The Foundry Does It Again! (Part One)

Last month, I was introduced to the superb Keylight plug-in for Final Cut Pro (see And, The Academy Award® Goes To… An Instruction Manual!?! and Enter The Foundry: Visual Effects Software That Is Unbeatable!). After completing my examination of that excellent add-on, I began to study FurnaceCore, which is another superb plug-in for Final Cut Pro that was created by the Academy Award®-winning software-developer, The Foundry.* This plug-in provides tools for image restoration, correction, and stylization, all of which vastly improve picture-quality and reduce production-time. My platform is a 2005 Dual 2.7 GHz Macintosh PowerPC G5, with 8 GB of DDR SDRAM, controlled by OS X 10.4.11.

Once again, the artists at The Foundry have produced an excellent example of graphic-design, typography, and writing; the FurnaceCore instruction-manual is just as good as Keylight’s instruction-manual. Not only does FurnaceCore’s manual have well-wrtten directions that are supported by descriptive imagery, but it also provides formulae that describe how to achieve the best render-times for one’s projects! Furthermore, this manual does not simply teach one how to use its software; it also explains HOW and WHY its software performs its job! All of this is most educational and considerate.

It is obvious that The Foundry’s employees are passionate about their work, they have an almost genetic connection to their products, and all aspects of the company function all-of-one-piece. (Correctly or incorrectly), it is easy to conclude that the people who wrote the code for the software are the same people who wrote the words for the instruction-manual. For instance, the final paragraph of page thirty states, “Where the motion is complex, e.g. multiple objects moving fast in multiple directions, we are unable to correctly calculate the motion… In order to improve results in these regions, we have a complex motion detector. This detector is designed to flag regions where we are unlikely to calculate the correct motion. In these regions, we detune the motion based dirt detector and add a spatial dirt detector. Only if both detectors flag dirt do we actually believe there to be dirt.”

Notice their abundant use of the word “we.” If one adjusts the grammar accordingly, after replacing “we” with “FurnaceCore” or “the software,” then the reading experience becomes cold and impersonal; as if the product was produced by one company, and the instruction-manual was outsourced to an agency that produces publications for many companies, but is not particularly passionate about the products about which it writes.

“Only if both detectors flag dirt do we actually believe there to be dirt.” This sentence almost makes me believe that the contingent of cinema, computer, graphic-design, marketing, sales, and accounting wizards at The Foundry are personally analyzing my footage and casting their magic on it!

In my experience, The Foundry is the only company that produces instruction-manuals which are as satisfying and enjoyable to read as their products are to use. I award five stars to the FurnaceCore plug-in and its instruction-manual!

*www.thefoundry.co.uk