HDR-FX1 & Avid Liquid: Import M2V
 

Hey guys, I need some help.

I recently just got my FX1 (after fighting for 3 days with B&H - but they finally got it right) and when I capture video with Liquid it saves the movie as a *.m2v file for video and two seperate *.wav files for sound... what is up with that?

I figured it would capture it as a *.m2t file.

What am I doing wrong here?

I believe that's what it always does. That's the video and audio extracted from the .m2t source.

Thanks Mark, but how do I make it into a *.m2t file?

Same thing happens in Pinnacle Studio 10, which runs on same engine. You can render out to a single mpg2 file which is an m2t file. The evidence I have seen is that it doesn't actually reencode the unedited portions of the file, so I'm guessing the reencoding does of the orginal capture does not reduce quality, the same way Vegas or Premiere does. In Pinnacle, they actually separate them out, but they are locked together on time line. I suspect it is an issue with their editing process, which includes continuous background rendering just at the editing point as you are editing.

This is conjecture, but I think that what speeds up editing with the Liquid engine. I would like to know if anyone can confirm this ?

This is called "Split GOP Editing" (I think) and FCP does the same thing on the Mac, though I'm not sure precisely how it works. After all, in HDV the I-frame has to be every 15 (or 12) frames. So how do Liquid, Studio 10 and FCP manage this without re-encoding, unless you are only allowed to edit on I-frames.

Since this would be unacceptable for editors, I think almost all footage would end up being re-encoded at some stage - or certainly at the output/export stage.

You don't want m2t in Liquid.
Transport streams are just that, and so Avid sets up the capture to recognize the stream as an elementary stream, which *can* provide for more efficiency.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'm glad to hear that my Liquid is doing what it's supposed to.

Anyway to import Liquid HDV into Xpress Pro? So far it reports "unsupported MPEG."

I've only been able to export QT's from Liquid to Xpress Pro. I think it has to do with the demuxed nature of m2v?

I've had much better luck going from Xpress m2t to Liquid m2v. In fact, my workflow now is edit in Xpress (720/30p) xfer to Liquid for finishing, color correction and output to pratically anything. Of course I edit 24p in Liquid because ... well you know why.