Red Giant Shooter Suite, now available in version 12.6, is a suite of six plugins/programs that offer an array of video editing tools. I took it for a spin and will explain what’s in the package in case you are shopping around for tools like these. Here’s what you get for $299 ($149 for an academic license): PluralEyes, Offload, Denoiser II, Instant 4K, LUT Buddy, and Frames. Below is a quick breakdown of each of those.

 

PluralEyes 3.5

Red Giant PluralEyes is technically an entire program of its own, so you don’t have to worry about compatibility. It was the first Red Giant product that I had ever heard of and has always been a reliable solution for synching audio and video. It’s a classic. If you learned on Final Cut Pro 7, like I did, you probably learned to use PluralEyes when syncing your DSLR footage with the external audio that you recorded. PluralEyes has always been great and continues to be one of the best in the game. If you use Final Cut Pro X, as I do, you know that there is now a built-in audio sync feature. So for me, I don’t really need PluralEyes. Some FCPX users will still use PluralEyes because you can actually still sync inside PluralEyes and then export a sequence for use in FCPX, but I don’t really need to use that step. As far as compatibility goes for that sequence exporting feature, PluralEyes does work with the major video editing programs: FCP7, FCPX, Premiere, Avid, and Sony Vegas.

 

 

LUT Buddy

Red Giant LUT Buddy will generate Look Up Tables for use in Adobe After Effects and Premiere. Essentially, Look Up Tables are little formulas for color that help you get your footage to look good in its final medium – which could be actual printed film, for instance. Let’s say you have color corrected your video project and it looks good on your calibrated monitor. Well, when you print it to actual film it may look different due to the color cast, contrast of the film, etc. It’s kind of like when you have a photo that looks good on your screen but when you print it out it’s too dark, etc. This is an age old problem for photographers. Anyways, LUT Buddy is popular industry tool for using LUTs.

 

Offload

Red Giant Offload pretty much works with every camera/memory card system out there, according to Red Giant. What it does is manage the import of your media. For me, this is the one inclusion in the Red Giant Shooter Suite that isn’t a must have. The program does verify the files and make sure that everything was transferred, which is kind of comforting. Sometimes I scroll through the finder on my Mac and look to see if everything made it, and might even check the size of the folder to make sure it’s correct, so I guess Offload would, er, offload some of the stress of making sure my precious media assets are safe and secure on my drives. You can also program it to create an automatic backup upon import.

 

Denoiser II

Red Giant Denoiser II might be the most aptly-named and straightforward tool in this collection. It, well, it denoises your footage. It’s a solid addition to your kit and can help with those clips shot at high ISOs that you’ll want to clean up without losing detail. Just like the noise reduction slider in Lightroom.

 

Instant 4K

Red Giant Instant 4K builds upon the older Instant HD, which made HD footage out of smaller resolution footage. Instant 4K makes high resolution out of HD and smaller resolution footage and is supposedly four times as fast as Instant HD was. Basically, the program has an algorithm that takes your footage, be it SD, HD, or whatever, and creates new pixels, adds sharpening, anti-aliasing, etc. to create new high resolution footage. You just pick whether you want to output your footage as 720p, 1080p, 2K, or 4K.

 

Frames

Red Giant Frames can de-interlace your interlaced footage to output as 24p. I believe this feature is built into Adobe Premiere, but Frames has added features for cropping and broadcast details, like NTSC, PAL, HD, etc.

I think this is a good package, and there is a significant savings in choosing the package deal; however, you can of course pick and choose from these six and select only the tools you want. Personally, I would skip Instant 4K, only because I would generally just shoot 4K if I needed 4K. Of course, it’s probably meant to help you in a pinch when you have a 4K project and maybe just one or two clips from an HD camera, but if that’s the case then I probably wouldn’t use the tool enough anyway. All in all, these are all fine products and I don’t see any red flags that I would want to pass on to my colleagues, so, happy editing and good luck.