I doing a review of 7.1 and I got the same warning about 24p.

While I can't report on my findings I will say your comments match my experience.

I have no choice to be public about reliability because I need to solicit feedback. In general I find Liquid 7.1 hangs-up very often. Thankfully not when editing, but when I switch Sequences while a background render is running.

Also, when doing general set-up task of moving filters, etc. During the first several weeks when working out workflow issues I would say Liquid never ran longer than 20 minutes without hanging-up. It's damn hard to kill the application when this happens. (Often have to kill the StudioU process.)

Since this same machine runs all the other PC NLEs without problem, it seems to be Liquid. Does this match your experience?

I am using 6.1 and don't have the hanging problem, except once in awhile, and occasionally I have to turn off the machine -- but rarely. However, I am also doing DV, not HDV. In the project I am working on at the moment I have 10 timelines, each 30 minutes long.

On the plus side, Liquid does instant saves, even when you have to turn it off, nothing is lost. Even if the project is not appearing on restart, it is there with everything saved.

I know if you are using ver. 7, it is necessary to have the updates. There are known issues that are currently unfixed but many of these are supposed to be fixed in another update coming in an unknown time frame. At the moment, it has been reported that the programmers are working this week on capture issues.

There are are lot of quirky issues with individual systems. One issue seems to be NVidia graphics cards. On some systems, these cause problems, though other people use them successfully.

However, to get the best info available, post specifics of your system and your exact problem on the Avid Liquid forum. LewS will answer with any known information about the issues you are experiencing and point out what may need to be adjusted to end the problems. A lot of the quirks are already known.

Liquid has a lot of program pieces from different sources that have been put together. For this reason I think different systems can have different little problems with different parts of the program.

Here is where one of those little workarounds may apply. For example, before changing sequences, turn off background rendering. (Click either "Stop Rendering" or uncheck "Render Yellow Slices" or do both)

Now I'm not an expert all all this stuff, but a couple people on the Liquid forum are (specifically LewS).

Good tip!

I assume you mean Stop Rendering.

I also find that when I move an HDV sequence into a DV sequence, the render starts. I guess it might make sense to set the delay to 5 seconds so one has a chance to issue the Stop Rendering.

Or, can one turn OFF BR so renders only happen when one requests it?

I think BR made a lot of sense before RT FX were added. Now i seem to use it only when I'm done with a sequence.

Probably what you want is to uncheck "Render Yellow Slices." This prevents rendering of all real time effects. This may take care of the problem.

The "Stop Rendering" box turns off rendering altogether -- and would have to be re-checked to turn it on again.

When fusing, or exporting, etc. everything is supposed to render. However, some have found that it is best to render everything when finished editing (check both boxes in the window that comes up when you click the "sigma" -- i.e. the "Stop Rendering" box and the "Render Yellow Slices" box) before fusing or exporting. Again, this is one of those things that has different issues depending on the specific system Liquid is running on.

For what you are talking about, try unchecking "Render Yellow Slices."

Regarding adding HDV to a DV sequence, I'm not experienced with this issues, but the issues are well known by LewS. Even if rendering starts, it can be turned off (stopped) at anytime without issues that I know of. It will begin again when the box is checked again. I don't know if adding HDV to DV creates a yellow slice or other color. If it's a yellow slice, the "Render Yellow Slices" box will take care of it.

There are other things to consider when rendering also. For example. Render files can be deleted or only render files no longer used can be deleted. Rendering can fill up the render drive depending on what is being done and redone and tried.

This is fine and I wish I could append the first post with the new location of the mini tutorial.

Once again I urge anyone who is interested in cutting 24p HDV for film to attend Liquid Immersion. I will personally show you as well as demonstrate how to edit on a Liquid system without any hangups.

Heavy hitters like Lew Schatzer (cuts for PBS), Paul Mitton (cuts for E!) and Tim Koranda will be instructing as well as many other highly regarded users of Liquid. I myself will be instructing as well as having plenty of conversation about ProHD.

