A collection of free Final Cut Pro for Mac plugins that I created for my blog from July 2011 to August 2013.

Each plugin listed here has its own Mac installer. Follow the links to find out more.

My top two old plugins:

Grow-Shrink – Effect that animates a change in scale for a clip. Will scale a clip up or down over the duration of a clip (including transitions if need be)

Sound Only – Cut only transition that crossfades audio between two clips choosing whether the video cuts before, during or after the crossfade

If you find my content useful, please consider donating as a sign of your appreciation. Thank you. I’d love to hear how you are using my plugins – links to your work would be great.

Also check out my Alex4D Animation Transitions plugin pack for Final Cut Pro on Mac – instant animation using transitions:

Effects – Stylize Plugins

Aged Film – More controls and ‘Bad TV’-style rolling

Bad TV – More controls than the built-in Final Cut Pro for Mac version

Blurs – Six blurs and one sharpen effect:
   Channel Blur – Blur combinations of red, blue, green and alpha channels
   Circle Blur – Blur a circular area
   Compound Blur – This blurs the clip based on values from another clip
   Defocus – Simulates the way clips go out of focus when using a physical camera
   Gradient Blur – Applies a blur gradually between two points
   Soft Focus – Overlays the clip on top of a blurred copy: a ‘fogged lens’ effect
   Unsharp Mask – More controls than standard sharpen effect

CMYK Halftone – simulate close up of magazine or newspaper print

Colour effects – 11 colour control effects
   Brightness – Change overall brightness
   Channel Mixer – Combines colour values from red, gree, blue and alpha channels
   Color Balance – Colour wheels for shadows, midtones and highlights
   Color Reduce – Choose two, three or four colours to keep – with option to chang them
   Contrast – Advanced contrast control
   Gamma – Precise brightness and brightness range control
   Gradient Colorize – Choose a channel to map a range of colours onto
   Levels – Map the darkest and brightest channel values to black and white
   OpenEXR Tone Map – Apply tone maps to OpenEXR encoded content
   YIQ Adjust – Adjust values in the YIQ colour space
   YUV Adjust – Adjust values in the YUV colour space

Distorts – Four distort effects
   Black Hole – Sucks clip into a single point
   Bulge – Pushes a clip out from or into a single point
   Circular Zigzag – A ripple distortion
   Twirl – Twists clips

Extrude – Simulated 3D thickness

Light Rays – shine light from behind the clip

Opacity Gradient – Add areas of colour that fade over clips

Random Tile – replace clip with multiple copies of a selected part of the source

Scale Mosaic – Pixellate with control over scale of elements used in each pixel  

Sparks – Adds animated stars and spark particles

Tile – Offset clips, scale, rotate, distort and skew tiles

Effects – Animation Plugins

Curves – Adds Final Cut Pro 7-style animation curve controls
   Curve X – Controls X position
   Curve Y – Controls Y position
   Curve Rotation – Rotate around a point of your choice
   Curve Scale – Scale aroud a point of your choice
   Curve Trim H – Crop the left or right edge of a clip
   Curve Trim V – Crop the top or bottom edge of a clip

Grow-Shrink – Animates a change in scale for a clip

Rotate XYZ – Rotates clips in three dimensions

Rotate + Extrude – Rotates clips in three dimensions and adds simulated 3D thickness

Smooth Move – Defines a start and finish position, scale and rotation for clip content with controls for how the clip moves from start to finish

Effects – Compositing Plugins

4 Up – Display four clips on the same screen, or switch between them

Adjustment Layer – Any effects or transformations you apply to this title will be applied to all timeline clips below

Fade In Out – Fades a clip in and out

Letterbox – Add black bars to show many aspect ratios, portrait was well as landscape – Oct 2012 

Luma Include – Choose which parts of clips are transparent based on brightness values

Magic Lantern HDR – Composition controls for resolving HDR clips generated by Magic Lantern on Canon SLRs – Dec 2012 – New effect for 10.0.6 and newer

Mask+ – Define 4, 8 or 16 points of a mask with animation control over scale, rotate and perspective distortion

Time Remap – More control over clip retiming with Final Cut Pro 7-style editable retiming graph  – New version for 10.0.6 and newer – March 2013

Shadow – Adds external or internal shadows

Trim – With differing values for feathering for each edge

Widescreen Matte – Add black bars to show many aspect ratios, portrait was well as landscape

Generator Plugins

Shape Grid – draw a grid of circles or squares with animating colours

Title Plugins

Basic – Keyframable – A title with many parameters you can animate using keyframes

Interface 2037 – A title effect that simulates computer interface from ‘Alien’ movie

Leaves  – letters blow onto and off screen

Text Box – Choose two points to define corners of a text box, fill and blur the box

Ticker+ – Title for horizontally scrolling news feeds 

Zoom Four – Zooms between a series of four texts

Transition Plugins

Concentric – Draws the incoming clip as a series of concentric shapes

Cross Dissolve start and end on edit – For those missing the Final Cut Pro 7 option of transitions that start or finish at the edit point

Dip to Background – A transition that shows a colour, another clip or transparency between two clips

Freeze – Freezes the outgoing or incoming clip

Inset  – shutters close in on outgoing clips and open showing incoming clips

Premonition – A transition that intercuts frames from the incoming clip with frames from the outgoing clip

Ribbon – Splits the outgoing clip into two parts and stretches the pixels in between into a horizontal ribbon – new in February 2013

Sound Only – Crossfade audio transition between two clips choosing whether the video cuts before, during or after the crossfade