Biting the (magic) bullet

Sooner or later I'm going to have the bite the bullet and pick up a copy of Red Giant's Magic Bullet to create the conversion from 60i to 24p. Problems: it's expensive ($500 academic) and slow on my machine. Besides 24p conversion tools, Magic Bullet comes with something called the "look suite" that offers preset/customizable color grading. This software is a bit like the earnest assistant who tries too hard and ends up doing too much. But it's fun to play with and some of the effects are kind of nice.

Here are the basic looks:
[view]

Here are my tests:

Preset: Warm and fuzzy


Preset: Basic warm to the max


Preset: Mexicali
This preset is based on the movie Traffic and is pretty in a kind of funny way.



Preset: Tropico Wash


Original red room: