DS Plug-ins

Here are links to 3rd party plug-ins that work with the DS. Avid and the DS Support site also have information regarding plug-ins. (added 5.08.07)

A note about version 10:

Any AVX 1.0 plug-ins will work in v10.0.

Tinder works (as does Anvil, Keylight and Furnace), although the new versions might not be on their public website yet. Boris works, but it must be BCC1 AVX1. Sapphire works, and it must be the DS AVX1 version.

SDK specific plug-ins required a recompile and will need to be upgraded. Foundry plugins must be upgraded and you will have to purchase a new license for the upgrade.


Boris: (AVX1)
BCC (Contimuum Effects)
Red (Compositing) Works poorly as a plug, but can be used standalone
Blue (3D) Works poorly if at all as a plug, but can be used standalone

Digital Film Tools (AVX1) NOT 64 Bit DS
55mm (optical filters)
Digital Film Lab (film looks)
Composite Suite (compositing!!)
zMatte (Chromakeyer)

Foundry (all using the Softimage SDK):
Supported on DS v10 as of 1st Sep 2008
Anvil (colourist tools)
Tinder (vfx)
Furnace (Steadiness (stabilizer) and Kronos (FluidMotion)) (note 3.12.08: reported to not work properly on 9300 DS v8.x with XP64)
Keylight 2 (Chromakeyer)

Genarts: (AVX1, 32bit and 64bit)
Supported on DS v10 as of 1st Sep 2008
Sapphire Plug-ins (many lighting effects, stylize, blurs, textures, etc.)

Re: Sapphire version 1 effects.
GenArts just announced they will no longer support v1 for Avid since development has long since stopped. Version 2 support will end in the not too distant future as v3 has been out for a while.

But DS 7.6 is the last version of DS that will work with Sapphire v.1 effects. DS 8.x and 10.x do not support v.1. (See Jef's note below) Sapphire 3 and 2 can co-exist and can be installed on any DS higher than v8 for people who are trying to support those plugins in a conform. For the latest information about these plugins please see Genarts website. Version 3 will promote v2 effects, so it'll handle v2 happily - it'll also co-exist with v2 if required for even better compatibility.

Jef further reports: We have Sapphire v1 and v2 loaded on all our DS ver 8.4 systems and they work just fine. We did this with Genarts blessing. We keep v1 around because a lot of our "budget minded" clients still use Sapphire v1 only. Sapphire 2 does not understand Sapphire 1 effects in a conform. Genarts cannot generate a truly permanent license for v1, so we cannot just let it sit there. Don't really understand why.


(Thanks to Jef Huey, Sean Stall and Tony Jover)

Photron/Imagica (using the Softimage SDK):
Supported on DS v10 as of 1st Sep 2008
Primatte's price list (in PDF format)
Primatte (Chromakeyer)
Primatte workflow here

Speed Six (all using the Softimage SDK):
Supported on DS v10 as of 1st Sep 2008
Monsters (vfx)
Raptors (Fluidz - Fire, liquid etc, Lenz - Crash zoom, Rack defocus, Lens correct etc, Speedo - Fluid Motion slomo, Trailz - well, er, trails)

3prong (AVX)
Not sure how many (if any) of these are still AVX1 - so may not work on DS.

Imagineer Systems
Mocha Tracking Station (planar tracking)
Imagineer makes a number of useful applications, but Mocha's .fraw interaction with the DS makes it a halfway-plug-in for the DS.
Tone's step-by-step DS to Mocha to DS tutorial
Imagineer's export to DS tutorial




Revised: Jul 17, 2009 12:06 pm