Genie

Squeezes and pulls the image to designated location outside the frame. This effect simulates the window minimizaton technique first popularized by Mac OS X.

This plugin has been completely redesigned in FxFactory Pro 6 to support advanced source and mask selection, chromatic aberration and animatable parameters.

The user interface encourages progressive discovery of the large number of features. Built-in presets offer shortcuts to popular styles and techniques. Master advanced techniques once and apply them to other plugins that share the same design.

Compatibility

Genie is compatible with Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Parameters

Presets

Presets contain a snapshot of your effect configuration. 16 built-in presets are available.

When you save parameter configuration to a file on disk, this file can later be loaded to recreate the same effect configuration. Presets generated in one video application can be used by the same plug-in running in a different video application.

Working with the Presets Menu

Preview

This parameter enables a canvas preview of the pixels selected through the Source and Mask parameter sections.

Previewing the Source and Mask

Genie

Squeeze Start

Determines at which point during the animation the clips is squeezed. If the animation is set to Slide In and this parameter is at 0%, the clip starts fully squeezed but immediately starts scaling up to its full width or height. When set to 100%, the clip starts already at its full width and height and remains so until the end of the animation.

If the Slide In parameter is off, the animation squeezes the clip as it vanishes to its final location. If Squeeze Start is set to 0%, the clip starts squeezing immediately, when the animation begins. At 100%, the clip vanishes to its final location without being squeezed.

Setting this parameter to 100% effectively disables any squeezing, whether the animation is set to Slide In or not.

Squeeze Amount

Determines how much the clip is squeezed during the animation. At 0%, the clip isn’t squezed at all. At 100%, the clip is squeezed to its narrowest/shortest possible representation.

Slide Angle 1

The direction in which the clip the clip originates from, or vanishes to, during the first phase of the animation (building in). Whether the clip is going to slide into the frame, or slide out, depends on the Slide In parameter.

Slide Angle 2

The direction in which the clip the clip originates from, or vanishes to, during the second phase of the animation (building out). Whether the clip is going to slide into the frame, or slide out, depends on the Slide In parameter.

Slide Start

Determines at which point during the animation the clips starts sliding in or out of the frame. At 0%, the clip starts immediately sliding in or out, according to whether the effect is in its build in or out phase. At 100%, the clip starts sliding in or out of the frame at the very last possible moment.

Slide In

Determines whether your clip slides in or out of the frame during the build in and out phases. When enabled, the output starts with an empty frame and the clip is moved and squeezed back to its full width and height, in the direction determined by the Slide Angle 1 parameter. When the effect builds out, the clip is squeezed and moved back outside the frame in the direction determined by the Slide Angle 2 parameter.

Slide In/Out

This parameter controls the animation.

When the effect is set to Slide In/Out by trimming, the following parameters are displayed:

The Trim slider defines a range where the clip is neither sliding in or out (steady state). Any time outside this range is spent sliding the clip in or out. For example, if the Trim range is set between 20% and 80%, the clip slides in from the start of the clip up to 20% of its duration, and starts sliding out at 80% of the clip and until the end. If the clip were 5 seconds long, the build in and out animations last 1 second each.

The Slide In (Easing) and Slide Out (Easing) parameters let you choose the animation curve when animating by trimming the clip or by specifying a duration.

When this parameter is set to animate via duration, the following parameters are displayed:

The Slide In (secs) and Slide Out (secs) give you an exact way to specify how long each phase of the animation should last. Should your requested time periods exceed the duration of your clip, a warning will appear in the output. For example, if your clip lasts only 3 seconds, it would be impossible to have the slide in and out animations both last 2 seconds each (as the total would be 4 seconds, or one second greater than the clip itself).

When the effect is set to build in and out through Keyframes, a single parameter is displayed:

The Progress parameter gives complete control over the animation to you. You will need to keyframe the Progress parameter using features of the video app. Note that there are no easing options when manually animating via keyframes.

Drawing Order

The following options are available:

When applying the effect with a specific Source and/or Mask, this parameter controls whether the masked portion of your media, to which the effect is applied, is drawn above, below, or exclusively in the output.

Inside Mask Opacity

When a Source or Mask has been defined, this parameter controls the opacity of the image that falls within the mask.

Outside Mask Opacity

When a Source or Mask has been defined, this parameter controls the opacity of the image that falls outside the mask.

This parameter is not available when Drawing Order is set to Masked output only, since that option already implies that areas outside the mask aren’t drawn at all.

Source

Parameters in this section allow you to choose a set of pixels to apply the effect to, based on a number of techniques:

  • Luminance Range: select a range of pixels based on their brightness.
  • Color Key: select a range of pixels through a keying algorithm.
  • Edges: select pixels according to an edge detection algorithm.
  • Person Contour: select the main subject in the video frame through an AI-assisted algorithm. Works best with human subjects.
  • Object Tracker: select pixels by tracking one or more objects across the frame.
  • Face Detection: select pixels by detecting the location of human faces and tracking them across the frame for the duration of the clip.

Choosing Source Pixels

Original (left), selecting the darkest pixels (center) and lightest pixels (right)

Original (left), selecting the darkest pixels (center) and lightest pixels (right)

Mask

Parameters in this section define a shape used to crop the output of the effect with. When using an object tracker or face detection, the same mask shape is replicated for each object or face that appears in the frame.

  • Off: no cropping occurs.
  • Rectangle: crop the output to a rectangular shape.
  • Oval: crop the output to a circular shape.
  • Gradient: crop the output to a linear gradient.
  • Bar: crop the output to a two-sided gradient.
  • Custom: crop the output to a shape defined by a custom graphic.
  • Text: crop the outut to a shape defined by a title.

Choosing a Mask

Rectangular mask (left), gradient (center), gradient mixed with Person Contour (right)

Rectangular mask (left), gradient (center), gradient mixed with Person Contour (right)

Chromatic Aberration

Parameters in this section allow you to apply color distortions inspired by lens geometry, but with greater artistic range.

Using Chromatic Aberration

Original (left), distortion of the red and blue channels (center) and of chroma (right)

Original (left), distortion of the red and blue channels (center) and of chroma (right)

Channel Selection

This section allows you to limit the effect to specific channels, leaving others unmodified.

Limiting Output to Specific Channels

Animation

Aberration Amount

Turn this parameter on to animate the Amount value specified under the Chromatic Aberration section. A number of standard controls allow you to control the animation:

Aberration Amount Animation


Animating the Aberration Amount with Directional (left) and Radial (right) Fringing

Seed

A number that controls random aspects of the effect.

Click the New button to assign a new seed value. When the seed value is changed, the effect uses a different random sequence to produce a different output.

Motion Blur

Motion Blur

Enables motion blur at different quality settings. The higher the quality, the more samples are used. Multiple samples are blended together to produce a single frame of output.


Multiple samples are combined to produce a single output frame with motion blur

Shutter Angle and Offset

The Shutter Angle slider controls the size (aperture) of the shutter used to simulate motion blur. The size of the shutter determines how long light is allowed to pass through the lens. The angle is set to 90° by default. A shutter angle of 360° means that samples are collected for the entire duration of the frame.
Setting a value of zero means that you want the shutter to collect light only once, which is equivalent to turning motion blur off.

The Shutter Offset slider controls the moment in time when the shutter opens and closes, relative to the duration of the frame. The offset is set to 0 by default. An offset of zero means the shutter is perfectly centered over the moment in time when the frame occurs. The shutter is therefore open an equal amount of time before and after the current frame occurs.

The Shutter Angle and Shutter Offset parameters are only available when motion blur is enabled.