FYI: Video Demo of Film workflow and Liquid 7.x

[Gary Bettan]

What a fantastic job! I'm going to make sure the folks over at Avid realize just how easy this process is! We get a lot of calls about Liquid & 24P. Until this post, I've always told folks it's coming soon. For JVC Pro users - it is HERE!!!

Just a note. Avid Liquid 7.1 is now available as a free download to ALL Liquid 7 owners. In addition the 7.1 updater also includes a link to Magic Bullet Film Looks - 55 presets for making your video look like film.

AL7.1 is a download, it's not going to be included in the box for quite some time - simply becuase there is a good supply of inventory available.

For those interested in Liquid but a littel intimidated by the interface, we include class on demand complete Liquid trainings DVDs with your purchase of AL7. http://www.videoguys.com/avidliquid.html

Gary

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

I export back to D-VHS or HDV or to the IOLINK DVD recorder. That makes Liquid's no conform solution very attractive to me. However, if you CC every frame then Smart GOP Splicing is no advantage. Unless, of course, Liquid conforms really fast. Don't know.

Steve, it conforms so fast that I can't believe it. I work on 30 minute and 60 minute timelines (mostly) and dump to tape is a walk in the park.

Also I do not %100 agree with Jake's post. I have both Liquid and Premiere/Cineform and use Liquid 99% of the time merely because it is so easy and the results are predictable with great quality. Liquid's toolset includes Commotion plugs, Magic Bullet plugs (now) and 1000's of effects, and you can always Xsend to After Effects.

The advantage I see with Cineform is capture and manipulation in 10bit. This requires capture from the component of the HD-100 to maximize it's workflow. If the material is sourced from the tape then I see no real advantage to Premiere/Cineform.

Anyway, if you want to cut a film you can get the job done on Liquid no matter how long the timeline.

@Jake- If you can ever make it to the Chicago ProHD user group (third Wed every month) we'd love to have you. We can explore not only Liquid(native) but FCP(Aja) and Premiere(Cineform) all together and talk about workflow and delivery. It'd be a treat!

[Jake Strickbine]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

@Jake- If you can ever make it to the Chicago ProHD user group (third Wed every month) we'd love to have you. We can explore not only Liquid(native) but FCP(Aja) and Premiere(Cineform) all together and talk about workflow and delivery. It'd be a treat!

Thanks for the offer- I'll keep that in mind. I'd love to come out and meet you guys. Hopefully it won't be too long before we have more workflows to examine than just those three!

[Thomas Smet]

Rendering is something you hardly ever have to do in Liquid. Most of what it can do including color correction, 1000's of 3D effects and most filters will run in realtime. If you have the pro version you can watch your HDV timeline down converted to component SD on your TV on the fly in realtime. That means everything that will play on the timeline will be realtime on your TV. You can even use the second head on your graphics card to hook up to a HDTV and watch your HDV edit in realtime in HD.

Any rendering that needs to be done before sending to HDV device will only happen at the end. Or if you want Liquid renders in the background while you work. By the time you figure out how to cut everything together your whole project will almost be done rendering.

Cineform does have it's advantages but Premiere Pro is so out of touch compared to Liquid that for me it wasn't even worth it. Using Premiere Pro for me was like running a marathon on crutches. Liquid is the only NLE that allows me to work closer to the speed that I would like to work at.

[Rogelio Salinas]

I just received the Liquid 7 trial DVD, and will be messing around with it tomorrow. I had read in Videomaker magazine that Liquid offers both timeline and storyboard editing options, is this true? Timeline is the way to go, but when you just have to move a couple of scenes around really quickly, storyboard can allow that to be done really quickly. It's exciting to see that Avid has a great all-around NLE for JVC ProHD users. The 55 Magic Bullet looks are also a great bonus as well.

[Jake Strickbine]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Rendering is something you hardly ever have to do in Liquid.

Rendering is something you hardly have to do in ANY NLE as far as preview is concerned.

I'm an Avid guy myself. I don't really care for the interface in Premier or Liquid- but these are matters of personal taste. When looking at things from a purely functional standpoint- there are tradeoffs involved in these different workflows- and the one that's right for one type of project may not work as well for another, depending on the amount of footage you're dealing with, the amount of post production (FX) involved, and the amount of hard drive space you have available.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

but Premiere Pro is so out of touch compared to Liquid that for me it wasn't even worth it. Using Premiere Pro for me was like running a marathon on crutches. Liquid is the only NLE that allows me to work closer to the speed that I would like to work at.

The advantage of Premiere is its integration with all the other products you likely use.

I tend to only use Photoshop so its not a big deal. Amazing no one has put a still image program into an NLE to save time.

[Ram Ganesh]

since this video seems to be offline/deleted from saltar's server - I uploaded my copy to Google Video (with stephan's copyright intact - let me know if u dont want it there)

http://snipurl.com/Liquid24ptutorial

[Antony Michael Wilson]

I wouldn't be so quick to applaud Avid. This HDV1 support and technology is legacy from the Fast/Pinnacle team. Note that Avid's more expensive, established tools (AXPro, MC, Symphony) do NOT fully support HDV1 even though they've been promising 'soon' since September last year. I doubt that anything good about Liquid has much to do with Avid itself.