But one of the main points is that Avid has made it clear that 24p is _not_ officially supported. Similarly, Avid has been silent as to when and _if_ 24p will be officially supported. Avid has made commitments about other products, but stays silent about Liquid. Unless you know different, or Avid says different, it makes some sense that as soon as Avid gets things straight in the fall with its other products, it will pull the plug on its unofficial, undocumented support of 24p for the JVC camera. But in or out, it's a guess, since Avid won't say.

Avid seems to still be in spin cycle with Liquid. As one of the dealers stated in another post, the Splash disk is not in the box because there is _so much_ unsold product lying around that went out before the Splash promotion. The "one-time" $200 off promo has become the "never-ending discount." June saw the Avid blowout of everything Pinnacle. (I've been getting what seems like hourly emails reminding that tomorrow is the last day. Whoa! I'd hate to miss out on Studio 10, the prequel to Avid Liquid 7.0.)

I don't see dealers coming on forums frantically pushing other NLEs, but there are several dealers on several forums doing this for Liquid. The stockpiles must be high.

You mention the Liquid heavyhitters. My questions is, are these people cutting in their big studios on the PC and inputting with the pro breakout box? Or are we mixing animals and oranges here. Reminds a bit of when Walter Murch cut Cold Mountain on Final Cut. He didn't order Final Cut with his $200 off coupon mail order and install it on his G4 in the bedroom. He had the whole Apple team rewriting the program for him as he worked... and the setup he used... well.

If you have to go to Liquid Immersion to learn how to get Liquid to work... and if Avid won't commit to HDPro 24p support... well.

When Liquid Pro costs less than a set of basic Tiffen filters for the HD100, or less than half the cost of one little LitePanel, and when Liquid can be made to work very well, Liquid's got a place and can be great for many people, even as an interim editor... but it's also fair and ethical to point out that Liquid is not of the class of an Adobe application out of the box as a modern software product.

I invite you specifically....

Or they might be better marketers. Perhaps they've got a good product, want to get the word out and make it better by getting feedback from the frontlines.

Of course, Avid might be not claiming support for 24p and 24F because it will decide at the last minute not to support either. But, it's more probable that until they have both working and tested they are not going to confirm support. And, right now 7.1 is not working 100% with 24p and perhaps not at all with 24F. So, they are quite correct in not making any claims.

However, once they get 7.1 working, probably with another SP or an upgrade to 7.2 -- you are correct that Avid will need to make pure business decision on Liquid's future. In the past they pulled the plug on VideooShop, Media Suite, and Avid Edit. They certainly could sell 7.x as long as they can -- and then drop it. Perhaps, once the Smart GOP engine is ported to Xpro.

But, they could also decide to invest in a V8. One option would be to remove all the funtions not relevant to DV/HDV. The whole X-send and even RS-422 stuff could go as far as I'm concerned. Also, remove the Classic stuff. The fewer functions, the less QC effort needed. QC could then be focused on DV/HDV and DVD output. With support for Bluray.

There's a marketing rule -- there is never room for more than three products in a market. Apple FCP, Avid Composer, and Adobe Premiere are three. Canopus has a chance because everyone considers that they produce very high quality products -- and reputation matters.

Which raises the question -- might Avid, after they get Liquid up to Avid's standards, simply lower the price of Composer and then drop Xpro?

IMHO, it's really impossible to predict what the next year will bring.

I have expounded this view (or variations) the past year.

I think Liquid needs to decide exactly what it is, then do that superbly, and all the junk and old coding needs to be torn out. However, it seems Avid has taken the opposite approach, piling in more Hollywood effects, more codecs that don't have a workflow, old Magic Bullet presets, a bitmap titler, and so forth. The people who are attracted by the "free goodies" also need a foolproof app, easy for first-timers and amateurs out of the box, and Liquid isn't that.

Probably no one knows for sure what the right move is. With the HDV cameras the DV world and the high-end world, the video world and the film world are truly meeting. There is a middle professional road that is looking for the new and perfect, affordable for the alone and lonely as well as the young family man and the creative retiree, super-NLE.

