FXhome Limited

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FXhome
Type Private limited company
Founded 2001
Founder Joshua Davies
Toby Walsh
David Cranwell
Headquarters Norwich, England
Key people Joshua Davies, Toby Walsh, Tim Edwards, Simon Jones, Jack Everitt, Neil Henderson
Industry Computer software
Products Special Effects and Video Software
Owner Joshua Davies
Employees 6
Website http://fxhome.com

FXhome is a visual effects and video software developer registered in 2001 by graduates from the University of East Anglia. Their current headquarters is at the Henderson Business Centre in Norwich, UK.

FXhome.com is the website and film-making community created by the same company.

Contents

[edit] History

The company was conceived in late 2000 and was formed in early 2001. Founded by Joshua Davies, Toby Walsh and David Cranwell, the company originally went by the trading name CSB-Digital. The meaning of 'CSB' is still unknown outside the employees of the company.

The company's first product was AlamDV, a bespoke application written entirely in Macromedia Director by Joshua, originally for his step-brother's use in his film-making degree (also at UEA). AlamDV was a 2D, bitmap-based special effects program for applying stock footage of muzzle flashes and lightsabers to digital video. As development progressed it became clear there was an untapped niche in the home video market, so the company was formed and in 2001 AlamDV became a priced product, sold through the website AlamDV.com as a download (without box).

AlamDV2 was released in September 2001 and managed to attract interest from the local media and a number of minority filmmaking/computer publications. This resulted in inaccurate press coverage that attributed the wrong names to printed photos of the team and frequently mis-spelled AlamDV as "AlarmDV", a typo which caused problems for the company and confusion for customers until 2005.

Personal issues led David Cranwell to leave CSB-Digital mid-2002, although he remains close friends and now works as a consultant and tester for the company. Tim Edwards and Simon Jones were hired mid-2002 to alleviate the pressures of coding and support. The additional manpower enabled the company to focus on marketing and it was soon noticed by Apple Computer, who invited them to develop iMovie plugins. The result was the limited release of a plugin-pack called iPlugins.

2003 saw major changes, including a number of website redesigns that culminated in the rebranding of AlamDV.com to FXhome.com. This was to accommodate the introduction of two new software products: "Chromanator", for compositing and greenscreen keying and "Digigrade", for digital color grading.

Chromanator was released in 2004 but the increased popularity of the company and its products caused the 4-man team to be over-stretched. The AlamDV series returned to centre stage as AlamDV3 entered development but Digigrade soon took to the back burner and remained elusive (some of its intended functionality appearing in later FXhome products). With the team working to capacity, updates were rare and vague and led to a temporary rift between the company and some of the FXhome.com community, who had established a loyalty to the AlamDV brand and believed both DigiGrade and AlamDV3 to be Vaporware.

2005 marked another major change of focus, with the original company's trading name 'CSB-Digital' being dropped altogether in favour of the trading name "FXhome", to match the website's name. AlamDV3 did appear but under a completely new name - "EffectsLab DV" - and its release in Q2 2005 marked the first appearance of the company's current product line.

EffectsLab DV was a completely new program, rejecting most of AlamDV's concepts and all of its interface, while introducing new features and retaining AlamDV's original functionality. Based on a new Common Interface, codename "Charger", AlamDV2's cumbersome 2D sprite system was replaced by 4 procedurally generated 'Effects Engines', all capable of creating hundreds of customisable effects.

Updates now came quick and fast, with feedback from the community playing a key roll in the addition of new features and tweaks. Next to be redesigned was Chromanator, changing its name to "CompositeLab DV" in the process, cementing the new 'Lab' branding. In late 2005, enhanced versions of both products were released, called EffectsLab Pro and CompositeLab Pro. An entirely new product, "VisionLab HD" was also created and released at the end of 2005, which combined CompositeLab and EffectsLab into a single interface and added additional features aimed at more advanced users. A new feature common to all 3 products, was the ability to create 'Presets', which stored and packaged a user's effects engine or grading settings, for use by other users. FXhome.com now hosts a library of over 1000 user-created presets.

Coder Jack Everitt joined the main staff in Q4 2005, boosting the coding side of the team in preparation for brand new products in 2007 and beyond.

2006 proved to be a pivotal year in the company's history, with frequent software updates noticeably improving the products at each release. The product line was rebranded, with the 'DV' versions being renamed to "Lite" and VisionLab HD being renamed "VisionLab Studio". FXhome also negotiated with European software distributor Softline UK, who released boxed versions of the products for the first time via retailers such as Amazon.co.uk.

In 2007 the company name was changed from Joshua Davies Limited to FXhome Limited. Expert coder Neil Henderson joined the team officially in February, having worked as a voluntary beta tester for several years as part of the FXhome.com community. A brand new product, VideoWrap!, was released in September, which provided easy video conversion to various devices such as iPods, PS3 and the Internet. November saw the release of another new product, PhotoKey, a chromakey compositing tool for photographers. In December EffectsLab Lite and CompositeLab Lite were discontinued and a large update was released for the remaining Lab products, including the addition of a brand new lightning/electricity engine to VisionLab Studio.

2008 began with the introduction of a new range of plugins for Adobe After Effects. Derived from the technology in VisionLab Studio, MuzzlePlug and PowerPlug provided advanced versions of the muzzle flash and lightning/electricity engines.

[edit] Community

FXhome focused on establishing a strong community from the beginning, initially with the AlamDV.com forums. The community increased in popularity and was transferred to the new FXhome.com website in 2004. Now home to over 80,000 registered users, the international community includes an extensive discussion forum, an online Cinema featuring over 700 movies, an IRC chat channel and a large library of user-created presets for FXhome software.

The community also enables the FXhome staff to provide one-on-one support via the chat channel, support forums and tutorials.

Community interaction continues to influence the future direction of FXhome's software development, including the official hiring of community members, such as coder Neil Henderson.

In May 2008 FXhome announced a cooperative short film project that hopes to use the resources of the community in its production.

[edit] Products

[edit] Current

  • FXhome CompositeLab Pro
  • FXhome EffectsLab Pro
  • FXhome PhotoKey
  • FXhome VisionLab Studio
  • FXhome VideoWrap!

[edit] Plugins for Adobe After Effects

  • FXhome MuzzlePlug
  • FXhome PowerPlug

[edit] Discontinued

[edit] External links