Avid Liquid 7.1 SP2

This is the latest professional video editing package created by Avid

Contents

What's New in Avid Liquid 7.0

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Review

by Allen Pilgrim

INTRO

    On November 22, 2005 the first copies of Avid Liquid 7 were shipped to the resellers. Although the upgrade does not include all of the features that people have been asking for over the years it is fairly significant. First, it exhibits that Avid is totally committed to the Liquid line. This in itself is reassuring and should put to rest any fears that they would be eliminating it after they folded in the features they want for their other products (such as background rendering). While they still will likely be incorporating those features, the same is likely to be true in reverse. It is my belief that we will begin seeing even more powerful features in Liquid that will make it one of their best selling products. There is a business truth that I learned many years ago: "It's better to make 2 fast nickels than one slow dime." What that means is that it is a lot more profitable to sell a lot of something at a lower price than at a higher one. Studio will likely be their number one selling product (in terms of numbers) and Liquid their second best selling product. While they will continue to sell the traditional Avid line, many with limited budgets will realize that they can't afford the high prices of those products and will look to a product such as Liquid. With Avid's marketing savvy AL7 should be a hit.

    I am also encouraged by many of the new features that have been added. I'll be discussing some of those later in this review. Keep in mind that AL7 was in development by Pinnacle programmers prior to the acquisition by Avid. Therefore, this is not truly an Avid product yet. In AL8 you will likely begin seeing a number of Avid features.

FEATURES

     The Pinnacle programmers have made some great decisions that I think will really help to establish Avid Liquid 7 as an NLE that can be used by hobbyists as well as professionals. Some of my favorite features are the introduction of Commotion filters and SmartSound. These two features give us an even wider range of creativity. With the Commotion filters you get a fair amount of power from this legacy application. Some of the filters include: Radial Blur, Corner Pinning (does not associate with other layers), Fractal Effects and many more. Another great feature is real-time timewarp. I have always been a little impatient waiting for the render so I could check out my timewarp. Then with each change I had to wait again. Those days are gone with this new addition.

SmartSound Interface

    Many of you are probably familiar with the SmartSound music that Pinnacle has been using for a very long time. With every release of Studio I always hoped they would put some new music in; they never did. Until now that is. AL7 comes with the complete Full Spectrum 44khz volume. This is a $99 value and there is a wide variety of styles on this CD. Full Spectrum 44k comes with:

New (12 new songs)

1. Bach Guitar (An arrangement of J.S. Bach's "Air on the G String" featuring acoustic guitars and oboe)
2. Blues to Go (There's a party up at the roadhouse, and everyone's invited. Down and dirty blues built for good times)
3. Cold Metal (This hard-edged heavy metal piece chills to the bone with no remorse)
4. Innocence (Easy, thought provoking music with a new age ambience. Ideal for creating a relaxing atmosphere)
5. Motor City Jam (The sound from Motown is here in this fun, upbeat track. Great for scenes of celebration)
6. Movie Logos (Powerful logo effects to give your production that 'big-budget' feel)
7. New Vistas (A fresh outlook and an upbeat vibe are conveyed in this track. Good for home videos as well as corporate use)
8. No Borders (Fresh from the dance clubs of Europe, this cut pulses with a relentless synthesis while giving an air of mystery. Great for active night scenes)
9. Subterfuge (Dark and looming, this tech-infused cut delves into the world of the uber-spy where global intrigue takes a front seat)
10. Synergy (Take on new frontiers and venture into uncharted territory in this subdued yet versatile soundscape)
11. Take Me There (This straight-ahead rock cut has a clean sound that works well with active outdoors scenes)
12. Tribal Theory (A wash of percussion takes us to unexplored corners of the planet. Great for adventure footage or any visual needing exotic aural backdrops)

Old (came with Studio and is labeled as Pinnacle 1 and also as Full Spectrum)

1. Boulevard Funk (Funky, groovin', contemporary pop-jazz. Danceable yet compelling with a soulful sax)
2. Hot and Spicy (Hot and spicy, this full brass band with Latin percussion will heat up any audience)
3. Island Party (Let the authentic steel drums and snappy rhythm section carry you to a Caribbean island for a "party blast")
4. It's Cool (Way cool, easy feel jazz with trumpet, sax, piano, bass and drums)
5. Kickin' Back (Moderate jazz pop with sweet nylon guitar. Easy to listen to or interesting enough to stand on its own)
6. Olympic (Big, epic and compelling, heroic with soaring horns, searing-hot piano and a strong rhythm. Great to evoke action, power and victory. Also ideal as a big finish)
7. Mozart Night (Relaxed classical with light woodwinds and piano - thoughtful and classy)
8. Orleans Romp (Fun, fast paced blues with a Louisiana, Zydeco flavor)
9. Piano Sonata (Mozart's Piano Sonata #16 in A Major. Thoughtful and sophisticated)
10. Power Drive (High energy, driving rock with hot guitar and hard hitting drums)
11. Queen of Sheba (Handel's famous classical piece. Relaxing and contemplative with authentic strings and woodwinds)
12. Rodeo Roundup (Get your audience hankerin' for a good-old time with this up tempo country piece featuring acoustic, electric and pedal steel guitars and a country two-step rhythm)
13. Swing that Thing (This high energy piece really captures that big band feel. Hot, toe-tappin' swing featuring a completely live 18 piece big band)
14. Underwater (Light and airy mood music with acoustic guitar, easy congas, shimmering bells and watery marimba)

