You can directly throw a filter on a clip at the preview window instead of applying it for each clip you send/cut on timeline.

I am offering the 1st little trick. As Paul and Sef wanted. But let's just stick on the facts and not talking about each one. 

I like to drag things into Liquid when importing won't work....alt-tab from Liquid to an open folder and drag the contents into your rack....this helped me get some VOBs into my Liquid....I didn't know about the extension changing way of doing things, as I have never had to do this in the past. It worked really well and looked remarkably good.

Another little trick that i like, although this one is not a hidden feature is the copy volume command...this can save quite a bit of time. 

Also on my Liquid Blue system at work, if you want to use the audio mixer, but change the volume for an entire clip, then type the number into the DB field, and then hold down shift and hit enter....I assume it works on Liquid, although am not in front right now.

I have never had a single vob failed at me importing.

But just in case what I always used to do.

VOB Import 

1) Copy first the files to a folder at PC (not from DVD).

2) Rename them.

3) And finally change the extension to .mpg from.vob

After you sync 2 cameras by Mark In and send the result to timeline you can safely delete the multicam clip. It's not needed.

Not the original media. When right click and choose delete just check only the upper box not the lower which asks about associated media.

This is not a secret but is something I always follow:

When I am coming to an important time on the project (let's say every 10 minutes but this depends on everyone's thought):

1) I am saving a copy of the sequence I am working.

2) I am emptying the trash of Liquid.

3) I am cleaning the project.

4) And finally I am saving the project by save a copy from Liquid to another disk.

And I always defrag the drives as much as possible. 

Instead of deleting one clip at a time in Liquid I like to create a garbage folder in the project browser.  I then just drag all the junk clips that I don't need into that folder.  When I went to get rid of them for sure I just go into that folder and select all of them and delete them.

This saves a lot of time and allows me to quickly run through the clips in a project.

The other nice with this method is sometimes I end up going back to that garbage folder to pull up a clip I now need to fill in a gap somewhere.  This is much easier then finding the clip on your hard drive and importing it again.

I use a seperate HD as my render drive and have NOTHING else on this drive...

Instead of defraging my Render Hard Drive, I do a quick format of this render drive... Saves tons of time over defraging the exclusive render hard drive...

BUT, if you decided to put data on this drive... reformating the drive could create a real problem.

Joe Moya

Especially with Quad Cores sometimes the renderer tends to go lazy.

Just right click on a yellow slice while the renderer goes on and force it to render (any slice doesn't matter) and it will wake up and go faster. 

If you create a 2D/3D gpu/cpu/classic effect with shadows you will notice that the shadows will follow the motion of the object.  This will be wrong for things such as rotation because the shadow will rotate with the object and at one point the shadow will be in one dirction and then it will be cast in another direction.  In real life the shadow will always be cast from the light source.

The way to trick Liquid is to do your animation in a 3D filter and then add another 2D filter that will just have the shadows.  The 3D filter will have no shadow settings set.  This will cause Liquid to run the animation through the 3D gpu filter and then cast a shadow from the same direction no matter how the object rotates.  So basically it is like animating a object, rendering it out and then putting a shadow on the new clip.

This will also work for a 2D filter with another 2D filter that just creates the shadow.  In fact this trick should work for pretty much any filter in Liquid.  Don't create a shadow with the regular filter you do your animation in.  Add a new 2D or 3D filter to create just the shadow.

Smet,

 Do you have an example of something you have done this with? Even a still would be good. I am having a hard time figuring out why you would do this, so an example would help me understand.

The steps to properly change the extension from .vob to .mpeg or .mpg are.

1st you open explorer or any other folder in WinXP and choose from the Tools>Folder Options.

And finally you are answering Yes when the system asks you for the extension change.
 

As I said before you can safely delete the multicam sync after you send the final result to timeline.

BUT.

Do not do this before the slices turns to green!!!

Meaning you have to wait for the rendering to end and only then you can delete the sync clip. 

One new for FX's.

I am working by loading the clips (by double clicking) on the monitor window and not on clip's viewer.

But I needed to raise the sound of the whole 1 hour clip and others too.

It was difficult and I tried this:

Right click on the clip at the rack and choose FX properties.

Then Double click on the FX you want to work with.

The FX and clip's viewer will pop up as a separate window!

This one you will like even more:

When at FX Properties Click and drag all the FX's you want.

You can Copy and Paste them all together to another clip!

We all know ? that it is possible to replace clips with other clips in overwrite mode and keeping the filter settings on those old clips by holding the control button down and drag the clips over the old clip.

This also goes for sequenses, if you, for example, has fused a file from an sd sequense and put that file on an hd sequense and upscaled it with a 2d editor, if you lose that fused file by deleting the wrong folder ( I did ... )  you can just drag the sd sequense over the redsliced clip holding the control button down and all is fixed.

A very simple tip but very  needed if you are working like me on audio side.

You bring the audio tool (meter) by pressing F3. This is easy of course.

But I always reseting the maximum peak by clicking on the dot to have a new metering every few secs.

This is getting annooying if you just doing it all the time.

Just hit F3 to get a metering and if you need to reset it just hit again F3 and again.

Every time the audio tool is opened the maximum peak is reset.

While this is already known as well let me say it again.

When you are working with HD media and you are trimming always at timeline as I do, keep the AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE TIMELINE PICKONS box unchecked,

otherwise the trimming will be so slow, that you will start thinking that something isn't going well with your HDD.

Try for yourself with the box checked on and off.

P.S. The same applies to SD clips at slower computers as well. 

I have too many files left over from 5-6 months I am doing the show AT ImportedStills.xxxxxx because as we know Liquid creates a new version of a TDK or image when you save.

All you have to do is to select at the eye icon(at 2 monitors setup) what I show at the pic. Having all of the medias there you could delete whatever you know that isn't in good use anymore and it is useless. 

Keep in mind that those are the MEDIA's and not the links to them so be careful.

At a relatively fast SATA drive the process is fast enough even with some hundreds or more media. 

I discovered something very interesting which is somehow amazing.

I did copies of the TDK files and the Heroglyph titles I use mostly which aren't more than 20-30. Then I deleted everything about IMAGE at Media Management for this project.

While Liquid writes new TDK files as .BMP's when you save them by Ctrl+E within a project, even if you delete all the files from the media management,

those files which are opened at the project and at the TIMELINE are recreating by itself. This is quite amazing and I didn't noticed it before.