Includes Native Final Cut Pro X and CS5.5 Support and New Lower-Priced Delirium Bundles

After completing extensive "under-the-hood" enhancements to the core suite of its effects plug-ins, Digieffects has launched Delirium v2.5, Damage v2.5 and Buena Depth Cue v2.5. The free updates for existing v2.0 users bring with them native support of Apple Final Cut Pro X inside select Delirium plug-ins, and native support of Adobe CS5.5 across the full Digieffects product line, including in the After Effects-only Buena Depth Cue. UPDATE: The new versions will be available for download soon.

"We had been supporting Final Cut Pro through the After Effects architecture before, but we moved everything over, first, to FXPlug and then FXPlug2," Digieffects president Robert Sharp told us. "It wasn’t an easy route, and we invested heavily in engineering to make it happen." Delirium and Damage also now natively support Final Cut Pro 6 and 7, Motion 4, and Final Cut Express. At this writing, 11 Delirium plug-ins, rebundled in a new lower-priced $149 "Phenomena" package, natively support FCPX. Sharps says more will follow in the near future. He also reports that development strengthened the suites’ integration with OS X Lion and fixed some bugs in previous versions. "What we’ve been trying to do for the past four years is make all the effects tools that After Effects users take for granted available to nonlinear editors," he says. "These releases certainly get us much closer to that goal."

Now that FCPX lists for $299, Sharp says it was time to begin offering reduced pricing on smaller effects bundles that appealed to specific audiences. "We are looking ahead at what a lower-priced FCPX will do to our market, and by comparison, Delirium’s full $299 price is just a tough one to swallow, especially for people who only need a few plug-ins at a time." In addition to Phenomena, new themed bundles including Color, Distort, and Mood and Composite pare down Delirium’s full suite of 44 plug-ins to $99 – $149 collections of 6 to 11 effects each. A wide variety of presets, which Digieffects users previously had to find and download separately from the company Web site, are now included in each of the full suite upgrades. "We know that everyone is pressed with deadlines, so presets let them start at the 50-yard line of creativity to get a jump on their work," says Sharp.

A streamlined registration and install process—a single installer will now work for entire suites—should appeal to large facilities with multi-seat users hoping to spread those tools across the network to a wider group of effects artists and editors. "University labs and our entertainment customers, like NBC Universal, will be able to do headless installs on their networks and it will be a lot less painful setup," says Sharp.

Delirium v2.5 lists for $299 for new customers and $149 for those migrating from v1.0. Damage v2.5 is $99 for new customers and $79 for those moving up from v1.0. Buena Depth Cue v2.5 lists for $199 for new users and $99 for those with v1.0.

For more information: www.digieffects.com