Digieffects Damage – The Ultimate Glitch Generator Plugin?
As digital picture quality becomes more and more pristine there seems to be an unseen opposing force that wants to destroy and pull apart that perfect digital footage.
Glitches, film damage and hologram effects have never been more popular. Creating and animating these kind of effects inside your favourite editing or composting software can be tricky or time consuming without a dedicated plugin.
Digieffects Damage Review
Digieffects Damage was one of the first plugins on the market that allowed you to create visual havoc on any footage you applied it to – glitches, aged film, signal or transmission errors. Damage is able to create an extraordinary amount of different effects through it’s modular approach. Damage isn’t just one effect, it comprises of 9 different plugins, which can be mixed and matched to create an infinite amount of different looks. In order to follow along with this review go here to download the free trial version of Damage.
Now let’s take a brief look at each one of these 9 effects in Damage (Click each image to get a larger preview):
Aged Film
This is probably the most obvious effect in the Damage suite. It will give your footage the look of being projected on film complete with film defects such as scratches, dust and frame jitter. If you need to recreate an old fashioned movie look then this effect will do the job admirably. Damage’s Aged Film effect is especially good as it offers detailed, granular control over each parameter so you can fine tune your look. Damage is great for editors as it allows you to easily recreate the look of footage from the 60s,70s and 80s, which can be great for documentaries or period piece movies.
Artifact
This effect reproduces the kind of video damage caused by satellite transmission errors or digital video playback errors. This kind of effect is very popular at the moment, any sci-fi or technology based movie or TV show will have used this kind of effect at some point.
Blockade
Blockade simulates the effect of a low resolution video camera in older cell phones where the video has been highly compressed and causes random blocks of colour to freeze and stutter.
Channel Offset
Channel Offset works by transforming the RGB and alpha channels of footage individually and also over time. This effect is great for simulating psychedelic hallucination type footage, time travel sequences or ghost type effects.
Destabilize
Destabilize is great for producing camera shake and ghosting type effects and is an excellent way of adding movement and chaos to your VFX or motion graphics footage.
Interference
Interference gives the ‘scan lines’ effect of old cathode ray tube televisons. Great for giving your footage the look of old TVs or security cam video.
OverExpose
OverExpose can give your footage the effect of being blown out – like when a cheap camcorder is trying to focus and adjust to the light level. It’s also excellent for producing random flickering of your footage. Like most of the other Damage effects, OverExpose auto-animates without the need for keyframes.
Skew
Skew is probably my most favourite effect in Damage. There are lots of controls, which can produce a number of different looks and effects. The effect itself is based on old school video tape recorders that had a control for tensioning the tape around the playback heads. If you adjusted the control too much – you got artifacts such as shearing of the image, static noise and horizontal and vertical hold problems. The skew effect recreates these artifacts in a cool and inspiring way and along with it’s auto-animated properties makes it easy to create interesting new looks for your footage.
Wave Displace
Wave Displace applies wave distortion to your footage – great for pixellated glitch type effects.
Digieffects Damage Vs Video Copilot Twitch Vs Red Giant Holomatrix & Glitch
So how does Digieffects Damage compare with other Glitch and digital destruction plugins such as Video Copilot’s Twitch and Red Giant’s Holomatrix and Glitch plugins? Read on to find out the Pros and Cons of each:
Digieffects Damage
Pros
- Can mix and match different effects in a modular fashion to get a staggering amount of unique looks.
- Enormous amount of control.
- Extensive range of presets.
- Multi platform – After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Motion.
- Excellent manual and tutorials to learn how to get the best out of the plugin.
- Uses the CPU rather than GPU so no expensive graphics card is required if you have an older machine.
Cons
- CPU not GPU based – slower to render compared to Red Giant UNIVERSE plugins.
- Some of the effects have a lot of parameters, which may be overwhelming to novice users.
Video Copilot Twitch
Pros
- Very simple to use.
- Comes with 10 free sound fx, 25 presets and good tutorial support.
- Inexpensive.
Cons
- Isn’t multi-platform only works with After Effects & Premiere Pro.
- Doesn’t have the granular control compared to other Glitch plugins.
- CPU based, slower to render.
Red Giant Holomatrix & Glitch
Pros
- Holomatrix is the fastest way to create hologram type effects.
- Enormous amount of control.
- GPU based – very fast to render.
- Multi-platform – works with After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Motion, Davinci Resolve, Sony Vegas.
Cons
- The amount of controls for Holomatrix can be overwhelming and not very user friendly, especially to novice users.
- Expensive – only available via a UNIVERSE subscription or $399 one off payment.
So is Digieffects Damage the ultimate glitch generator plugin?
After having used Damage for a few weeks now, I’ve been surprised at the amount of different looks and effects it can generate – not just glitch effects. The big reason for this versatility is the modular nature of Damage. Unlike similar glitch generators or digital destruction plugins, Damage isn’t just one plugin – it’s split into 9 different plugins which can be used in a multitude of different combinations. Other nice features like the random controllers, which can give you a fast and easy way to try out different looks, put it ahead of the competition. The large number of presets supplied with Damage also give you a good starting off point when using the plugin for the first time, along with the extensive tutorials and manual.
At just $99 Digieffects Damage is an easy purchase. If you’re a working editor or motion graphics artist, the time saving features like Damage’s auto-animation are well worth the asking price. With Disney, Warner Brothers, MTV and HBO users of Digieffects products, you can be sure that you’re buying a quality, versatile plugin.