Here are the new RT effects: DreamGlow, Soften, DuoChrome, Lighting, RGB Color Balance, and White Balance.

AUDIO

    Avid Liquid 7 now comes with Direct Sound support. With Direct Sound you can use a Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 setup with a 5.1 speaker setup and mix your 5.1 surround in real-time. Avid also improved the audio mixer and added new audio filters such as Noise Reduction and Grunge. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

CAPTURE/LOGGING

    EZ Capture is the latest feature to make capturing video even easier. I use this for most of my capturing now. If you want more control the logging feature is still available.

EDITING

    For those who have used Liquid in the past you will notice the toolbar is basically the same. There are some new icons that can be added such as the new SmartSound icon (not shown here). You can customize it to suit your needs.

AL7 Toolbar

Emboss Editor

Gradient Wipe

Lens Flare GPU

Timewarp

Old Film CPU

Sphere Section GPU

Combine Effects: Shards & Sphere Section GPU

Timeline (not much has changed here)

New Organization. You can choose to have this to the left of the timeline viewer. It replaces the source viewer.

BOTTOM LINE

    Upon close inspection, and after using it for several projects, my conclusion is that, in spite of its flaws, Avid Liquid 7.0 is one of the better prosumer NLEs on the market.       

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Bugs

1. Fixed in SP2 - SmartSound does not work for a number of people.
2. Return ability to export Elementary Streams. The following are comments from the Avid webboard: "The problem is that exporting to elementary streams only produces an MP2 audio file (which is fine for PAL DVDs but isn't supported for NTSC DVDs)." "With 6.1 you can export with ac3 audio, I consider this a big step backwards."
3. Fixed in SP2 - Fix the DVD problems. You can read about these on just about any thread on the Liquid Community Forum.

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Feature Requests for Avid Liquid 8 (or shall we call it Avid Liquid Xpress?)

These are not in any particular order (except the first one IMO) and not all the ideas below are mine; most came from the Liquid Community forum.

