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It is very hard to compare these products - they are world's apart. I understand Douglas's hesitation in getting involved in a comparitive discussion - he's only been using Media Composer for 3 months and there are levels of complexity in this product.
Personally I'd say if you've answered the question by saying Liquid does everything you need it to do reliably then there is no valid reason to migrate. If however you get frustrated with the way Liquid works, or you ever wanted to do something that doesn't seem to be there then the chances are it is in the MC product.
My knowledge of Liquid begins and ends with a couple of trade shows, a couple of online demos and years ago tackling the old FAST product. Liquid and it's straight to DVD technology etc seems clearly aimed at the wedding end of the market, but probably stacks up quite well against competing products like Premiere Pro and Vegas. I nearly bought a copy because Avid were so slow to support the JVC ProHD format in 25P but in the end I thought FCP would be a better bet if I had to regularly edit it.
My top 10 for Media Composer (that may well be true for Liquid as well; I don't know) are:
1: monitoring of Digital cut (laying back to tape) - Media Composer polls your deck to make sure everything is in sync, no dropped frames etc
2: matchframe and reverse matchframe (ability to quickly match back to your source and vica versa from the timeline)
3: DnxHD - apart from ProRes I don't think there's a comparable product although Cineform is good without the hardware support.
4: Seamless multicam - it's a little clunky to set up if your cameras aren't locked together but it works extremely well
5: Database - this is really what sets MC apart from the rest. It's the database that has allowed projects to remain compatible for as long as I've used it, between Macs and PCs. The media tool is excellent for managing project media and manipulating it.
6: Sorenson Squeeze _ I used to love ProCoder but it has got so clunky with Quicktime, whereas SS just seems to work and is included with the physical upgrade.
7: Unity (networked storage) - the ability to run multiple systems of one centralised storage solution, have the same project opened at the same time, automatic bin locking etc etc. No one does this quite as well as Avid.
8: A bunch of useful effects including Timewarp, Pan and Scan, broadcast levels filter; Spectramatte Chroma key (similar and as good as Ultimatte), Color Corrector (not as good as Apple's Color but built in to the app)
9: JKL trim mode - the ability to trim while the edit is being previewed
10: Batch digitise and batch import funtions that work (thanks database) - oh and the interface which looks more like an editor and less like a playground.
There's a bunch of other things that I rarely use including film matchback, ScriptSync (very powerful for scripted work), and some excellent supporting tools for larger workgroups and workflows. Obviously there's als AvidDS and Nitris for those needing higher end stuff as well as complete interoperability with ProTools.
And there's bound to be a bunch of other things that other editors prefer over mine - it's a well thought out, very customisable editing tool. It is not a great compositor (although you can do quite well within the interface), it's a reasonable audio tool (with all the most common AudioSuite effects from ProTools built in, as well as Audio punch in for VO) but you wouldn't mix a feature film on it.
Here are some things we know Media Composer won't do. It won't accept any old file format you put into it - it will import most Quicktime formats and transcode them to an Avid MXF or OMF format - sometimes these are fast because it is just a matter of re-wrapping the QT to MXF/OMF, other times transcoding is needed and it cna be time consuming. It will also accept some AVI formats. It supports a vast array of decks with templates that take into account the hardware being used but some decks are only supported via a generic template and aren't guaranteed to work. It won't support foreign codec natively - it will have to transcode things like Cineform, ProRes, BMD etc. And you won't lose all your media attached to your project (unless your media drive goes down) - I've seen this happen on other NLE's like Premiere and FCP too many times to mention.
For all that there is still no reason to upgrade unless you think Liquid doesn't do some of things you need it to do. And as yet there is no upgrade announcement. If you want to know more Avid has an excellent website with workflow examples and whitepapers. HTH
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