I am graduating from college in the next couple of weeks, so all the equipment I have access to will be gone.

I am planning on getting the Sony A1u, and I am looking for software.

With the blessing that is an accommodation (one of the few blessings bestowed upon us poor souls who work retail) I am able to buy Avid Liquid 7 for only $50 (vs. $499). This is obviously a great deal that I should jump on out of pure principle, but I was wondering how system intensive HDV editing is.

Vegas Movie Studio Platinum edition was my software of choice before I discovered the accommodation. I liked it for the fact that to edit 1080i HDV its system requirements were relatively low (2.8 GHz recommended and 512 MB of ram).

Liquid’s requirements are very high, requiring a dual core processor, 1 GB or ram, and a PCI-express video card.

For the most part I will be down converting to SD, but I would also like the ability to edit HD.

I have a 2.5Gghz Pentium 4, 512 of ram (will probably upgrade to 1GB), and a Radeon 800XL AGP card.

I would love to edit HDV natively, or at least be able to capture it then render it to an intermediate (or uncompressed) format.

Will I be able to capture and edit HDV?

Is there and intermediate codec for Liquid 7?

Should I just go with Vegas Platinum edition?


Any help would be greatly appreciated. I think I’m going to get Liquid just for the fact that is can do 5.1 surround and has some other nice abilities (especially for $50).

I’d also consider getting Vegas if its HDV editing ability is that much greater.

Sorry for the long post.

Thanks,
Kris Galuska

Oh, can Liquid 7 use the Avid DNxHD codec?

Thanks

Get Liquid. It does HDV natively (no transcode). And the reason Liquids requirements are so high is that it background renders and will play 4 lines of HDV 1080i in real-time with that setup.

As for SD, I run Liquid 7 on a AMD A643200+, 512MB, with ATIs' 200M -128MB video. The only thing it cannot do is capture to the 4200rpm drive with the standard logging tool without dropping frames. BUT, the EZCapture, which does not split video and audio into different tracks and creates a single AVI, does capture with it.

And part of why Avid bought Pinnacle was to get the HDV codec support in Liquid along with a consumer market (Studio).

Oh, nothing under about $10k does what DNxHD does (145Mb/s?) If you are worried that Liquid is too much for your system, that will kill it ;)

Kris,

I'm a very happy Vegas user who couldn't get Pinnacle software off my computer quick enough when I found Vegas. But everyone has their personal favorites and there is no single product that is right for every situation, person, or price point.

So the advice always rendered here is, go download the free Trial versions, work in both environments and then select the one you are most pleased with. I think it will be VMS and George thinks it will be Liquid, but only you have to live with the decision...so test drive and then tell us which you picked!

It still is $49 ;)

Liquid Trial (http://www.avid.com/forms/infoLiquidTrial.asp?product=Avid%20Liquid&iTrackingID=LQTRLDVDSPTLGTQ106)

And if you don't like Liquid for $49, you can get a cheaper Sony Upgrade because you have it.

Vegas Competitive Upgrade (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/shopping/item.asp?PID=342&cid=111&disp=1)

It still is $49 ;)

Exactly I think I'm going to order Liquid. If I don't like it, I only lost $50, and I could still use it for 5.1 and Smart Sound.

Thanks