1. Really the top of my list is a new Title editor. I am really disappointed that nothing has been done to improve TitleDeko in the years that I've been using Liquid. Actually the Studio version is easier to use. I have TD Pro but it still has some pretty serious quirks. Sometimes deleting one letter causes erratic behavior. Virtually every time anyone uses TitleDeko people say, "That just screams TitleDeko.") This program has long since lost its effectiveness and I think this is a dead product, It will get us by but we really need something better. Something that does 3D titles and animations would be nice. Something like BluffTitler would be nice.
2. Full 24P support (I don't use this but people keep asking for it).
3. Either improve DVD Authoring so it's on the same par with something like DVD-Lab Pro or remove it. The latter would probably make people mad so I would suggest greatly improving it. Better yet buy Mediachance and get their technology for DVD-Lab Pro.
4. Added in patch - I would like to see some improvements to the new SmartSound feature. We should be able to highlight the area of the timeline we want to add the music to and select it from there (similar to Studio).  Also, have the default name be a combination of the Song and Version just like in Studio. It is annoying to have to change the name from "SmartSound Clip" to "At Any Moment - Enchant" for example. That is what I do every time I use SmartSound.
5. Sonic Fire Pro plug-in
6. Export to PSP or Video iPod or other personal video devices (even better - real-time or accelerated encoding)
7. HD output of the timeline via "Robert" Break Out Box
8. Newer HFX transitions that have a more broadcast look to them
9. Some level of auto color correction like Xpress Pro has
10. Motion Tracking
11. Better audio cleanup tools
12. Two pass VBR (aka Dual-pass encoding) is a MUST!!! This is the primary reason I do not use Liquid to create DVDs.
13. Ability to save multiple clip effects as a single special effect and be able to use them in any project.
14. Allow us to use special FXs between projects. I really dislike having to recreate them every time I start a new project. I know there are workarounds but I would prefer it if an effect that I create is available for ALL projects. Maybe have a checkbox or selection menu that says, "Show me all effects" and "Show me only the effects for this project." That would satisfy those people who do not want to see all of them.
15. Ability to burn time code to output
16. Xsend to work properly at the trimmed clip and not at the initial duration
17. Output the source window, with multicam panes, and with time codes overlaid, as a rough cut for multicam script editing. Burn to a DVD, let the script writer/directors use it to help shape a project
18. Open architecture to use more plug-ins like avx plug-ins and a lot more
19. Background rendering of all sequences (or a group there of) rather than just the current sequence?
20. Fully customizable windows layout, not only five presets. Dockable windows
21. Ability to turn off Instant Save at will. Sometimes you don't want to save (this one is debatable)
22. Improved Xsend and Xreceive. For example: XSend uncompressed to Combustion
23. Ability to change the color scheme. This has been asked for for many years now. There are some people who prefer the Combustion-like, dark grey; I do not. I would like to be able to apply different skins.
24. Change it so Liquid doesn't take over all the other Windows colors. An application should only affect itself. I know of no other program that does this. At least allow for us to turn this off.
25. A modernized interface (to Vista standards).
26. The ability to tell Liquid to use all of the resources (or some percentage) available to it. Right now it limits it during rendering for example. Typically if I'm going to render yellow slices I don't do anything else on the computer so it should use all the resources it can
27. Multiple audio tracks in DVD Authoring
28. Live Waveform & Vector scope monitoring on analog inputs
29. MackieHUI emulation and Joystick support for the audio mixer
30. OMFI import and AAF support
31. Improved Media Management Tools
32. The ability to set the ranges of Shadows, Midtones and Highlights in the Color Correction ala Symphony or Combustion
33. Fix all the rendering problems. On my system I should be able to have render yellow slices on and not have it freeze up or crash. I know I don't lose anything but I almost always have to reboot after a crash like this. That really takes a lot of time.
34. Fix other performance problems which have been outlined in detail elsewhere. For example the video just stopping for no apparent reason, audio dropouts, HFX and other effects not playing realtime even after renering yellow slices (only happen sometimes), etc.
35. Allow for the alpha channel in QuickTime videos so we can easily use products from Digital Juice. I would greatly prefer a single video than a folder filled with sequenced animations.
36. Don't make it rerender every time a clip with an effect is moved. Why can't it just keep that information.
37. Defintely faster rendering of Magic Bullet and Commotion FXs. This is almost unbearable and the reason I rarely use them.
38. Migrate all features of the editors to the realtime and get rid of the Classic. This one may have more ramifications than I am aware but I would prefer to only have to go to one place for 2D editing (for example) than to have to remember which one had the ability to do a certain feature.

    Well I'm going to stop there but there's many more features I'd like to see. Most importantly there needs to be some fixes for the current problems.

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Troubleshooting Avid Liquid 7

1. Notes:
   - More will be added as time permits
   - If you have any other suggestions for this section please e-mail me. Information is available on the Contact page.
2. What do you do if you have disbanded your audio and then deleted it?
   - Right-click on the clip and choose Properties
   - Check the Audio tracks you want to restore
   - You may now disband if you want
3. Note: This was a tip from LE 6.x and I have not encountered this problem in AL7 so it may no longer apply. Yellow Slices will not render. This is one of the most aggravating problems. The number one cause of this problem is Norton Firewall. When you install Avid Liquid it is best to disable it. Also when you run AL7 for the first time you will receive a warning about "rm.exe" being a High Risk and another warning about "studio.mod." You must allow all connections or rendering will not work.

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Getting the most from Avid Liquid

1. Track Names. Many people have asked for guidance on what to name their tracks. Here is one of my more common naming conventions. Also the order makes a difference depending on what you are doing.

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Latest Version of Avid Liquid

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Links

Check this out for up-to-date information on Avid Liquid from fellow video enthusiasts. Here you will find several experts who started out just like the rest of us and are more than willing to offer help. The webboard is a rich source of solutions and also a place where you can exchange ideas.

This is probably the most comprehensive site for Avid Liquid on the web.

Although these LIVE Webcasts have not been updated since March 2004 there is still some valuable information that can be gleaned from them. Learn more about the Liquid Edition features and techniques to make great videos. These LIVE workshops will help you to expand your creative abilities.

Allen was a guest speaker for a LIVE Webcast at Pinnacle on March 16, 2004 at 8:30 a.m. PST. The topic was about the differences between Studio 8 and Liquid Edition. Here are some of the concepts covered on the Webcast:
1) Some of the differences between Studio 8 and Liquid Edition
2) The basic concepts of using Liquid Edition
3) Advanced editing such as Pans and Zooms (aka Ken Burns), Picture-in-Picture, Keying and a couple others if time permits
4) Answers to questions submitted

Also on March 23, 2004 at 1:00 p.m. PST Allen and Jim did a pre-recorded Webcast about "Weddings and Events." Basically I shared about the decisions made in creating a special event video as well as business aspects.

Both Webcasts are currently available for download.

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Last revised: January 19, 2009