeze frame templates (transitions for these are included as well). These plugins are a great way to impress a client or create a package around their branding with minimal effort… or at least far less effort than everyone else is putting in.

And when you these in conjunction with something like Cineflare’s Kinetic Badges, which is a series of animated and highly customizable vector graphics, chart type things, and textures, corporate and branded work becomes are far simpler, less tedious, and considerably better looking.

Quick note about all of these packages, and really any package you work with in FX Factory… don’t watch the “demo videos” to learn how to use the plugins. Watch the “(plugin package) in Final Cut Pro X” video that is next to the “demo video” on the product’s info page to get a more in depth understanding of what to do with the plugins.

All of these packages are available through FxFactory and are only available for use in FCPX.

Review disclaimer – Yes, we do sometimes get free products and licenses. No, this does not affect our reviews. We only advocate and sell the products that we use in our own workflows. If we bother to review something, it’s because we use it in our day to day and like it. We also very much admit that we haven’t seen everything… if you think there’s a product out there that we should be talking about, please let us know at workflow@fcpworks.com.

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