Stephen, thank you for the invitation (though I must say, there is slight threatening undertow there), but it is impossible for me this year. When I get the HD100 class camera, which I definitely am, I will be editing on Liquid, and I trust it will work... and I hope SP2 for 7 is out. (about a month to 6 weeks from now?)

All you have to do is ask.

I've edited the original post with the Google location, as well as Paolo's H264 version which I've made available on the DV Info media server (hope that's okay; always happy to help host good clips like this).

The revised locations now in the original post are:

Click here for streaming WMV best viewed full screen 1280x1024.

Click here for QT Mov (H264) For Macs in the house.
download first, and rename the extension from .movx to .mov

Hope this helps,

No undertones amigo, only a specific offer to people who are already cutting on Liquid and are interested in expanding the tool to include Film and SD delivery.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to cut ProHD and then deliver BetaSP through the component on the pro box to a deck as well as DigiBeta. I'm talking long form timelines, without a hiccup.

Hi Stephen,

Great stuff. You're going to force me to switch! Especially if I don't get my FCP update soon.

Tom

It does help, Chris. Thanks for the assist.

Hi Stephen,

Liquid doesn't seem to get a lot of attention relative to the other players (final cut etc). What is it about liquid you like? does is have any unique features?
great video btw....

I think you might want to recast that "without a hiccup" statement. There is a major CONFIRMED bug in Liquid that prevents an HDV sequence from being put in an SD DV sequence and resized. There is a workaround -- I've worked out -- but it shouldn't be necessary.

Your choice of uncompressed output as the example of SD delivery nicely avoids the bug. But, I doubt DigiBeta is a very common output for an HDV editor. How about showing how one can export 24p via FireWire to a DVCPRO HD deck? Or, via HD-SDI to HDCAM or DVCPRO HD.

You'd need ChromeHD for that. Chrome's BOB will output to all those decks via HD-SDI or component.

I know all the tricks after 5 years on the product (thus, no hiccups) but what is this bug you speak of and how are you resizing? Explain your attempt and I'll try to see if I get the same results. You're probably figuring out there are at least 5 ways to resize HDV to SD in Liquid.

What I like most about it is that it is it's own environment. There is virtually no generation loss to your video if you keep it inside of the Liquid environement. You can layer effect after effect on clips and at the very most your end delivered product would be second or third generation. HD preview to HDTV with a client watching your edits playout in full glory is an incredible time saver and very impressive without render. In other words it's FAST and flexible.

Learning the intricacies of the program took a long time. The operation manual alone is over 1000 pages, but once it's learned then WOW. The sky opens up because you have contol over everything. Try cutting 9 or 10 cameras in 5.1 surround, mastering in Wavelab using Steinber VST's and color correcting using secondary colors and then adding FX that can utilize any one of 10 different scaling/rotation algorithms. You can't get in any other NLE without purchasing thousands of dollars worth of plugins and helper apps.

That's what I like about it. You can keep it simple with cuts, fades, wipes and simple edits and then output OR you can get down to the nitty gritty to the deepest technical part of editing, all in one application.

Stephen,

I already bought Liquid and just last night bought a Vaio VGC-RA830G. Can't wait to start playing! Where can I get my hands on the 1k page manual?

Oscar,

When you install Liquid the manual will be installed as well. It is a PDF manual that can be found in 3 places. In your start menu or by hitting f1 and then selecting the PDF tab or you can get context sensitive help from anywhere within the app by hitting f1 and then clicking the appropriate button in the displayed page. I recommend printing out the manual at least once. I have an extra one that I can give you next time I see you (if you wish).

S.Noe

I have an extra one that I can give you next time I see you (if you wish).
 

Only if you no longer have use for it. It would be much appreciated!

Do what every HDV editor is goingto do:

Create a 720p sequence.

Fill with 720p clips and add tons of FX.

Create a widescreen DV sequence.

Drag 720p sequence with FX into the widescreen DV sequence.

