What NLE to Use....

B

BitBuilder

Member
Hello all,

This is my first post so... I apologize for my post in advance. :grin: I am currently using Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro 6 (The pre-Avid acquisition version). I like the interface and the features, and when I got it, it was much faster than Vegas at editing HDV (which I was editing at the time), and I liked the background rendering. I am now however looking at how I can extend the usability of Liquid for DVCPRO HD editing.

I've used the cheaper NLEs, and while I like some aspects of Vegas, it's interface and speed leave a lot to be desired (in my personal opinion -- don't take offense at this). I can edit HDV on a laptop in Liquid, and it's painfully slow in Vegas. I was not particularly pleased with Avid's acquisition of Pinnacle because they seem to be more in the game of metering the features of their lower end products, so they can "justify" the prices of their upper end products (Adrenaline on up). On the flip side of that Pinnacle was more interested in playing corporate business over the past few years with their acquisitions of Steinberg, and M-Audio. With Avid's acquisition I see them putting Liquid on the bottom rung of their product lineup, and I expect to see a trickle of worthwhile new features, and probably more fluff features I don't care about then anything else ( ex. --SmartSound).

I have rambled a long and winding path, but bottom line, Liquid supports MXF files so I'm trying to figure out a workaround by importing via this file format. First off is this a viable option, Secondly, if not what is going to be my best NLE alternative. I'd like to keep it in the Windows realm because that is what I have other than FreeBSD machines. I use Combustion, for compositing & FX, and Lightwave for compositing & 3D.

Thanks in advance...

-BitBuilder
 
Liquid 7 will give you DVCPro50 422 MXF I/O support out of the box. With Liquid you can directly edit MXF without a conversion so you can edit directly on a P2 card. Add that with the speed in rendering (as you know) and your set for SD. HD is another animal.

In the case of DVCproHD there is a stumbling block. Liquid Pro does not support the DVCProHD codec. I could imagine that DVCProHD will be included with Liquid Pro at a later date to support the HVX200. As of now you can use everything the HVX200 has to offer except DVCProHD with Liquid 7.
 
Barry,

You can edit 24p but you can't capture it from a DVX100. P2 is another story altogether. That's an import (or link) which Liquid does support. I've been editing HD-100 720p24 HDV in Liquid 6.1 all along. I just can't capture it.

Believe me, there are alot of people bitching about 24p end to end for Liquid and the word is, it's coming.

Supported framerates for Liquid are Click here
 
BitBuilder, I already dropped a post in the new Avid Liquid forum on avid.com.
I also want to know if DVCPro will get supported or not. Since they already have it in their XPress Pro it should be a problem, but it was an oversight by Pinnacle lateyl I guess.
Once Avid repsonds on their site I will post the answer her. But don´t hold your breath...
 
So if you had a DV 24p file, or a DV50 24p file, on a P2 card in Op-Atom MXF format -- Liquid would allow direct import, 24p timeline support, and direct output to a 24p DVD?

What about if you install the Avid DV100 codec -- would that give you DVCPRO-HD support? Would it recognize the Avid Quicktime DV100 codec?
 
Liquid 6.1

24p capture---->no
24p ingest------> yes
24p edit --------> yes

24p export:
DivX------------->yes
wmv------------> yes
MOV------------> yes
m2v ------------> no

About the Avid codec? I don't know...
 
Well I guess I'll give installing the codec a try in a bit... If that doesn't work I'll cross my fingers that Avid decides not to forsake Liquid Pro in the name of their "higher" end products... Otherwise I might have to find a new NLE.

Hey, any idea if there is, or is going to be an upgrade path to Xpress Pro, I can't find any info on it if there is one? I know they have DVCPRO HD support in that...

Thanks for the feedback Stephen, Barry, Alpi69, I appreciate it...
 
Still no word from Avid. But many users are waiting for DVCporHD in Liquid.....

I don´t think there is an upgrade path (yet), because for AVID it is not an upgrade. they see them as two seperate products in separate markets/targetgroups.
 
Barry_Green said:
Does Liquid support editing .movs? If so, it should support using the Avid DV100 codec, yes? No?
Click to expand...
Yes Liquid 7,
DivX, MOV and WMV native.

As you probably know, MOV can be encoded 10 ways to Sunday so I haven't tried specifically with Avid's codec.
 
Just use Apple Final Cut Pro BitBuilder. Get a Mac, wait until MWSF in January to buy. IF you get FCP Studio, it comes with Motion, Soundtrack, DVD Studio and LOAD more. A real steal.

If you must stick and stay with PC/Windoze than I've heard that Vegas is a good option but I am a Apple bigot, part of the church, indocrinated into the Apple cult...sad but true
 
... and now with Liquid being owned by Avid, surely we can expect that it will work with the Avid DV100 codec... I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but it looks like Liquid could gain a little market share if they play this one right. With Vegas stubbornly not supporting DVCPRO-HD, and Premiere in the same boat, and Liquid getting some "deep pockets" behind them, boy, now would be the time to push.

If they've already got 24p timeline support, Op-Atom .MXF support, and they're now part of the Avid family so they can use Avid DV100 support -- I think they've really got a chance to make some inroads here.
 
