Okay, it is one of a few things to answer this question:  "Where are all of the Chrome Xe  users??"  This area is EMPTY!

Possibilities:
1. Only 6 people purchased Chrome Xe.
2. It is so good, and so perfect, that noone has any problems, and thus no reason to forum.
3. There is another forum somewhere.

Anyone care to comment??

I just bought an LHe card w/ Chrome Xe for a great deal... Im anxious to learn more about it before it arrives.  When I get it, I want to be ready to throw it in and get started!

Thx.

Rod on Kwaj

Now 7. Sorry, I couldn't resist that. Thomas Smet is the guru in that area, give him a ping...
Xe has rather strict hardware requirements and spells out "certified parts". A review of that list would save
some fustration and time.

I run Chrome Xe since it arrived as beta-version, and in my view it is one of the best systems in the market. My major favorite is the the down conversion from HD to SD, so that I can use my SD-monitor to show the HD-video with correct colors and not disturbed by the 4:3 layut of the TV-monitor (the video is letterboxed). The down converted presentation can be selected betwenn letterbox, compressed, etc.The other big advantage is the HD-SDI input and the HD-component input, which allows video being captured in 4:2:2 (8 bit or 10 bit) scanning, which is better for blue/green screen activities.

The advantages of Chrome Xe is, however, somewhat limited by the software problems which have not yet been solved, e.g., 720P/50 capture problems with audio, Quicktime crashes Chrome if you use version 7 of QT (only version 6.5 works flawlessly, but with restricted codec selections), file import of HD .avi files fail (in Chrome HD version 6 I can import them without any problem), and finally a fundamental color presentation problem on the PC monitors (this is not only an issue for Chrome Xe but for all Liquid systems), where the color prsentation of HD/HDV-video in the video windows uses wrong color conversion parameters (those for SD-television accoding to ITU BT.601 standard instead of BT.709). The result is, that you cannot use color correction without an external TV-monitor, if you want to have best quality. With Chrome Xe systems you have correct colors if you connect the external monitor to the Xena LHe card.

I discussed this color issue with people in Munic. They told me, that there is no way to correct it, as long as the real-time playback from the timeline will be maintained. For this reason I bought Media Composer, which allows correct settings of color matrix parameters with HD content.

 

Chrome Xe really is a great system and I feel it is worth the cost.  It is even more worth it since you got such a good deal.  Anymore of those at that price point?

Like you said for the price you can't really go wrong.  Xe as it stands should last as decent system for at least a few years yet.  When the software side no longer does it for you you can always use the board with Vegas or Premiere.

The amount of stuff you can do in RT with this system is amazing.  If they would only made a HDV deck that had a SDI input or at least component input Liquid users wouldn't have to render as much HD material anymore.  Xe has been a very stable system for me but it is super picky on hardware specs.  Hopefully it will work for you.  Please do let us know how well it works.  We are pretty much all on our own when it comes to figuring out what hardware works.

The reasons why Xe will last me a long time yet:

1.  I mostly cut and put everything together in Liquid.  I usually do most of my graphics outside of Liquid.  This includes either Photoshop, After Effects or 3D Studio Max.  For the fun of it I will also use Gimp and Blender just to show they can be used.  While some complain about the lack of format support in Liquid I find it offers enough to get the job done.  The image sequence support and RGB AVI support is enough to cover the highest level of quality outside of 10bit.  The only down side of course is file size but if you can get around that you can do anything with Xe.  Drives are cheap and at the end of the day 8 bit RGB is better then many of the Cineform formats when dealing with multiple layers.

2.  Liquid does have built in support for a intermediate format but not very many people know about it or use it.  So far there is no way to capture to this format but I do render graphics to a 300 mbit m2v format.  This is limited to 4:2:2 yuv but it is pretty darn close in quality to uncompressed yuv and at a much smaller size.  Liquid will also work fairly well with mjpeg avi formats although there is a slight color shift in Liquid.  These formats combined with RGB give me plenty of options for the future.