Then, following Avid's direct advice, and their HDV White Paper, drag the 2D CPU EDITOR to the 720p sequence with FX Container. Adjust scale factor.

Segments of the 720p sequence without FX will be correctly resized by .56% from 1280x720 to 720x480.

Segments of the 720p sequence WITH FX will be incorrectly resized by X% from 720x480 to 405x268. (Since Liquid does everything in % -- there is no way to work in pixels -- thus the last number is an estimate.)

Liquid's FX seems to screw-up the clips' scale data whenever CRT and GPU FX are applied. (Or, if a clip is in a second track.) So, in the DV sequence Liquid seems to ASSUME the clips are 720x480 and scales this.

If I had somewhere to host a video file I'd show you exactly how to scale HDV1 to any timeline that Liquid supports without monkeying with any FX settings.

As I said there are at least 5 ways to scale in Liquid and the method you've chosen is the hardest.

*ahem* Stephen, you've got mail!

1) Read my post carefully and you'll see I clearly said I tried the way Avid's Liquid Product Manager said to do it. Moreover, it was the method recommended in a chat with the German team. It is also the way indicated by the Avid White Paper sent to me Avid.

2) I suspect Avid recommended this way because it is "intuitive." (After all, once one has an HD timeline it is obvious that it should be resized to SD.) It's far better that the intuitive way works -- than it doesn't.

3) I note you didn't report your results in trying the Avid way -- which will fail.

4) I also said I solved the problem, but it is a "workaround" to avoid the bug. The fact it is a better way is no excuse as a newbie would never ever think of it.

5) It's no virtue that a product has more than one way of doing something. In fact, IMHO it would be far better if there is only one intuitive (Apple) way. That's why iTunes kills the rest. And, it's why Avid has long ago lost the race to Apple.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy editing with Liquid or that it doesn't have tons of capabilities. I've got a sequence with: 1080i60, 720p24, 720p30, 480p60, DV 16:9, DV 4:3, and MPEG-1 cell phone video. Try that with FCP!

But, that power is lost if there is no relevant HDV documentation and there are bugs. And, it doesn't help that Avid doesn't ship the absolutely mandatory 1,110 page Reference manual with the $499 version.

I know the method you speak of for many years. I believe the white paper you're referring to came out pre-version 6.0. That way is not the absolute best way and it was built to accomodate the Edition Pro 5.5 pci card and not necessarily the Liquid 6.0 pro break out box.

Anyway, I can see how having one way and one way only to scale would be a boon to a casual user, however, to a power user having multiple ways to scale is necessary. Liquid offers 16 completely unique scaling algorithms within it's CPU FX editors. Each one has it's effect on your choice of 8bit or 16bit subpixel routines. No other NLE has that ability without very expensive added plugins. How much are Nattress plugs going for now? Even After Effects only offers a global algorithm.

Try this Steve, put a clip on the timeline and then add the 2D CPU editor. Now open up the editor and go to the options tab. Twirl open the "channels", "render options" and "Quality". On the Quality section select the custom check box. Check out your 2D filter options now as well as you Precision choices. Now go back up to the channels and separate the channels to see what effect your choices have per channel. Make your choice on rendering frames or fields and then see the results. That's just with the CPU effects. How about the old Classic effects?

Go into the control panel for FX and change your options to use these settings:

set rendermode to YUV processing 16 bit per channel
deinterlacing =5 tap filter
positioning =bilinear
scaling = 6 Lobed Lanczos

Try massive zooming on Dv footage using the Classic 2d or 3d filter.you will be stunned. Then try zooming that much in Photoshop, or After Effects to compare. You'll soon see that the FAST group is on top of their game with very high quality math.

To the casual user the "fit largest - keep aspect" or "fit X - keep aspect" is the easiest way to get the job done. Doing the scaling in that manner always uses 3 lobed Lanczos which is a very good all around algorithm.

On the other hand, for a power user that likes to get everyting out of an effect they can choose not to use the general scaling and select Cubic B Spline for scale up or SinC for scale down.