I've been using Avid Xpress Pro for years, and generally I've been annoyed with it for incompatibility reasons. It took them forever to support XP, took them forever to get their HDV codec (not that I use it), all kinds of buggy point releases, crappy deck/camera support that even Windows Movie Maker could get right. But to my surprise, v5.2 just works. I haven't had any problems with it at all, and I certainly don't have an "approved" system. Now that it works, I can actually recognize that I love the features and I'm happy with it. And yes, it does DVCPROHD.

That said, I'm also very interested in trying Final Cut Pro, but I don't intend to buy a Mac until the Intel versions come out. Crossing my fingers for a better power-price curve.
 
codec

codec

I'm in a similar bind. I have a Mac and a PC - my PC is currently more powerful than my mac. I am planning on using final cut pro to capture my DVCPro HD footage - but I'd actually like to be able to edit it on my PC - I will also need to encode it out of final cut pro to use in Boujou for camera tracking and in Fusion for composting. Any idea how to get it out of Final Cut and into other packages? with DV it wasn't such a big deal - I have just been using uncompressed .mov, but that's a whole lot more space with HD now. Oh, did I mention that I need lossless (for camera tracking)?
Suggestions?
 
Barry, you are right. Since it is a very good editing programme Liquid could get a big market share with AVID´s marketing behind.
In PAL (25p) and interlaced it is already capable of most stuff. Since AL7 it supports 4:2:2, DVCPro50, MXF, P2 support, XDCam support and even brings filters from Commotion etc. All it misses is for you NTSC guys 24p-recording, and I wouldn´t expect that before AL8. It also misses DVCProHD (which is included in the Chrome package for € 7000 extra). IMO it is a strategic decision from Avid if they want us Liquid users to upgrade to Chrome (which is very unlikely for HVX owners) or leave for AvidXPress. I am sure they are aware of the danger this brings: many users could leave for FCP. and nothing is more expensive than getting users back.....So if they are smart they include the Avid100 codec or DVCProHD somehow asap in a patch. Even if it costs a little it will keep them their customers and will be a very intersting package for others.

Greg: There is no way around uncompressed for your cross-application-effects. DVCProHD is still compression and every time you compress and uncompress to a new copy you lose. I doubt DVCProHD is lossless. I would expect it to be like DV, where I avoid generationloss as much as I can. HDV is even worse then DV. Stick to Uncompressed mov or avi. Gives best results.
 
I really hope Avid doesn't drop the ball on this, but I think they are going to start dumbing down Liquid Pro to make for a better demarcation in their product higherachy strata. As a matter of fact most of the new features added since Avid acquired Pinnacle are consumer/video to web based upgrades:

SmartSound -- Acid like soundtrack creator
DivX capture and editing -- Web/Consumer Format
Windows Media 9 editing -- Web/Consumer Format
Real-time time warp -- This is a nice upgrade to the time warp feature
Image stabilization -- Not sure how good the algorithm is...
HDV preview on SD monitor -- Can already do HD preview
Single monitor UI -- Worked fine on laptop as was
EZ capture -- Simplified capture tool
Muxed file editing -- Needed for DivX and WMV

Berry, I really hope your right, because if they were smart they would jump on this opportunity to make Liquid attractive for price/performance, but we'll see...

As for FCP I really do think it's a great program with a clean interface, (Liquid's interface is powerful, but slightly toy-like) but I love Liquid's background renders (I'd go crazy on tweaks without it), and it runs great on my laptops, and like silk on my dual core machines, plus since I built all the boxes I can continually do hardware enhancements.

(SIDENOTE: I like to use the analogy of Apple being like a Luxury car and PC's being like an old muscle car. You buy a luxury car it runs beautifully, and looks great. You drive it without thinking about it, and take it in for a tune-up once in a while. While with a PC you got bucket seats, and your always under the hood tweaking it to make it work better.) :grin:

But really I can't afford to update everything right now (would need at least two machines, two FCPs, and one Shake), and I have a workflow that works for me. If I thought it would really help my workflow I would consider it more right now, but...

Thanks for the input all...
-BitBuilder

PS -- Sorry if I rambled was up all night working...
 
I am shopping for an FCP system now. In the mean time (Jan) I have Premiere Pro & Vegas. Will it be a simple matter of plugging in the HVX200 and dumping the P2 files onto a hard drive to edit? Hello Panasonic, help us out here. I will just need to create a small demo until I get the real HD system in-house.
Thanks
 
BitBuilder said:
....start dumbing down Liquid Pro to make for a better demarcation in their product higherachy strata...
Click to expand...
I completely disagree with this statement. In fact the opposite is true and Xpress Pro has some catching up to do in some areas. Don't forget that Avid took on a huge market share with Studio users and they have come out with Studio 10 to accomodate that group (and not accomodate them with Liquid).

Liquid is more comparable to FCP than XpressPro merely by virtue of it's capabilities. Look at it this way, Liquid can edit 16 camera angles with it's multicam, has Dolby 5.1 surround with ASIO2 or Direct Sound monitoring support, instant save technology and secondary color corrector. I could go on and on. These type of features are unavailable in Xpress Pro and some are not in Symphony or Adrenaline. On the flip side, Xpress has some stuff I'd like to have in Liquid too (24p end to end). Nevertheless, Liquid and Xpress are two separate product lines under Avid.

Avid knew what they were doing when they bought Pinnacle. Barry may be right. If they can add a couple of missing features then Liquid will have the Avid name and all that FAST technology under the hood.

we'll see....
 
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