[Jack Walker]

I have been using Liquid since version 5.5. I have put in hundreds of hours on it, probably over 1000.

I own version 7, though I am using 6.1 since version 7 was a mess on its release. Version 7.1 is supposed to have fixed many of the problems... though not all -- but i don't have the time to waste right now to find out.

I use 6.1 for DV and it works very well for very long timelines.

However, anyone who is thinking of it should download the the trial and make sure it does everything that will be asked of it. A lot of workflows are only partially implemented, so make sure your workflow is complete.

It should be noted that 24p is not officially supported by Avid. Here is a quote from the Liquid product manager, Jim Thill, that appeared on the Avid Liquid forum:

"The JVC support is in a category we call "implemented but not yet tested". The engineers have done the work. The QA team has not completely tested it. Product Marketing has not yet added it to the official feature list."

Here is the complete thread on the Avid Liquid forum:
http://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/thread/92838.aspx

Avid rarely makes comments on these kinds of discussions, so I believe the fact Jim Thill made his comment is significant.

Avid is already known to remove features previously available in Liquid. For example, the import of VOB files used to be supported, but no longer is. Here is a quote by one of the moderatores in a recent thread:
"The importing of VOB files is no longer officially supported by Liquid. Please see the 7.1 readme file. For that reason, VOB files have been removed from the import list of file types."
Here is the full thread on the Avid Liquid forum:
http://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/thread/110862.aspx

At the end of last year, Tim Wilson from Avid, said at the end of the year, when specifically asked about using Liquid for a project that would go to film, he answer not to use Liquid, use one of the other Avid products.

Liquid is very finicky with the system it is running on. It is advised to download the trial and make sure it will run on the system you want it on.

There are are lot of workarounds needed when using Liquid. For most people these these take days and days to first, figure out the documented feature doesn't work, second, go to the forum and be told that there is an undocumented work around, third get the workaround to work. Typically, at least one two weeks needs to be added to a project when a new Liquid user or an old Liquid user tries a new workflow.

In some areas Liquid is not professional class, such as MPEG encoding, DVD creation, and there are many little examples.

The technology in Liquid is dated and not standard to modern applications. Examples are AfterEffects plugin support, VST support, etc.

While lots and lots of formats are listed on the box, there are abberations in in the workflow. For example the SD uncompressed capture format (using the Pro BOB and component in) uses an old Pinnacle/Fast non-standard pixel size that will not import into other programs. It must be transcoded and exported at an inferior quality (I spent three weeks figuring this one out.). If your project is going to stay 100% in Liquid, this is not a problem... but if you are going to DVD you are stuck with the substandard one-pass encoder in Liquid and the inferior, built-in DVD program.

When I did the uncompressed work I ended up with Black Magic capture and Edius editing out to Encore DVD. It worked flawlessly the first time.

A friend did a video 15 project for the first time which ended up a big hit at a large board meeting. He used Premiere Elements, including timewarp features, key frames, 3 track soundtrack with on camera sound, voiceover and music and had it edited in 3 days, at odd moments through the day. The company just bought an FX1, Premiere Pro 2 suite and a new editing computer.

This kind of experience is rare (if ever) with new Liquid users.

Liquid is excellent for what it does. However, every scenario is different and the _complete_ worked flow needs to be tested multiple times before depending on it for an important job.

There are fervent cheerleaders for Liquid (and for the right person in the right situation Liquid is outstanding), but some of the fervency is from a fear that Avid will drop Liquid and not get it working right if there isn't a large enough user base.

I would be concerned that Avid might pull the unofficial 24p support from Liquid then they get support in Xpress Pro and other systems up and running in a few months.

On the other hand, a lot of new users that expressly want HD100 support in Liquid might cause Avid to officialize the support and not take it out.

At the Liquid Immersion event at the end of last year, Tim Wilson, the last day in the discussion, specifically asked how many people were using or were thinking of using the JVC 24p camera. He made his interest in this clear by bringing the discussion back when he didn't get an immediate answer and asking twice again. It appeared even then that the JVC camera had Avid's attention; it's just not clear which product Avid will aim at it.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Jack Walker

t should be noted that 24p is not officially supported by Avid. Here is a quote from the Liquid product manager, Jim Thill, that appeared on the Avid Liquid forum:

"The JVC support is in a category we call "implemented but not yet tested". The engineers have done the work. The QA team has not completely tested it. Product Marketing has not yet added it to the official feature list."

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?

[Jack Walker]

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.

[Jack Walker]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

Thankfully not when editing, but when I switch Sequences while a background render is running.

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).

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Jack Walker

Here is where one of those little workarounds may apply. For example, before changing sequences, turn off background editing.

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.

[Jack Walker]

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.