The thread is getting pretty far off track (my fault). I do plan on making more tutorial videos and posting them for interested parties.

S.Noe

BTW The manual is delivered with the product in PDF. As all vendors lately, the printing cost are on you. You'll need the reference and it is very well written. I've only found one or two errata.

I really want to be nice, but I've dealt with this gobeldygook for 2-1/2 years.

By the way, on what page of the pdf are these recipes?

Avid has targeted Liquid at the event videographer. They are supposed to be able to pick up the program and have a capture to DVD all in one solution.

Yet, it turns out that the German development team doesn't have the right answers, that you're suppose to be a 5 year power user and heavyhitter cutter to really understand the simple elegance of the eclectic hodgpodge Liquid is, you have to be a technical librarian and Liquid historian to wade through the whitepaper miscellany to see the elightened true way to complete a simple task, and all the while Avid won't commit to documented ProHD support, and Liquid captures an uncompressed component signal through the pro box in a 720x512 proprietary format that can't be gotten out of Liquid without destroying the quality with inferior transcoding routines. (Apparently, this format goes back to FAST and the closed editing systems. As Noe points out, if you stay 100% within Liquid, things can work -- but that's not often a desirable scenario considering some of the major inferiorities of Liquid such as MPEG encoding, Titling, DVD creation, etc.)

If the math is so great in Liquid, how come the mpeg encoder can't be improved. Anyone can check how bad it is by encoding 2 hours of dancing in Liquid for a standard DVD, and encoding the same 2 hours in Procoder or MainConcept and compare the final DVDs.)

This post is rambling, but I'm just tired of the cult surrounding Liquid that refuses to look at it objectively: "Liquid is a brilliantly simple program to use, and if you don't see that you don't have the power user experience to understand the multiple machinations of multiplexed workflows, and you haven't been on the boards enough nor been to enough Liquid Immersions to grasp the intricacies of the elegant 49 steps workarounds."

Wow! Jogwheel enlightenment! What if I became a Scientologist and stopped taking my anti-depressants! (... but of course I didn't need my anti-depressants until I started depending on Liquid.)

If you want a consumer application like iTunes for your video editing then you should be looking at Studio or iMovie. How you can compare a consumer orientated product like iTunes to a professional application like Liquid stuns me.

Good question about the mpeg encoder. The CBR routine is good but there is no multipass VBR which is required for the highest quality when compressing 2 hours for DVD. Instead they use a "statistical" VBR routine which does no favors for a long DVD.

The "recipe's" are found in engineering manuals like this one Digital Video and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces . I had to hunt down that information on my own 2 years ago. I asked Joe Figura what it all meant and "where's the white paper"? No such luck. Instead there was a guy who went by the name "Vaman" who was an engineer at FAST that explained a good deal of it to me and then I looked even further to figure it all out. Last year I had the discussion with Graeme Nattress and David Newman about the powerful features as well. So, no, it's not something found in the manual and is more for video engineers.

It seems to make sense to discuss virtues of the product especially where it relates to ProHD. Scaling HD to SD is pretty dog gone easy if you want it to be. You are right in that one can get lost in the Gobledy gook instead of keeping it simple. Didn't mean it to get in the way of productivity.

The simplest way to scale your entire project is to lasso your clips and then right click and select "scale to fit - keep aspect" (in the case of 16x9). This will scale your clips no matter what timeline you lay them on and it will not render them either so your are getting native no matter if you move a container to another timeline or not. Simple and easy.

&BTW: The immersion thing is just another chance to get drunk and unwind as well as meet some new people.

There are Classic Clip FX, Classic Transition FX, Clip CPU FX, Clip GPU FX, Transition CPU FX,Transition GPU FX, and of course the "Special" FX. Since each uses different math, one has no idea what's going to happen if one uses one FX vs another. Or, why use one vs the other. Worse, if you use the wrong one -- one more -- workflows break. This isn't greater power! Since it's undocumented, it is chaos caused by poor engineering. Each year someone added yet another function -- with no consideration of the consequences. There are still functions that support the Video Machine!

