OT: Dumbing down Avid Liquid

blink3times wrote on 10/23/2007, 5:43 AM
At a recent volunteer Avid Liquid (which is now PINNACLE liquid again since Avid has returned it to the Pinnacle devision) tutoring convention, a free copy of Pinnacle studio11 Ultimate and a massive 40% discount on a upgrade to Media Composer was offered to everyone who attended.

This raised a lot of question which the Pinnacle reps who attended tried to answer as best they could. It's been clear for some time now that Liquid has been floundering, as it went from Pinnacle's hands, to Avid's, and back to Pinnacle again.

It seems that there will be a new liquid version but not anytime soon and the name will not be liquid... they will continue to patch the existing Liquid 7 (which needs it in a few places), but they have made it clear that there will be no 10 bit color space, no network rendering.... and other things that tend to separate the pro versions from the consumer ones. It APPEARS that they will be dumbing it down and trying to make it more like Pinnacle Studio to try and attract more studio users.

Interesting twist with liquid... at minimum though, I don't think it will be considered much of a competitor anymore to premiere, Vegas... etal.

Comments

Yoyodyne wrote on 10/23/2007, 12:19 PM
I had a feeling something like this was going to happen back when Avid got a hold of the product. Seems to me that the NLE's are kind of boiling down to the few major players...survival of the fittest? Software Darwinism?
blink3times wrote on 10/23/2007, 4:09 PM
Agreed... The weaker NLE's seem to be dying off. Ulead's Media studio Pro as well as DVD Workshop is being discontinued... and now it looks like liquid will take a dive. All the more reason for Madison to stay on its toes!
Cliff Etzel wrote on 10/23/2007, 5:01 PM
Having moved from working as a print photojournalist moving to video, I have been concerned with what app to settle on and to have a good reason to settle on it.

I started out with PPro 1.0 and upgraded to to 1.5 and was content with it as I thought it was really the way to go on the Windows platform. I dabbled with Vegas at that time and tried to wrap my head around Avid (which was very frustrating). When I moved to 64bit XP Pro last year, I discovered that PPro and Audition, my two most used apps no longer worked correctly. Having to search for special drivers to get my burner seen was only partly successful PPro saw it, Audition and Encore would not. So I tried SONY's apps - EVERY single app I had saw my burner straight away. That was the clincher for me. Then I finally wrapped my head around the Vegas way of doing things - a moment of enlightenment ensued and I realized just how kludgy Adobe's work flow truly was. Add to that the memory leaks that are becoming evident among its users, and I said "Bugger off" to my Video Collection Suite.

As a video journalist, I don't have time to deal with out of memory error messages rendering a 5 minute video from the timeline that were the norm for me with Adobe's apps. No matter if I used 32 or 64bit Xp Pro - they still occurred. I have content I need to edit and deliver - SONY's apps just deliver day in and day out for me - no matter if the processor is a single core Intel processor on my Dell laptop or my dual core AMD desktop. It's not that the AAA apps aren't good at what they do - they just seem too similar in how they do things - which is an old school way of working - separate apps doing a specific function - typically handed off to someone who works in that specific app. I foresee a new breed of video content creators entering the market who will need to be well versed in not only shooting, but editing their footage and understanding how to work with audio - and doing so quickly and delivered to multiple distribution channels. For me, Vegas allows 85% of that right within the app, my other 15% is handled by Sound Forge/Cinescore/Acid Pro - depending on the specific task.

I don't see that being available from SONY's competition. If SONY can continue to deliver an app that is as stable as Vegas has been for me, along with some added functionality (please SONY, open up the plugin spec to third party plugin programmers - especially a motion stabilizing plugin), SONY will make inroads with those who choose to work as self contained content creators like myself.

my $0.02

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt
Coursedesign wrote on 10/23/2007, 5:51 PM
Amen to that, Cliff!

Having said that, I still wouldn't mind getting a Media Composter just for the Script Sync feature...