Avid Xpress/Liquid Combined Workflow

[David Parks]

Avid Xpress Pro for Editing 720/30p HDV (Pro HD)
Avid Liquid for Finishing

You know this actually seems to work for me and my crazy clients.

Shoot HDV 720/30, digitize m2t into Avid Xpress Pro with 720/30 preset. Edit. Edit anywhere. Avid's media management allows me to move from my desktop to my notebook and back to my desktop. (I edit at my clients offices or Starbucks sometimes that's why I need the notebook).
Also, I don't quite trust Liquid's media management yet to move projects, drives, and media from computer to computer. Xpress Pro/Composer media database is rock solid.

Export the sequence out using the Avid/Pinnacle MPEG 2 setting. Import into Avid Liquid, (creates m2v). Scale, fit Y keep aspect for 4:3 or fit X keep aspect for 16:9. Color correct. And then I can go out straight to DVD, DV, YUV uncompressed, DVCPro HD, HDV, filmout, and I bet (although I haven't tried yet), you could cross convert to 1080i. So far the image quality results have been good.

I am more and more using Liquid as my finishing platform and Xpress Pro for editing.

Anyone who is continually frustrated with Avid Xpress Pro's lack of scaling tools and HDV 24p and HDV 720/30p downconversion issues should look at Liquid, and for those like me who have been editing using Media Composers and Symphony and are to old or stubborn to completely switch then this may work.

Thanks to Stephen Noe for his Liquid tutorials. Without them I would have been lost on scaling and cc.

Any thoughts???

[Gary Bettan]

Cool! I know that Avid is working on getting the whole HD workflow down better, but that is one crazy and useful solution!

Gary

[Antony Michael Wilson]

Well, I'm in the soup even more over here in PAL land with HDV1 and TOTAL lack of support in AXPro and MC. I have been using Liquid to capture and transcode footage for SD offline in AXPro and then decomposing the Avid sequence and exporting to Liquid via ALE for conform in Liquid. Then I finish in Liquid in uncompressed HD or scale and batch export again from Liquid as 1080P DNx for finishing in AXPro, MC or Symph Nitris. Works a treat but it's a real pain in the neck.

Bring on full HDV1 support in AXPro/MC/Symph!

Oh, and secondary colour correction in AXPro/MC like in Liquid...

And uncompressed HD like in Liquid...

And general 720p/25 or 50 like in Liquid...

And decent scaling algorithms like in Liquid..

With Symphony Nitris going out at £60k + (which will at least sort out the CC and uncompressed HD - but not 720p mind) the £300 asking price for the basic Liquid software is just amusing, really.

[Steve Benner]

Avid released Xpress 5.6.4 about a day ago, and still no HDV1 support.

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Antony Michael Wilson

Well, I'm in the soup even more over here in PAL land with HDV1 and TOTAL lack of support in AXPro and MC. I have been using Liquid to capture and transcode footage for SD offline in AXPro and then decomposing the Avid sequence and exporting to Liquid via ALE for conform in Liquid. Then I finish in Liquid in uncompressed HD or scale and batch export again from Liquid as 1080P DNx for finishing in AXPro, MC or Symph Nitris. Works a treat but it's a real pain in the neck.

Bring on full HDV1 support in AXPro/MC/Symph!

Oh, and secondary colour correction in AXPro/MC like in Liquid...

And uncompressed HD like in Liquid...

And general 720p/25 or 50 like in Liquid...

And decent scaling algorithms like in Liquid..

With Symphony Nitris going out at £60k + (which will at least sort out the CC and uncompressed HD - but not 720p mind) the £300 asking price for the basic Liquid software is just amusing, really.

Anthony, you hit the nail on the head. 100K for Symphony is a steep asking price when you get almost everything for our HDV workflow in the Liquid family line for pennies on the dollar by comparison.

The full asking price for a Liquid system is less than a plugin for MCA.