Liquid Edition

In the third article in Robbiebee's series in which video editing programs are compared, she takes a closer look at Pinnacle's Liquid Edition 6.

• Section 1: Studio 9 plus
• Section 2: Premiere Elements
• Section 3: Liquid Edition (this article)
  

Introduction

Liquid Edition is an editing program which has descended from the former well respected Fast professional editing software. It is available in 2 forms, the software only version, which is the one that I use, and Liquid Edition Pro, which makes use of a Breakout Box and allows the user to monitor the video on an external monitor or TV screen.

This program makes no pretence of being designed for beginners, though some do start with it. In its previous version, it did not even use a conventional Windows style interface, but version 6, by default, does have the main conventional Windows features. Users can, if they wish, opt for the Classic interface, which totally takes over the desktop, instead. For experienced users of the program this arguably can offer a faster way of working.

Liquid Edition is designed for professional or very serious amateur use. The learning curve is steep, even for experienced editors, but once into its way of working, most users would hate to go back to working in any other way. Every feature, effect, transition etc is infinitely controllable, usually by keyframes.

As you work, it just gets on with rendering away in the background. There does come a point, as you can imagine, where the sheer amount of work you are asking of your machine causes you to wait a while, but it can deal with several effects at a time without affecting the work flow. Two very useful features are auto save. You never have to remember to save, unless you wish to save a copy under a different name. The other is multiple undo's; you never seem to run out of that option.

Fortunately, as well as the telephone directory sized manual, a much shorter, but still fairly comprehensive user guide is provided, which takes you step by step through the main processes and gets you up and running fairly quickly. There are so many features though that really knowing the program inside out will take much longer. If you learn on an as required basis, as I do, then maybe you'll never get there. On opening the program, one of the 1st things you might wish to do is to customize the keyboard shortcuts so that you use ones you are already familiar with. This is a simple process, and the user guide takes you through it.

Capturing

Before opening the program, your capture source should be connected and switched on, so that it is picked up as the program boots up. The 1st step is to give your project a name, and ensure it is being stored where you want it to be. Ensure that the view is showing the timeline and sequence Editor, and then then open the Input Wizard. You can skip it but only if you know what you're doing. You are prompted to select a rack, and name it. This is where your captured clips/imported media will appear. The next step is to open the logging tool which can be done through the wizard or via a button.
Now you have to select a reel. This this is the name you give your tape so that LE can identify it. The reel could also be any other source you are capturing from, but needs to be carefully identified, as the one thing you need when working with LE is clarity.

Once the reel is named, capturing is very straightforward, and allows control over how and what is captured. The dialogue box is straight forward, provided you take the time to read it properly, many a time I've skipped that in the early stages, and then wondered where the capture is. A picon is put into the rack for each capture. I don't usually make use of batch capturing features, preferring to capture on the fly, but they are of course an option. There is a scene detection feature which can be applied after capture.

From the Pinnacle Discussion forums, I see that the program Scenalyzer, reviewed elsewhere on the site, works very well with Edition. It splits each capture up into scenes by video content, in the way that Studio does, as it is being captured

Editing

This is where you see a big difference between Liquid Edition and most other programs such as Premiere, though I understand professional high end programs work like this. It is not initially intuitive, but soon becomes so if you have experience of other editing programmes.

You can opt for virtually as many tracks as you want, and all can be audio or video. As far as video is concerned, as you would expect, higher tracks cover lower ones unless you opt for some form of transparency or other effect.

There are several ways to organize the view. I use a timeline, with source and project viewers, but there are other choices. Clips are dragged into the source viewer from the rack where they are stored. Right clicking is a fundamental process in LE, as you work, you find it brings up menus with most of the things you need to do in that situation. Mark ins and outs are set in the source viewer, though once on the timeline, clips can be trimmed by dragging, and then a button is clicked to send them to the timeline. There are 2 editing modes: film style or overwrite. If you send a clip to the timeline in film style, it is inserted and all other clips move to make way for it. In overwrite style it will overwrite anything in its way.

Once your clips are on the timeline, the list of things you can do with them is seemingly endless, and really the best way to try them out is to get hold of a trial version and play with them. The color correction and keying effects are particularly good, but there's no end of things you can do if your imagination thinks them up. Transitions are dropped between clips and effects are dropped on top of them.

A very useful editing feature is the ability to fuse a sequence, which rapidly renders it out to a file. However, even more useful is the Containerize feature. If you have edited a section, and want to be sure it is safe, and you wish to be able to shunt it around the timeline, without continually rendering, you put it into a container. This puts all the clips into one block on one track on the timeline, and it behaves as if it has been fused. However, you can step back into the container at any time and continue to edit that section.

Output

Once your edit is to your satisfaction, you can choose a variety of ways to output the movie, and also author to DVD from the timeline. Initially this process seems very similar to Studio, but you soon realize that again you have control over every aspect of the design process. It is not a difficult process, but does need you to read the manual the first few times. I have had very good results from difficult footage.

Conclusions

There are a lot of features in LE6 that I haven't mentioned, as at the moment they are not important to me, so as yet I haven't used them. It handles HD video and 5.1 surround sound. It also can use sub pictures when authoring a DVD, which can be used as subtitles but even the manual says this is not a simple topic! This is a program that you are not likely to outgrow, yet if you have some editing experience, you can soon be producing good quality videos and DVD's. How long it takes you to fully exploit it, if ever, is down to you.