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

[Oscar Villalpando]

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?

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Oscar Villalpando

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

[Oscar Villalpando]

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

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

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.

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.

[Stephen L. Noe]

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.

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

If I had somewhere to host a video file.

*ahem* Stephen, you've got mail!

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

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.

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.

[Stephen L. Noe]

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.

[Jack Walker]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

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.

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.)

[Guy Barwood]

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.

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.

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Jack Walker

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

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.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

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.

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.

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

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.).

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.

[Antony Michael Wilson]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

1) And, it's why Avid has long ago lost the race to Apple.

Excuse me?

[Jack Walker]

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.