# Special effects programs for mac?



## enaj (Aug 26, 2004)

I am looking for advice on a good special effects program. Basically, I want to layer, on top of my video footage a fireball going across the screen (like it came out of someone's hands). I believe Motion can do this but I do not own the program and I'm not sure if I want to drop $300 on the software for just this one project. On the other end (cheap), I have also seen Porcefx but you manually have to move the image for each frame.

Any suggestions?


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## district (Sep 14, 2003)

I used Discreet Combustion myself, but it's really expensive. You can do some basic compositing in Final Cut Pro/Express. If the video of your fireball has an alpha channel it should be really easy.


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## MannyP Design (Jun 8, 2000)

There's one called AlamDV (now called FXHome,) I believe it's fairly cost-effective. It has a fairly large user base so there's be lots of goodies to play with.

Cheers,


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## vanderzee (May 1, 2005)

PorcFX 2.0 just recently came out, it's the cheapest one I've seen ($40) and is easy to use, and its for Mac OS X. check it out at http://www.porcellus.com.

Cheers,
- Lance


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## district (Sep 14, 2003)

That cheap one looks too limited, and kind of troubling because it's limited to simulating gunplay.


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## vanderzee (May 1, 2005)

Yeah, you'll have to import your own fireball graphic because PorcFX doesn't have one at the moment... there's some glowing ball effects but im sure that's not what you're looking for. However version 2.0 does have keyframing so you won't have to do it frame-by-frame anymore.

Cheers,
- Lance


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