"To the casual user the "fit largest - keep aspect" or "fit X - keep aspect" is the easiest way to get the job done. Doing the scaling in that manner always uses 3 lobed Lanczos which is a very good all around algorithm.

On the other hand, for a power user that likes to get everyting out of an effect they can choose not to use the general scaling and select Cubic B Spline for scale up or SinC for scale down."

There are few NEW Power Users who are going to buy Liquid. (Adobe Studio is for thoese guys.) Anyway, Avid intends Liquid for the "casual user." It's just plain crazy to think that anyone shooting DV or HDV cares about "Cubic B Spline for scale up or SinC for scale down." (They should and might care -- were it documented.)

The "fit largest - keep aspect", is a great method, but you are the first person to tell me what math is used! And, it took a week of work to figure it out. Folks in this market do not have time to spend a week on each topic. (Worse, it took a lot of time to get Avid to even admit they had a bug that required this technique.)


"BTW The manual is delivered with the product in PDF. As all vendors lately, the printing cost are on you. You'll need the reference and it is very well written."

An 1,100 page PDF -- that's nuts! Yes it's well written, but it's likely not been updated in 3 years. There are still German screenshots! And the 20 pounds of Apple documentation tells me it's not a PDF inside the box. Stephen, you need to write a book! I'm serious.

However, it will take a huge effort to strip Liquid of the old and unneeded stuff, fix the bugs in the remainer, upgrade the DVD compressor to VBR, and add HD XML export and import, XDCAM HD via 1394, DVCPRO HD via 1394, DVCPRO P2, plus Bluray support. And then document all this.

This will likely take several years and lots of money. Now realistically, is Avid likely to spend money to deliver a product that will have to sell in the 10s of thousands to ever generate a profit? And, is there anyway an improved Liquid will sell that many copies against FCP, Premiere, Xpress Pro?

Which is too bad, because I really like editing with Liquid.

This brings this section of the conversation full circle.

I think everybody who is cutting for filmout should be exponentially worried about (clued into) scaling algorithms since the image is going to be scaled to 30 feet and up. Anything to avoid aliasing of the final product needs to be known so that the best possible quality can be transfered while still allowing FX moves (if needed).

True the casual user may not ever want to know about these type of things. However, for the purposes of this community that may be using the ProHD solution for film transfer, knowledge of the scaling is relevant.

Excuse me?

Steve Mullen has figured it out exactly, like as if he is a professional figure outer.

My position on Liquid has always been that it does an excellent job, once the workflow and idisosyncracies (sp?) have been figured out for each specific use. This can take a week or a month or longer, but finally Liquid can work well.

Liquid's strength, when the flow is working, is an editor, not as a DVD program, a titler, a special effects machine (as AfterEffects/Boris), as an encoder, as a transcoder. Because there is so much clutter, vintage remains, and incompleteness in the codec workflows, getting video in and out can be water torture.

Steve is absolutely correct that Stephen should write a book. Or perhaps do a training DVD. The title would be "Perfect Liquid Workflows: the right way to do what you want to do."

The book/DVD covers specific workflows for specific kinds of projects with all the steps, settings, etc. from capture to export. The workflows come from the scenarios users encounter.

The video Stephen posted here on ProHD capture and editing is an excellent start. The ones he said he would also like to do if he had the time (HDV to SD DVD, etc.) are also good. All the extraneous options are left out, leaving just the right steps, the best steps to get a job done.

The workflows need to be professions, that is, they need to consider that titling, mpeg encoding, DVD creation, etc. will most likely be done outside of Liquid so they workflows need to include getting the video out of Liquid (the exact settings from the myriad of options in the export process, etc.) in the best shape.

Obviously, this is a lot, undoubtedly too much, work, and not reasonable.

However, following the same concept, perhaps people can submit their own workflows to Stephen, he can check and correct them, and a third party can set them up neatly on a page. Over time a brilliant, accessible collection would accumulate.

