Using VSCO Film in Final Cut Pro
If you are a lightroom user or if you use VSCO cam app on your phone then you already know how awesome VSCO film is.
Unfortunately VSCO doesn’t yet offer a plugin for FCPX, you can grade your videos in lightroom with VSCO film presets but you will be limited with the available controls for video inside adobe lightroom.
So I have tried to find a way to use their presets/filters directly in final cut pro & I think I have found a way of doing so via LUTs.
Okay, straight to the point, requirements:
- Look converter
- LUT Utility or LUT Buddy (FCPX)
- VSCO Film Presets (I use lightroom version)
The look converter is a handy tool that allow you to convert a certain look/effect/preset from an app or software (Instagram, lightroom, VSCO, etc) to a LUT that you can load from your preferred editing software or NLE & apply it directly to your footage.
If you use the new versions of Adobe Premier, After Effects or Davinci resolve then I believe they have their built-in LUT utility/loader
Steps & Workflow:
- Import the Neutral Filter that came with look converter in adobe lightroom
- Apply the VSCO Film effect (or any other effect) that you would like to load as a LUT in FCPX
- Make sure you remove any grain & sharpening from the effect
- Export/Save the Neutral filter image (Name it on the filter you’ve applied)
- Load the image/Neutral filter into look converter by clicking on 3D LUT
- Make sure that the destination folder where the LUT will be converted to is correct
- Open Final Cut Pro, from the effects browser drag the LUT Utility on to your footage
- in the inspector window, under Apply LUT click on the No LUT to select your freshly baked LUT from the drop down list.
- That’s it
Now you could tweak the workflow above by thinking out of the box
For example. take a snapshot of the video you are working on, import the image into lightroom and apply your adjustments first (shadows, highlights, temp) then apply your preferred filter & save it as a preset Then continue from step one from the list above onwards.
Tips:
- Dont add sharpening to the Neutral Filter, you can add it later in FCPX
- Don’t apply grain to the Neutral filter, the grain will be static and it will look fake, apply the grain in FCPX.
- For best results, adjust the white balance (color correct) before adding the desired VSCO Preset to your footage
- in many cases, its recommended to denoise your footage before applying LUTs
Please share your results with me, I would love to see your work!
Happy LUTing 🙂
Twitter activated vending machine - VIVA Eid Social Media Activity
What kids love the most about Eid?
It’s definitely not the food nor the new clothes… It’s the Eidiya? that they look forward to.
For you who doesn’t know what an Eidiya is, it is the money children receive from elder members of the family & their adult relatives on Eid, read more about it here Eid-ey-yah
How can we turn this traditional/religious event into a social media activity & mesh it with the real world? A twitter vending machine that will dispense gifts/Eidiya once a user follow the official twitter account of VIVA Bahrain?@VIVA_BH and tweets their favorite moments of Eid.
So how does it work?
All what is required is a data enabled smartphone & a public twitter account, parents had to follow the instructions on screen & it basically involves sending an Eid greeting tweet with #VIVAEidiya hashtag & a dynamic number that appears on screen.
Once the tweet is sent the, machine will look for that tweet & it will dispense a box that has Eidiya.
Different denominations (20,10. 8, 5, 3, 2, & .5 Bahraini Dinars) were placed randomly in the twitter vending machine, so no one would know how much is inside the box until they open it.
The video was shot @ Bahrain City Centre, the venue where the machine is/was placed at
PollDaddy unlimited voting hack 2012 video
Based on Alex's post on RustBrick's website back in 2009, I was able to find a way to crack the new code/algorithm set by pollDaddy.
I am not going to publish how the hack works but I will show you a quick video demonstrating the attack in action.
For those who doesn't know, PollDaddy is a popular online poll creator.
Samsung Galaxy S3 Video with Cinematic Film Effect
We decided to go out for a quick video shoot with the new Samsung Galaxy S3 & collected few good video footage from our shop @ Bahrain city centre & our Ramadan rewards Stand (with the BMW), as you will notice we've applied some film effects to the footage to give that cinematic feel to it.
The final video compiled pretty well however you will notice that the camera will try and refocus at some point due to the fact that I should have selected a focus point to maintain the depth of field (discovered that later on).
Galaxy Nexus Video Demo
So it's been a while since I have posted anything recently, my wife just got me a galaxy nexus & I have decided to shoot a video with it.
on top of this page is an experimental video shot with Galaxy Nexus - ( It's not what you shoot with, its how you shoot it )








