- Final Cut Pro is one of my favorite video editing programs for Mac, and if you're watching this video, I'm guessing it's yours too. So today I thought I'd share with you my favorite free plug-ins
for Final Cut Pro. Let's dive in. Now, first up is a plug-in that I use on almost any video
where I show the screen, and that's mCamRig. Let me show you what it does. So you can see here I have a video of my screen recording and
I'm going to add mCamRig. I'm gonna drag it on the footage here 'cause of the title. And you can see what it does is it zooms in on the
clip and then zooms out. This is great for showing details in the screen recording. And of course you can drag around this little area here and pick what it zooms in on, and I'm gonna do the edge here. Then I'm gonna go back
and show you the settings. I love that it'll let you turn the animation off
or on for in or out. It is such a great option. You can also choose how much it zooms. And additionally, there's
also a lot of blur effects. I like to actually select
this Infinite Focus option, and let's go back and see how it looks. Perfect. It's such a great way to show somebody a screen recording. Now, next up is a plugin that I use in almost all of my videos also, and that's Alex4D Grow-Shrink. Now, you can see here right now the screen is slowly zooming in, and this is how I do it. So you can see here I have
a talking head clip here of me and the camera is static, but we can drag on the
Grow-Shrink plugin here, and you can see that the
screen slowly zooms in. The best part about this plugin is that you can choose where it
zooms in, just like that. And additionally, there's
a bunch of options here for choosing the start
scale and end scale. So let me start it zoomed in
and then end up zoomed out, and you can see now we're zooming out. Additionally, you can choose a curve to change the speed of how it moves. Overall, a great plugin to add some motion to your talking head videos. Now, if you've ever been editing a project with multiple clips, you know how annoying it can be to apply the
same effects to every clip, and that's where an
adjustment layer comes in. There are so many free
plugins for adjustment layers. They're all kind of the
same from my experience, but the one I'm gonna be
showing is by Ripple Training. Let me show you what it does. We'll type in Adjustment Layer, and you can see RT Adjustment Layer, and we'll drag that on our clip here. And you can see I have
an ungraded clip here, so it looks a little dull. So let me go over here to our effects and we'll pick up a lut, and we'll apply that to
the adjustment layer. And you can see it applied a lut to our footage here, so it looks great. Of course, you can apply
any effects that you want and change other options, and then it'll apply to
everything underneath it. As you can see here, I have
a second clip that's vertical and it's ungraded, but we can drag over our adjustment layer and
now it looks good too. Now, speaking of vertical clips, if you've ever tried to add a vertical video to your project, you know how annoying it can be to have those black bars on the side, and that's where the next
plugin here comes in. It's called M Vertical, and what it does is it blurs
the sides of your footage. So you can see here it
added the blur on the sides. Now my favorite part of the plugin is that it also offers a ton of options. For example, you could
change the brightness and scale of the background, and of course, the blur intensity. Overall, just a great way to add vertical clips to your video. Now, if you've ever tried to show a photo or a logo on
your screen like this, you know how annoying
it can be to animate, but there's a better way. Let me show you. You can see here I have a clip with a screen recording
and then a logo shows up. Now, this is a compound clip I have here. You can see how it's laid out, and then I'm gonna hit back here. Now, what I'm gonna show you now is the Tap5a Quick In-Out Animation. So let me drag that on the clip and you can see what it does here. Really smooth, really clean way to show images on your screen. And of course there's a bunch of animations you can choose from. I love to do the fly in ones. So we'll do fly out to left for the out animation and
let's see how that looks. Perfect. Such a clean way to show a logo on screen. And of course you're probably gonna want to add a little sound effect in there too. Next up is a great plugin
for adding ambience to your clips and the plugin
is called mLight Diffuse. What this does is it actually looks at the footage that is on screen and actually adds a blur
effect to the light. Let me show you what it does. You can see here I have a little clip of the sunset and we're
gonna add mLight Diffuse. And you can see here there's six different
versions to choose from. I like the mLight Diffuse 3, so we're gonna add that on. And you can see by the
fall it adds some grain and it didn't really
do much to our footage. And what we can do here is
change the diffuse amount, and you can see here it
changes the brightness of the diffuse. You can also change the threshold, which changes what is being diffused. And I like to turn off the noise, and I also like to turn
off the reflection opacity. By default, there's a reflection. I just find it very odd, so I'm gonna turn that off. And there is also an option to change the color of your light. So I'm gonna make this a
little bit more yellow. And of course, let me see here. Now let's play. Now that looks beautiful,
but let me just show you a little bit more crazy example, just so you can see how the
effect is actually doing. So you can see here it's
adding a glow effect to all of our footage. Now, of course, this is
kind of an extreme example but you get the idea. Here's one of the other effects on a clip of the moon I have, and you can see it adds a
nice little effect there. Next up is a plugin for
people who love motion blur, and that is Pat Nangle's Motion Blur. Let me show you what it does. Have you ever tried to speed up a clip just like this and it
just looks kind of boring? You can see here it
doesn't really give you that timelapse effect. Now, I'm going to add
Moderate Motion 2 blur up here onto our clip and let's
see how it looks now. So you can see it actually blended the frames together here, and now it looks a lot more cinematic, a lot more timelapse-esque. Just a great way to add motion to your clips and not make
it look like a slideshow. Now, our last plugin
is also by Pat Nangle. It's a super simple plugin that shows name tags under people. I use it a lot during my vlogs. Let me show you how it works. So you can see here I have a clip of Megan in Banff overlooking the view. And let's say we want to add a little Instagram tag to her. Let's go get our Instagram tag title here. You can see it's right here. We'll drag it onto our clip, and you can see it has
a nice little effect that pops in and it has an Instagram tag. Of course, we can change
the username here. The thing I love about the plug in is you can also do a name
or something like that. Super simple. And this pairs super well with the built-in tracking
that Final Cut offers, so let me show you how that works. We're gonna go to our video section here and we're gonna go to Transform, and I'm actually gonna track
Megan here on the left. We'll just select the bounding box here. And I'll hit analyze, and it's tracking the motion of her as she moves around the scene. And you can see now that our name tag is actually assigned to her movement. And of course we're gonna
have to offset it here, so it's actually under her and we're done. Boom. Such a great way to tag
people in your footage. And that's it for my
favorite free plug-ins for Final Cut Pro. Now, if you want links
to any of these plug-ins, check the description below. I'll include links to all of them. Did I miss a free plugin that you love? Definitely let me know
in the description below so I can check it out. And if you enjoyed this video, remember to like and subscribe. Thanks again for watching.
