Wes Plate from Automatic Duck presented his new product Ximport AE at the recent Los Angeles Creative Pro User Group. Wes showed the audience how to get FCPX timelines into After Effects and also recounts some great NLE history. Well worth a watch with your morning latte for half an hour!

We were slightly sceptical when Red Giant announced their ever growing pack of plugins called Universe. Well, it's just had a thumping update with a lot of new effects and is beginning to look like a good cross-platform plugin collection.

Want to export a section from a clip (or clips) out of FCPX for use in another application? ClipExporter 2 is now live, new features and it's back on the Mac App Store. Thomas Szabo explains all.

Yes this is a site about Final Cut Pro, but we think this sneaks in on merit of inspiration, entertainment and humour. The video is going viral, so grab a coffee and enjoy.

In the last of our video reports from NAB 2014 (Not bad seeing as we were not planning to do any due to lack of staff!) we talk to Peter McAuley from Boris FX who introduces us to BCC9.

The new Nodes 2 plugin from Yanobox was announced at the Supermeet in Las Vegas last night. Create complex visual animations in Final Cut Pro X, FCP7, Motion, Adobe After Effects & Premiere Pro.

Some hot news that's not off the NAB show floor. Automatically track and censor faces within FCPX, Motion, Adobe After After Effects and Premiere with the new Secret Identity plugin. We are impressed, very impressed.

Unlimited Filters from Picture Instruments allows a user to build looks in Photoshop and then take the LUT grades and apply them in FCPX, Adobe's Premiere Pro and After Effects.

After a great tease video, the news is out. Universe from Red Giant is a new system for building plugins for multiple hosts on OSX and Windows machines. It's community driven and a variety of subscription plans gets you access to a growing library of effects.

New to the Final Cut Pro X ecosystem, designer Harry Frank has released a pack of modern style lower thirds. Priced at $49 for 20, we also have a 15% off coupon code.

The deluge of new plugins post NAB continues. New releases include a utility plugin for getting the timing right when editing to a script and a couple of new free plugins from Andy Mees.

Dashwood Cinema Solutions has released a collection of effects and generators called the Editors Essential Plugin Suite. Also in this story you will see the coolest thing happening in FCPX this week!

SUGARfx have made editor's lives a lot easier by releasing a brand new $49 plugin for the display of subtitles in FCPX and Final Cut Pro 7 timelines. 

Thomas Szabo at Mindtransplant has emailed us to say that ClipExporter has been taken off the Mac App Store and is now free to download. It's not the end of this handy app for getting clips out of FCPX, it's the beginning of more development.

Everybody loves free plugins, especially when they offer a lot of functionality for no Dollars! Idustrial Revolution have just updated their popular plugin called CoverFlux which now brings iTunes style slideshows to Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere Pro.

The visual programming tool Quartz Composer hasn't received much love from the Apple team for a while. Should Apple finally kill it off, not only will it be the end for many popular QC based plugins for FCP, it could also be the end of Final Cut Pro 7 itself.

Another useful plugin from the husband and wife team of Graeme & Wendy Nattress. This $49 plugin makes animating 'video scrapbooks' from still images.

***Winners Posted***

Idustrial Revolution have updated their popular Volumetrix light spill plugin to give full compatibility with Final Cut Pro X. They have also given us five copies of their popular $49 plugin to give away.

The options for getting clips and projects from Final Cut Pro X into After Effects are decreasing. Foolcut won't work wih versions above 10.0.2 and Automatic Duck is only for Final Cut Pro 7. The new ClipExporter version 1.1 from MindTransplant fills that gap.

When the Final Cut Studio version of Pan & Zoom was released, it gave great Ken Burns style effects in Final Cut Pro 7 and was easy to use too. Noise Industries has now upgraded the free plugin to work with FCPX.

Long term plugin writer and Motion guru Patrick Sheffield has moved two of his popular plugins over to the FxFactory delivery method. Priced At $19 and $29, they're not going to break the bank stylizing your footage.

***Video Reposted***

Whatever you are doing, stop, get yourself a coffee and spend the next 30 minutes watching Michael talk about large format workflow. Packed full of information, this recent LAFCPUG presentation is not to be missed.

SugarFX have updated their Viewfinder HUD (Head Up Display) plugin for Final Cut Pro X. The update brings an extra 50 filters for FCPX users.

Digieffects have announced that their plugin 'Damage' is now available for Final Cut Pro X. So if you want to degrade that lovely pin sharp footage into old film, compressed video with artifacts or TV interference for example, this $99 plugin fits the billing.

Nick Militello, one of our readers emailed us to say he was having problems with Thunderbolt speeds when using an extra monitor in the chain. We investigate.

****Updated with winners****

FxFactory Pro 3 from Noise Industries was officially announced by press release today. We have two copies of this revolutionary set of plugins for Final Cut Pro X and FCP7 to give away.

A brand new plugin from Graeme Nattress, Levels and Curves gives you on screen colour correction controls in Final Cut Pro X.

This is a unique colour correction plugin from the people who bought you Motype and Nodes. Now you can colour correct in FCPX without taking your eyes off the viewer!

Digital Film Tools have released 'reFine' a $99 video & film plugin that delivers edge aware sharpening and smoothing effects. The plugin supports many hosts including Final Cut Pro X and FCP7.

GenArts have released Version 6 of their popular plugin pack Sapphire for Final Cut Pro 7. They seem to be moving away from compositing tools and going for the eye candy.