In the meantime, I support Liquid as an editor. However, I suggest people who want to use it to download the trial and try your workflow. I also suggest not to depend on it for a paying job until the workflow is tested and you have had time to discover any hitches and get answer to problems.

I agee that the pro needs to know ALL this. But:

1) the pro cannot learn this because it is undocumented.

2) Avid is not aiming Liquid at this group. It has Composer for this audience!

This is a conflict I see no EZ solution to.

Moreover, without a VBR DVD encoder, folks will not use Liquid to edit HD with the goal of going to DVD. Since that it the primary path for HDV shooters, by definition, Liquid can NOT be optimal for the very customers who Avid is aiming it for. And, the minute Avid uses Sonic (as they have suggested for making Bluray DVDs) they lose the integrated nature of Liquid.

And here, I part company with Jack -- if the DVD encoder were fixed and the power tools documented -- it is the ability to stay in one application that is so attractive to me.

In the next series of HDV@Work I'm going to document my HDV workflows.

But, who is going to document the 3 or 4 different color correctors? And, 3-4 different keyers? (By the way, the Green Screen chroma-key is great!)

One of the CC is powerful, but I can't even find the Black Level and While Level controls. Why do I want to see my colorspace in a cube? There are no settings for 709 colorspace, only 601 colorspace. In short, as Jack says, IF one has weeks to learn Liquid, you are all set. That's why there needs to be an "HDV Tutorial for Liquid."

Avid claims HDV is documented, but that is so damn Avid. Yes, HDV I/O is documented, but not the WORKFLOW. And, after reading Stephen's posts I doubt they have anyone inhouse who could write what they need. Avid should hire Stephen to write the tutorial.

I agree that if the encoder were fixed, staying in the application would be very advantageous. The reason I went to Procoder was specifically the below par results I got from the Liquid encoder (going back to 5.5, but I don't think there's been any improvement).

On the color correcting front, the big color corrector with the waveform monitor doesn't have keyframing. One of the other color correctors has keyframing, but not waveform.

I just color corrected ten hours of old beta tapes that had been originally corrected "on the fly" it appears, by different people with different equipment settings. Since the original video had been shot by the same person, in the same studio with the same settings, it would have been easy to make correctikons by looking at the waveform and setting keyframes and clicking various presets (this was studio audience, host, guests setups).

However, since the fancy colorcorrector, with the waveform was added to Liquid but not integrated, I ended up having to open the new colorcorrector, check the monitor, close it, go to the basic color corrector set keyframes and set the values, go back to the other one, etc. etc. I can put a lot of cuts in and colorcorect using different correctors as needed (which I did), but there were a lot of transitions where the correction had to change over time, necessitating key frames.

On the good side, the different correctors gave identical results with identical settings, but how to set the settings varied, and the new color corrector really needs keyframes.

In many cases, specific little problems are not significant for hobby projects... but for professional projects, this issues all add up adding considerably to editing time and frustration.

The all-in-one app is very attractive for many projects. However, the results need to be professional throughout the workflow. Superb first generation editing becomes a moot point when subjected to subpar encoding and amateurish DVD authoring.

EDIUS 4 BROADCAST ARRIVES NEXT WEEK

On the color correcting front, the big color corrector with the waveform monitor doesn't have keyframing. One of the other color correctors has keyframing, but not waveform.

HADN'T NOTICED I SO BUSY FIGURING-OUT THE CONTROLS!

However, since the fancy colorcorrector, with the waveform was added to Liquid but not integrated, ...

I THINK YOU'VE HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD. GREAT FUNCTIONS -- NO INTEGRATION. OFTEN THIS HAPPENS WHEN THE ORIGINAL CODERS ARE NOT PRESENT AND NO ONE DARES OPEN THE OLD CODE.

On the good side, ...

THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD SIDES. I JUST ADDED 5.1 AUDIO TO A PROJECT IN AN HOUR. REALLY FEEL A TUTORIAL IS ALL THAT'S NEEDED.