As it says in the title.

The presenter is a) a digital video system seller including all of the main apps,  b) an amateur film producer in his own right and c) an ex-liquid devotee.

 He was demonstrating Edius as well Adobe and Apple products at the UK Institute of Videography convention last week. He has personally moved from Liquid to Edius for 'most' of his personal work, using other apps as needed.

He made a great case for Edius 5.  Edius looks and feels so much like Liquid 7.  There are so many processes and actions that seem very similar.  The interface is similar. It does most everything out of the box, off the timeline.  Like liquid it is augmented by some bundled apps for what it can't do itself.

On a quad core machine it renders multiple layer colour correction in a flash.  The presenter (who has no axe to grind) reckons that Edius is around 30% faster than any other app to edit with.  It ingests almost anything, and outputs almost anything. Edius uses all of the functions in the latest chips.

What was clear however, is that there are things that Liquid can do in areas like secondary colour correction that Edius cannot do.As well as other things, I am sure.

So what's the point?  For me, as an event videographer, on a level playing ground, a 30% time saving is key.  If Edius could do everything that Liquid can do but faster I would move in a flash.  So my point is, if Edius gets there first, then I'm gone.

 Come on Pinnacle / Liquid  / or whoever you are!

In my mind, Edius is the bar the replacement product should compare or exceed. If the replacement product does not match up, many will go as well. Eduis has a number of good codecs going for it.

Yes, they are coming here to Sweden too, I got a link to a free trial for download and tried to link to a virtual EX1 card for fast import and previewing.

It didn´t succed and the virtual card is now empty, I noticed that when I opened up Media Composer and saw that the clip was offline.

I have now uninstalled the trial .......

How about stability... did he mention any comparison as to how stable Edius is compared to Liquid (specially with regard to HD)?

There are a lot of NLE's that can do more than Liquid (or at least the same)... but, most of them are not as near as stable as Liquid.  At least that has been my experience.

According to the presenter. Edius is almost 100% stable (one or so hangs a year).

I got the impression that the secondary colour correction is its big weakness.  It had a brilliant white balance tool though.

I'd still prefer that Avid / Pinnacle delivered though.  

I did the 30 day trial -Rock solid. Not one hicup.

Just wondering..........Was the 30% improvement in work flow, edit responsiveness, or in rendering?  If it was in work flow, that is something that would impress me.  If the gain is in responsiveness, that would interest me a little.  If it is in rendering, that is not a key factor for me (currently 99% SD work).  Liquid's background rendering is fine for me.

The amount of human time in a project is the key metric IMHO, and when I finally retire Liquid, the NLE that offers me the most efficient work flow will dictate my choice--not how busy the processor is.

I will take a look at Edius, but 2 key "work flow" things for me is how well an NLE plays with After Effects, SmartSound and other applications I have grown dependent on.

Thanks for the head's up John! 

 Should they plan something in my neighborhood, I will strive to attend too.  After all, attending a similar event is what hooked me on to Liquid (although it was Edition back then)..

Let's not turn this into an Edius forum.

That said, I like Edius and it would be a good replacement for Liquid if NexGen fails to appear or is not a good replacement. Of everything out there, it is the closest relative to Liquid in terms of looks (almost all the icons are identical) and workflow. You can make its screen layout look almost identical to Liquid. It is also as solid as Liquid. So, as options for the future go, it would be a good choice. It is not, however, inexpensive, especially if you need analog in and out.

Let's just wait and see what Avid/Pinnacle do next year.

Let's just wait and see what Avid/Pinnacle do next year.

This waiting takes too long...

Edius is very stable and Handles HD great. It scales to the power of your computer. Grass Valley also has several HD I/O hardware options to choose from.

Here's a link to a guide we posted on our website 

Gary

That Liquid was not to be developed further, and a replacement product was in development was announced November 2007, and has been "discussed" since then. So, hardly a secret. The conversations are dwindling, uncertainty is becoming more the rule.

After this much time, a mere statement of intent from Avid pertaining to the eventual delivery of the product would hardly dilute any shock and awe collateral, but it might stem the erosion of potential customer.

Avid's business, Avid's call, one man's opinion.  

TVJohn:

After this much time, a mere statement of intent from Avid pertaining to the eventual delivery of the product would hardly dilute any shock and awe collateral, but it might stem the erosion of potential customer.

Avid's business, Avid's call, one man's opinion.  

I couldn't agree more TVJohn - opinion shared

videoguys:

Edius is very stable and Handles HD great.

Gary

I'm not sure that's the question though.

If you're looking to stay with HD (mpeg2.... HDV...etc) then you can go on using Liquid for ever or even switch to ANY of the other NLE's because they all handle these formats quite well. I think the judgment should be placed more on the advanced codecs/formats that there are out there. I've played with Edius (with AVCHD) and maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't for the life of me get it to run at full frame rate. AVCHD on the preview seems to run at kind of a slo-mo rate. If you convert with GrassValley's intermediate then all works fine.... but it's such a pain to do so and you can already do that in a manor speaking with Liquid. It also doesn't seem to import 5.1 sound (from these newer avchd surround cams) very well.

My machine isn't the fastest in the world, but it's also not the slowest either (Q6600 quad, 8 gig ram, GTX285 vid card). It just seems to me that Edius should be performing better than it is and jumping to Edius would be more of a sideways jump than a forward jump.

AVCHD is a disaster to edit natively in a multistream manor. Hopefully, as memory size increases, we will see a move to less compressed, easier to process formats.

Edius does take advantage of hardware acceleration within its HDStorm I/O cards, in a way similar to what Avid does with DX hardware. 

Bellford Jack:

If you're looking to stay with HD (mpeg2.... HDV...etc) then you can go on using Liquid for ever or even switch to ANY of the other NLE's because they all handle these formats quite well. I think the judgement should be placed more on the advanced codecs/formats that there are out there.

Yes, as far as working with HD (other than AVCHD, but who wants to do that?) is concerned, Liquid is just fine.  I think the bigger factor for a newer solution, be it NextGen or some other NLE, is for the software to be able to take full advantage of new technology.  This includes operating systems such as Win 7, multi-core CPU's, new graphics processors and more than 2GB of system memory.

I also hope the wait is not too long.

TVJohn:

AVCHD is a disaster to edit natively in a multistream manor.

 

While this may be true, I can certainly muddle through it a lot easier with CS4 (even in its native form). Not that I particularly enjoy PP, but it does perform much better with avchd. I get full frame rate on preview even with some of the transitions/effects. I can't seem to do this with edius.

Anybody who is interested in how well or poorly Edius performs can download the trial version and play with it.