Add yet another useful tool to the PHYX line for effects for Final Cut Pro, Motion and After Effects. As you may recall, PHYX once made plug-ins for Apple’s Shake compositing software. After Apple announced they would no longer update Shake and the software neared the end of its life, PHYX began making its current tools, which run under the popular FxFactory engine from Noise Industries. First came PHYX Keyer for keying and greenscreen work, then PHYX Color for color correction tasks. Now there’s PHYX Cleaner to repair and, as the company says, to “enhance footage.”

PHYX Cleaner may be the most useful of the PHYX tools yet. While not designed for more dedicated tasks like keying and color grading, Cleaner is a set of five tools that rebuild or generally fix problem footage (for more, go here). Most deliver what they sound like they will: Chroma Reconstructor rebuilds pixelated color channels. Deband, in an effort to compensate for low bit-rate images, reduces banding and restores color depth. Deinterlace removes interlaced fields to reduce artifacts. Digital Make-up Kit, much like Digital Anarchy’s Beauty Box, attempts to smooth anything you don’t want on your talent’s skin, such as blemishes, wrinkles or acne. Fast Noise Reduction attempts to reduce noise and keep sharp details with “a powerful sharpening method similar to that used by NASA.” I’ll be very interested to see how that noise reduction works on Canon 7D footage.

PHYX Cleaner is $199 and available as part of the FxFactory 2.1.6 download. A free trial is also available.