Other than one large flaw, Phyx Keyer is a useful suite of tools. Perhaps more importantly, it’s dead easy to use. It doesn’t make creating a chroma key into a one-click operation, but it makes the process simple. You’re still going to spend a lot of time tweaking settings, but if you’re ready to start working with keys, that’s the nature of the business.

It’s an open secret that the title generator included with Final Cut Pro can be a little… quirky. Thankfully, I’ve discovered that the plug-in wizards at FxFactory had come up with their own (free) solution: a title generator called Manifesto. Manifesto is simple, sweet, and works like a charm, and it comes with two title generators.

After Effects is a program that allows you to do pretty much anything to video. You can alter time, warp reality, change lighting, or make that light saber video you secretly dream about (it’s okay, everyone does it). It’s an extremely powerful program with a steep learning curve that’s about more than just special effects, but also about manipulating video in the same way Photoshop manipulates images.

Nodes is a piece of software that makes data points into beautiful bits of video, that are really dazzling. If you’re working on an industrial or other business film where you need to clobber someone with text in a stunning manner—but not something they particularly need to be able to recite afterwards—then Nodes is a dead useful way to create a variety of visually compelling short sequences.

To use Adobe After Effects is to stare into the face of madness. And I mean that in the best way possible. The simplest way to describe it is as Photoshop for video; you can import it, add special effects, or even use it to create video from scratch. This program is so mind-bogglingly powerful that the fact that it not only exists but can run comfortably on my MacBook Pro is awe-inspiring.