If you own Autodesk Flame, chances are you already have version 3 of GenArts’s Sapphire Plug-ins and are eagerly awaiting version 4. From what I saw on the show floor at NAB, you won’t be disappointed.

The new version, which will cost $10,000 and is scheduled to ship by the end of Q2, 2007, includes 46 new effects and many functional enhancements. As before, the program offers an extensive array of presets with extreme configurability. With the film damage effect, for example, you can modify stains, dust, flicker, speed, scratches, dust, hairs, shake and defocusing, as well as color controls and motion blur. During the demo, the pristine HD footage morphed into old, damaged celluloid, with good responsiveness and preview frame rate on an HP quad-core Linux box running Flame 2007.

I also looked at the toon tool, which delivered Charles Schwab commercial-like effects with extreme configurability and performance. Check the GenArt’s web site for a complete list of features.