Universe

MISFIRE

Our classic Magic Bullet plug-in for creating film damage effects has been updated to run on the GPU. MisFire adds scratches, dust, flicker, noise and more, giving your footage a stylized aged look. Check out Retrograde for even more authentic aged film effects.

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Getting Started         

• Drag the uni.MisFire effect onto your clip.
• Click the Choose a Preset button to see a preview of all the presets available. Double-click any preset to apply.

Overall Controls

• Damage Amount: Controls the amount of damage that is applied to your footage. The higher the number, the more effects are applied.
• Color Amount: Affects the amount of color change will be applied to your footage. If the value is at 0.0 the original color of your footage is untouched, sliding up to 100.0 where the color is entirely controlled by the effects applied.
• Random Seed: This feature is useful for adding uniqueness and variety into the Misfire effects. Changing this control will change the initial starting point of the effects, giving them a slightly new appearance.

Effects

MisFire includes 16 effects that can be applied either individually, or as a part of a selected preset. Click the checkbox next to any effect to apply it, then use the settings below it to modify each one.

• Softness: Soften the grain applied. Smaller values mean harder edges, larger values add a more diffuse look. It is best to stick with small values.
• Saturation: Control the amount of saturation in the image, from completely desaturated at 0.0 to highly saturated at 200.
• Fading: Causes an overall lightening of your image that is exhibited as lower contrast. The default value is 100, lower values will lessen the effect, increasing the contrast.
• Funk provides for tone variation across the frame. This simulates a film negative with lightness variation across the entire frame that may be caused by improper storage or in an environment where fungus or mildew could form. This is similar to Splotches but occurs throughout the frame and will persist from frame to frame. Funk Opacity: The default is 15%. High values may look unnatural but feel free to adjust to taste.
• Splotches manifest as a local dirtiness or discoloration of the frame. This can happen on any frame and will usually only persist for a frame or two at a time. Controls include:
  • Splotch Number: Controls the number of splotches on any given frame where the scale controls the size.
  • Splotch Scale: Value at 1.0 will cover about 40% of a standard DV-size frame or about 16% of a 2K film frame.
  • Splotch Opacity: Controls the darkness of the discolored areas. You may need to lower the value on very bright footage (to make the splotch less prominent) or raise the value for very dark footage to bring out the effect.
  • Splotch Frequency: Determines how often a splotch will appear in a sequence. The default value of 50 will cause a splotch to appear on half of the frames. Try lowering this value if you want the splotches to occur less frequently.
• Dust essentially draws bits of black and white material onto the frame. This effect is similar to the small particles that appear on film that has been run through a projector numerous times. The defaults are meant to generate a small amount of both black and white dust that is very noticeable.
  • NOTE: While a number of categories include a Frequency control, each category determines its frequency separately, so splotches won’t necessarily appear at the same frame as dust or any other category of effect.
  • Black Dust Amount, White Dust Amount: Control the maximum number of black or white dust particles appearing in any one frame. For large frame sizes, you may want to make this value much larger to increase the appearance of the dust.
  • Dust Opacity: Specifies the transparency of the dust particles. The default is 100%, which makes the particles quite noticeable. If you want the dust to look smaller in the frame, try lowering this value to between 40 and 60%.
  • Dust Frequency: Determines how often a dust particle will appear in a sequence. The default value of 50 will cause dust particles to appear on half of the frames. Try lowering this value if you want the dust to occur less frequently.
• Flicker causes the image brightness to change from frame to frame. This is similar to the uneven brightness caused by the degradation of an old print.
  • Flicker Frequency: Operates the same as in the Dust or Splotches categories, where the value specifies the percentage of frames in a sequence that will have change. The default value of 50 means that half of the frames in a sequence will change in brightness.
  • Flicker Amount: Controls the degree of brightness change. The default of 10 will cause only a small variation.
• Vignette: Old film tends to exhibit a lot of darkening around the edge of the frames, which is often a result of the lens and camera that were used to shoot the film. Vignette will mimic this aberration. Unlike other MisFire effects, Vignette does not animate or change from frame to frame.
  • Vignette Size: Controls the overall width of the darkening where a value of 0 will darken all the way to the center and value of 100 will not darken the frame at all.
  • Vignette Intensity: Simply changes the amount of darkening.
• Displacement: Often old or mishandled film prints can exhibit a warping of the image caused by a physical bend in the film frame itself. Displacement offers a very simple control for warping the image.
  • Displacement Amount: Specifies the level of warping in the image. With this control, a little goes a long way. This category of effect does not auto-animate so you may want to keyframe the Amount value.
  • Displacement Scale: Specifies the size of the warping in the image.
• Micro Scratches: MisFire offers 3 different styles of scratches. MicroScratches are very thin, faint black lines across the entire image. Film is often scraped as it run through a projector, creating faint black lines on the frame, and this damage is what is replicated.
