Review: Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite 13 Offers Tools for Better Video
By Jim Bask
From Videomaker
Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite 13 includes seven high quality plug-ins to give you better looking video. More than just color correction tools, they are also creative color tools.
Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite 13 is a robust set of color correction tools. Denoiser III gives you up to three more stops of light and Cosmo II makes poor complexion or harsh lighting easy to resolve. With Colorista IV, Red Giant gives you guided color correction to quickly balance color.
Red Giant has been around since 2002 and is one of the most popular plug-in companies. Their products run the gamut from keying, to special effects, and color correction. Their reputation in the plug-in world is one of pioneering and innovation.
Everyday Tools
Magic Bullet Suite 13 includes Looks, Colorista IV, Denoiser III, Mojo II, Cosmo II, Renoiser and Film. Each plug-in can be purchased individually or as part of the suite. For just under 900 dollars, version 13 should be amazing — and it didn’t let us down.
As we stated before, with Denoiser III, you can gain up to three more stops without having to worry about noise. When applying Denoiser III to Sony a7RIII and Canon 5D Mark IV footage, they both benefited. The 5D Mark IV is not a good low-light camera, but with Denoiser III, instead of having a maximum ISO of 1600 before noise became an issue, we were able remove noise all the way up to ISO 6400. With the a7R III, a much better low-light camera, we were able to push it up to ISO 6400 with minimal noise without Denoiser. With Denoiser, we were able to crank up the ISO to 12800. One thing to consider with any denoiser tool is that the more noise you remove, the less sharp the picture becomes. We were impressed that, with the 5D Mark IV, there wasn’t significant smoothing from Denoiser III, even at ISO 3200. It’s only after the noise starts to take on color and becomes less random that Denoiser III is no longer enough. Denoiser III is worth buying even if you can’t afford the whole suite.
In many cases, the default settings for each will get you most of the way there.
Just like Denoiser III, Magic Bullet Cosmo II doesn’t require much ability to dial it in. In many cases, the default settings for each will get you most of the way there. Released in 2011, Magic Bullet Cosmo is a remarkable plug-in for making skin look great. I suffer from a constant red face and don’t have the best complexion. However, whenever I am on camera, I apply Cosmo II and my skin looks smooth. Anytime you have a subject on camera and their skin needs to look better, Cosmo II will save your butt. The first time I realized Cosmo is key was after I shot a commercial at a dermatologist’s office and the doctor told the patient to not worry, as we knew how to make skin look great. We didn’t have any big secret outside of Cosmo….[continue reading]