Went to Digital Factory Tools (www.digitalfactorytools.com) for the free fast blur, and saw some interesting other plug-ins. Anybody who has experience with them, and are there other available 3th party plugins they would advice? It would be nice to have a list of what's available out there, and the quality they provide.

edit:

1 google away: www.pluginz.com

still, firsthand experience of you all would be welcome to sift the good from the not so good

edit2

Digital Film Tools indeed

If you mean Digital Film Tools, then we've been working with the 55mm filter set and the Composite suite set for some time on our Symphony. Highly reccommended, and they work with AXP as well. Shop around and you can get their entire bundle for around 690 dollars, which I think is a steal. This will give you a specialist chroma keyer as well, which I've not tried, but hear good things about. The best 'film look' plugin I've seen (at least working in PAL) is the 3-Prong Speedramp plugin, which at 120 dollars for AXP is also a fantastic value (as it's name suggests, it also does clever speed ramping with motion effects).

HTH

Bill

The best keyers, in my opinion, are Ultimatte ($1600) or Avid's SpectraMatte ($25,000--included in the price of Adrenaline HD 2, also soon to be able on Symphony Nitris).  zMatte by DFT is a good keyer, and very affordable.  I completely support Bee Gee in their recommendation of DFT's entire plugin bundle.  At $695 it may seem expensive, but it's well worth it.  What you get in Composite Suite is incredible...including a few plugins that no one else has (Light!, Ozone, and Camera Flash), plus an arsenal of awesome keyer-supporting matte plugins, like Edge Composite, Light Wrap and others.  They even have some additional color-correction plugins in it, too.  55mm and Digital Film Lab are 2 plugin suites that create awesome looks, eliminating the need to have the technical knowledge to pull them off in the field during the shoot.  You just can't go wrong with these plugins, dude.

Boris Continuum Complete is another "must-have" plugin suite.  In fact, it's always the first plugin suite I recommend, as it offers the most "bang-for-the-buck."  Almost 200 plugins, with integrated motion tracking, motion keying, ability to apply them directly to Avid titles, plus they also have autonest functions, allowing you to nest multiple BCC filters, without having to actually nest them on the timeline yourself (this is called the "Multi-filter" feature).  At $795, it's a better value out there than anything right now!  http://www.borisfx.com

Good luck.

For tons of customizable 2D transition effects, check out SpiceMaster at www.pixelan.com.