  • Number Microscratches: Does not correspond to the number of scratches, but instead is a measure of the density of the scratches—higher numbers yield a denser field of black lines.
  • Microscratches Opacity: Changes the transparency of the lines. The Number and Opacity controls should be adjusted in tandem. If you raise the Number control, you may want to lower the Opacity, or vice versa.
• Color Grain: When most people think of film, they think of grain. While some film stocks do exhibit noticeable grain, this type of effect is best used sparingly. The Grain category generates more than just random noise. If all you want is random noise, a simple noise filter applied on top would work fine. The Grain controls go beyond this by letting you create the multi-colored clumps associated with true film grain. Grain offers nine different controls for specifying the amount of grain and where it appears on your image.
  • Grain Amount: Controls the grain density.
  • Grain Color: Lets you simply specify whether the grain is the same on all the color channels Red, Green and Blue. This control is on by default. If you turn it off, you will notice that the colored grain disappears and is replaced by a tinted noise, based on the Red, Green and Blue percentages.
  • Grain Scale: Control the scale of the grain.
  • Grain Persistance: gives you the power to control how much the noise changes on the layer from frame to frame. The default is 1, which changes the noise randomly from one frame to the next, increasing this slider up to 30 will increase how long the pattern of the noise remains the same from frame to frame.
  • Grain Red, Green and Blue Softness: Soften the grain on each color channel. Smaller values give harder edges, larger values add a more diffuse look. It is best to stick with small values in these controls. They are interrelated and related to the Color controls.
  • Grain Black Suppression, Grain White Suppression: These two controls determine whether the grain is drawn in purely white or black areas. The percentages specify the percentage of brightness or darkness in the frame where the grain will NOT appear. For example, 10% Suppression White means that the grain will not draw in the very brightest pixels in the image and will only appear fully in areas that are 10% or less of fully white pixels.
• Luminance Noise: Add quick rendering noise and grain to the Luminance channel of your footage. Self-animating by frame, this tool is highly useful for mimicking the look of 35mm film grain.
  • Luminance Noise Amount: turn up to increase the amount of noise in the layer, or turn down towards 0% to decrease the noise.
  • Luminance Noise Contrast: increase or decrease how evident the difference between darkness and lightness of the noise is.
  • Luminance Noise Scale: allows you to make the size of the noise larger or smaller.
  • Luminance Noise Persistance: gives you the power to control how much the noise changes on the layer from frame to frame. The default is 1, which changes the noise randomly from one frame to the next, increasing this slider up to 30 will increase how long the pattern of the noise remains the same from frame to frame.
  • Luminance Noise Supersample creates a finer noise pattern on the layer when the checkbox is turned on.
  • Luminance Noise Opacity: make the effect more subtle and transparent over the original image.
• Deep Scratches generate a colored scratch that appears to have depth, and to wiggle or move from frame to frame. This colored scratch mimics a physical scratch on the film that has removed some of the film resist, letting light through that is pure in color. The scratches can shift left or right by a random amount that varies from 0 to 5-7 pixels, depending on the size of your image.
  • Number of Deep Scratches: The specified number of scratches that will be drawn on the image.
  • Deep Scratches Duration: Controls the maximum length that any one scratch will appear on the image. The duration is determined randomly for each scratch and can be between 1 frame and the maximum specified number of frames.
  • Deep Scratches Tint: Specifies the color of the scratches. The default color is close to pure green, which is the color of real scratched film.
• Basic Scratches generate thin bright or dark lines that wiggle or move from frame to frame. Unlike the Micro Scratches or Deep Scratches effect, Basic Scratches will not cover the entire frame but will gently fade toward the top or bottom of the frame.
  • Number of Basic Scratches: The specified number of scratches that will be drawn on the image.
  • Basic Scratch Duration: Controls the maximum length that any one scratch will appear on the image. The duration is determined randomly for each scratch and can be between 1 frame and the maximum specified number of frames.
  • Invert Basic Scratches: Lets you specify either dark lines (when it is on) or light lines when it is off.
• Gate Weave: When a film frame passes through a projector, sprockets outside the image area control the vertical motion of the frames through the projector. Over time, a film can become warped or the sprockets can wear, causing the frame to appear to move side to side. This kind of motion is called Gate Weave and this effect mimics it.
  • Weave Frequency: Controls the speed of the left-right motion of the frame. Small values cause the frame to move slowly. High values will cause the frame to move quickly from side to side.
  • Weave Amplitude: Measured in pixels. The default of 5 pixels will cause the frame to move left or right 5 pixels then return to center.
  • Weave Noise Frequency: Varies the motion by the percentage you choose. Small values will cause a slight variation of the motion, while large values will cause the frame to appear to jitter.
• Post Contrast Film often appears with higher contrast than video. Over time the darkening or contrast change can be quite pronounced. The Post Contrast control lets you quickly add this effect. Applies a darkened high contrast effect. The default value is fine in most cases. Values beyond 50 will likely look unrealistic. Negative values can cause the image to appear to wash out.