Post Production:
Plug Video Productions

It’s a dream come true: You produce a video, which receives accolades, and in turn, you are sought out by high-end clients eager to tap your talents.

That is precisely what happened to Plug Video Productions, based in Yorba Linda, California, after exploiting its new-found powers within VT[3] to produce an amazing couples biography for an upcoming wedding.

Plug Video Productions had already developed a reputation with such repeat clients as Disney and Black Angus. Dan Douglas says he was quite proud of the final biography, so he entered it into competition with the Wedding and Event Videographers Association, and won the Silver WEVA Creative Excellence Award. Plug Video also won a prestigious peer-reviewed Aegis Award for another project. Behind it all, Douglas says, was the immense power that real-time editing provided him in VT-Edit. “I loved using it because there are so many layers going on, and a lot of positioning as well. No other NLE I’ve used could keep up. There’s no way I can creatively work this quickly. VT-Edit is the only thing that can keep up with me! I can easily manipulate images as fast as I can think…as fast as I could want them to go, which is how I did so many blends and layers.”

Click here to see streaming version of this video - 4.30 minutes

In addition to the creative flow of unlimited layers in real-time, Douglas says last-minute changes become trivial, regardless of how large the project is. “One couple came in several times, and they loved it, but kept asking ‘what would happen if I added this here’. The Storyboard view in VT-Edit made instant insertions for me (in literally 10 seconds). Nothing needed to be rendered. In other editors, such as Premiere or Avid, I’d have to stop to render.”

Dan Douglas, of Plug Video Productions

Douglas stresses that unlimited editing power leads directly to unleashed creativity. His project involved hundreds of clips that were layered, color corrected and for a large sequence of clips, played in reverse. Without the power of VT-Edit at his disposal, he would not even have considered such an out-of-the-box concept. “Throughout the project, I represented time with color, and I loved the real-time color correction. For all those clips playing in reverse, guess what I could do? Click reverse clip…boom! It was done; more than 200 individual clips. There are over 780 clips in this project, and 600 photos mixed together. VT-Edit didn’t have any problem.”

Plug Video Productions appreciated the ability of VT-Edit to also act as a light-weight compositor. “We used a lot of soft edges throughout this project. I could soften edges immediately in Positioner, and never once had to go into Photoshop to clean it up, which saved us hundreds of hours.” Not only is VT-Edit fast, its even faster than Douglas anticipated, with a project bid of 600 hours being trimmed to an unprecedented 150 hours, out the door.

Because the workflow of VT-Edit was so liberating, Douglas tried many things simply on their artistic merit, without any consideration for how long it would take, since it was truly real-time. “My creative potential is now completely unrestricted.”

And that expanded creativity has now led Plug Video Productions right into some high-profile contracts, including a wedding video for U.S. Olympic Volleyball Gold Medal winner Misty May, several contracts for Yahoo, and even taping a Jessica Simpson music video. Douglas credits his NewTek tools for some of that success. “Anyone can be a good editor. To be a great editor, you’ve got to have the right tools, and I’ve never seen such easy-to-use tools as VT[4].”

Misty May winning Olympic Gold Medal

Plug Video shooting Misty’s wedding

Douglas, who is an ardent parasailer, frequently shoots while aloft, and says he cannot wait to take advantage of VT[4]’s integrated motion stabilize feature.

Dan Douglas enjoying a morning flight

For skeptics, Douglas urges them to set aside any notions until they have seen VT[4] in action: “Give it a try. I had a buddy who used it for less than a minute and said, 'I’m buying this!' You’ve got to try it out and you’ll see what I mean.”

Plug Video Productions is in Yorba Linda, California, and can be contacted at info@plugvideo.com or on the web at www.plugvideo.com.