CoreMelt Complete is now available for Final Cut Pro X and it's been reduced to half price. Also Red Giant show us why Magic Bullet won't be coming to FCPX just yet.

Noise industries must be one of the most prolific tutorial makers for plugins out there. These two new plugin tutorials are for stylising video.

Digieffects have joined the list of companies that have updated their plugins to work with Final Cut Pro X. Delerium is the first pack that gets the makeover.

Hot on the heels of the weekend's excitement with FCPX and FCP7 project interchange, Jef Gibbons got in touch with us to share his Final Cut Pro X OMF export 'workaround'

Over half an hour of information and tips on Final Cut Pro X from Steve Martin of Ripple Training. The first presentation we've seen stopped by a heckler too.

The news yesterday that Wes Plate from Automatic Duck was moving to Adobe flashed around the internet pretty quickly. Is this good or bad news for Final Cut Pro X?

Two completely different tutorials on using green screen in your productions. One of them qualifies for inclusion as it describes the process in Final Cut Pro X, the other because it's informative and fun for a Friday.

The newly announced Thunderbolted Intensity Extreme from Blackmagic Design is targeted at professional videographers. Small, bus powered with HDMI in & out, it will retail for €209.

We first saw this a few days ago and to be honest were slightly put off by the sparse website. There is nothing like a fresh demo to prove a point and here the author shows off the script exporting RED material out of Final Cut Pro X and into After Effects.

Rays, you either love them or hate them, but used right they can add a lot of impact or subtle realism. Digital Film Tools have upgraded their Rays plugin to work with Final Cut Pro X.

Red Giant have today announced the availability of its updated professional green screen tool, Primatte Keyer. New features, improved performance and a pretty impressive list of Hollywood credits too.

The ability to edit 3D material wasn't included in the list of features of Final Cut Pro X when it was launched in June. Dashwood Cinema Solutions have plugged that gap by updating their 3D editing tools for FCPX.

Noise Industries were the only plugin company to have products that worked with FCPX on the day it was released. The new version of FxFactory is ready for that Lion OS X 10.7 and Final Cut Pro X combination. Tutorials after the break.

***Winners Posted***

Yes you read the headline right. Not only have MotionVFX started to publish Motion 5 templates on their store, they are also offering 5 $200 gift certificates in an exclusive FCP.co giveaway competition. All you have to do is tweet!

Making 3D material is still not easy, so how difficult is it to make a 3D menu to start off your 3D Blu-ray disk? To be honest we wouldn't have a Scooby where to start, luckily we know a man who has produced an excellent half hour tutorial to show us how.

When the $99 Nodes plugin was first launched it caused quite a stir, there was nothing on the market like it. Now Yanobox have published an amazing free update for all users. Stunning demo video after the break.

There are plugins out there for 3D editing, but they are expensive even with the latest price cuts by GoPro. If you have FCP and After Effects and you're on a budget then this workflow is for you. Part two of the video and the finshed result after the break.

Noise Industries powered PHYX Keyer 2.0 amps up popular keying plug-in pack with three new keying plug-ins for increased keying accuracy, speed and control in Final Cut Pro, Motion and After Effects. All the info after the break.

Noise Industries have added a couple of plugins to their successful FxFactory Pro pack of plugins for FCS and After Effects. The poster image isn't that great, but the video is in 720p so hit the play button to checkout how to 'slice'. The video for 'flip' as well as information on Photo Montage is after the break.

So we've been there before with our 1000fps slomos in Twixtor and in Motion as well. But while we were looking at DSLRs to create cool Time Lapse effects, there's always somebody out there tinkering with new cameras and FCP. More after the break.

It's the old problem on a 5D shoot, you're budget doesn't stretch to lighting your night time exterior to match that Hollywood blockbuster, so what do you do? Go with your underlit shot, and trust that the darkness reflects the mood you want to evoke? Well, here's the low budget answer thanks to Robino Films. More after the break.

FxFactory from Noise Industries keeps on growing its set of FCP & Motion plugins. This is a good one, a zoom transition with a twist. (I don't know why but I want to say that in the accent of Serge from Beverly Hills Cop)

A brand new plugin from the people who bought you Motype and Nodes. Yanobox today released 'Barcode' a free generator for Final Cut Pro, Motion, After Effects and Final Cut Express which lets you generate and animate EAN 13 barcodes, with unique and unexpected results. (Updated 15/2/11 Tutorial posted)

If you need to simplify your workflow, then try Post Haste, now updated to version 1.1. Enter some basic information about your project and let Post Haste take care of copying and renaming your files. More after the break including some amusing food for thought.

In a wistful promotion aimed at that lovelorn Valentine's Day market, EditorsKeys are trying to make us fall in love with editing again. Some spec and other keyboards after the break.

Noise Industries have announced the release of free plugin Manifesto 1.0, which comes in two variants: a static title generator and a title roll/crawl generator, and it's infinitely more powerful than the native title generator in FCP. FX Factory has also had an update. More after the break.

Ever wanted to know when an FCP render has finished? Well now you can. And by the time you get back from getting that all important coffee you should have a message waiting.

 “Render Notification 1.0.2” by Josh Petok from the current cut. It is a nice little script that watches the processor usage of a few pre-selected apps and will email you when the load goes down. In other words it alerts you to your render finishing. To find out more about it go here. There's also a useful suicide script for killing off a hung After Effects at the same link.

Those very informative people at NewMediaWebinars present a VFX Plug-in Essentials Webinar looking specifically at the plug-ins and filters offered within Noise Industries' FX Factory.