Is anyone else in a situation where the have liquid Blue 6.1 and FS-4pro DTE?

[Sharyn Ferrick]

Has anyone else been following a story in TVB re the nightmare the Los Angeles Unified School District's TV Station KLCS. Here is a link to the story
http://televisionbroadcast.com/artic...cle_1461.shtml

It seems to come down to what was really committed, and certainly points to the advice of : Get it in writing before the sale, but does bring up a situation of what do you do for your customers. While there probably is not a massive base of Blue 6.1 systems out there, they probably are all in customer sites that would definitely be A list level.

I am surprised that Avid and FE don't get together and sort this out, if FE is going to support Pinnacle, then supporting Blue 6.1 would seem to make sense, if Avid is going to end of life the product, then for valuable customers upgrading them to Chrome 7.1 also might make sense. In any event it seems to come down to a how well do you take care of your customers, and a warning to get it in writing.

Are there any other users in this same situation? and how did it get resolved?

Sharyn

[Matt McEwen]

Hi Sharyn,

I think what is missing from the online version of the article (the printed version has it) is that KLCS's FS-4Pro HDs do appear to be compatible with the latest 7.1 release of Liquid. This is noted in Avid's response. We do work very closely with Avid and all the other NLE manufacturers and try to support as much of the different file formats as possible. The situation at KLCS was very unfortunate and would appear to be atypical misinterpretation of our product's specifications. But we did work with them to try and solve the issue including signing them up to our beta test program. In the end, it appears that Avid did make a change to their software which has apparently solved the issue.

I must say it has been quite a challenge trying to support all of the different file formats and standards with FS. Not only do you have multiple frame rates now in HD (1080i, 720p, 24p, 30p, 60p etc.) and different video standards (DV, HDV, DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO 50 etc.), you also have many different file wrapper types for each different NLE. We have tried to prioritize development around the most frequently requested file formats/standards and also be as clear as possible about what we do support in our documentation and promotional material. HD is a large learning curve for everyone involved in professional video and we have been trying to work with our customers as much as possible to ease the transition and find out what is important...that is why I spend so much time on the forums! The issues at KLCS were unfortunate and it appears they have now been sorted out (with Avid Liquid version 7.1) which we are very pleased about.

In order to avoid these types of problems, we do encourage customers to review the FS camcorder, feature and NLE compatibility guides on our website so that they understand exactly what different FS models support.

Hope that helps,

Matt

[Sharyn Ferrick]

HI Matt:
I originally thought based on the Printed article that things had been sorted out, but when I talked to Alan Pokin further it appears that this really is still not sorted out
He said:
We run 2 liquids and 3 Blue 6.1. Since Avid has declared an end of life for the Blues there is no upgrade to a Blue 7.1 available. The problem is that any project in 7.1 cannot be opened in 6.1. We currently use the 7.1 as a gateway to break apart the m2t files and then import them into the 6.1 workspace so we are not tied to a single edit bay.


So what might appear in the article to be a solution by simply going to 7.1 really is not the case, since there is not Blue 6.1, and as he says you cannot open a 7.1 project in 6.1. The alternative seems to be a very expensive upgrade to Chrome 7.1 or obviously getting FE to support the now end of life 6.1

Having been familiar with Fast-Pinnacle-Avid transition, I still think there are two issues here, one is, on the Avid side of things, but the other really is on the FE side. Blue customers tended to be very high profile, and considering all the confusion is it really all that massive an effort to get this support for this customer? It would be a serious mistake to have people think that this situation is really resolved.

Sharyn

[Matt McEwen]

Hi Sharyn,

Regarding Liquid Blue support, it is not always as simple as us coming up with a file format that will import. When we did look at Pinnacle support, the file format required would have been quite complex to develop on FS and may not have been possible at all. We decided not to pursue HDV support of Liquid nor did we ever claim we would support it.

Regarding KLCS’ situation, I was just making reference to what was in the article under the Avid response. While we did work with KLCS to try and solve their issue by providing beta versions of software, we were not aware of the compatibility issues between different versions of Avid.

You will also notice that Avid (Pinnacle) Liquid support for version 7.1 is not listed on our own NLE compatibility guide as we have not as yet tested it in house. We do plan to test it in DV25 and HDV mode and will add this to our compatibility list if all goes well. We have no plans to qualify or develop for Liquid Blue or Liquid Chrome. The only Liquid support we currently claim is with Liquid 6.1 in DV25 mode.

Hope that clears it up.

Matt

[Sharyn Ferrick]

HI Matt
you bring up an interesting but worrisome situation. I wonder if your company is just one of the many that are really restricting support for the Liquid product line based on the obvious overlap with the traditional Avid product line in a sense forshadowing the eventual demise of most of the Liquid products

Sharyn