3.  These above formats give Xe users for future cameras.  If there is an odd new camera format out there you have 2 options.  Capture through HD-SDI and problem solved or convert to a format Liquid supports.  If you are coming from a compressed source such as AVCHD then convert to a high bitrate m2v file.  If the source is higher quality choose RGB.  At work we now have a Red One camera and I have converted the 4k material in Redcine to a RGB quicktime file which I again converted to a RGB AVI file at 1920x1080 which works perfectly in Xe.  Outside of not having 10 bit or 4k resolution support the RGB avi format is about as good as you could ever ask for from the Red One camera.  To be honest I feel 4k is only really important as an aquisition format, sort of like shooting on film but editing at 1080p for many of the Hollywood movies.  If I can only get Redcine to support writing to avi files then the Liquid workflow would be the same as the Red workflow from any other system.  XDCAMHD is going to be here to stay for awhile.  Liquid already supports this format so most highend camera support is already there.  Liquid already on it's own set up a 4:2:2 50 mbit m2v codec that matches the new SONY XDCAMHD format.

4.  As much as I would love 10 bit support I do all of my work as 8 bit.  Even at work where we deal with $100,000.00 projects we do everything as 8 bit.  Our main editing system is a SONY Xpri which cost well over $100,000.00 and we own the second system ever built and we use it strictly with it's built in HDCAM 8 bit codec.  All 3D Studio Max and After Effects material is rendered as 8 bit.  If we edit out Red footage on the Xpri chances are we will do so at 8 bit.  We may do a few projects at 10 bit but to be honest the cost ratio just isn't really worth it.  We tend to shoot our stuff with great care so we don't have to push the color very far.  Even when we do we find 8 bit to be fine.  We just finished a huge project for Habitat for Humanity where most of the stuff was shot with a SONY Z1 and we pushed the color pretty far and it looks great.  So for now I am ok with 8 bit.  The way I look at it 95% of the cameras and formats out there shoot as 8 bit and while 10 bit is great and does help with a 100% 10 bit workflow I find the whole 10 bit thing is being used as more of a marketing ploy to make people think they are doing better.  Does anybody think 99% of the Adobe Premiere users are working with a 10 bit format?  Sure it would be great for Liquid to have it but I am not going to freak out and dump my perfectly good system that can beat the pants off of FCP just to say I can edit 10 bit.  Especially when I know I would never use 10 bit right now anyway.  If I have a client that insists they need 10 bit I will either try to convince them that there is no way 10 bit will help their Z1 footage, let them find somebody who will do it, or tell them yes I can edit the color in After Effects or buy a cheap copy of some other NLE to work with the color.  Most of the time the client just wants to here we have some 10 bit tools, so tell them After Effects is 16 bit and they will be even more impressed.

5.  I never do any of my encoding in Liquid.  For DVD's and web formats I will use higher quality encoding tools and better authoring programs.  This solves A. the time it takes to encode video in Liquid and B. The level of quality I can get from my encoded material.  This also gives me unlimited support for futre formats.  I tend to fuse out a file to use in my encoding programs.  Sure it takes up a lot of drive space but the quality is worth it in the end.  This method also allows me to use other systems I have to encode and author my material will leaves my main system open for real editing.

Feeling of Deja vu . Chrome XE is not out that long, so there are not so many users. And of course, maybe 1% will acutally be on the forum. And most questions asked on this section are actually related to the Chrome XE hardware. The "regular" Liquid questions are mostly handled on the other sections.

Well here is another Chrome Xe user albeit for only the past few months. I had been using 'Purple Field' more laterly known as 'Liquid Purple' , for the past 7 years for 'location edits', the bulk of my work being carried out on Discrete Edit. My last surviving Discrete Edit system finaly 'expired' so it made sense to migrate to the 'big brother' of Purple for work at the studio.

I had assumed the transition would be simple, forgetting that Chrome was a variation of Edition which I had not 'upgraded' too! Sounds crazy to remain with my origional 'Purple Field' but at the time the upgrade was offered Pinnacle had switched to web verification of the software and I could not risk a demand to 'verify' if I was stuck in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere with no web connection . . . . life was somple with a dongle! Thankfully, I purchased through a dealer (RTS) who believe in customer support, they have patiently answered my oft times silly questions and generaly been a great help.

Chrome has now earned its' spurs and overall I'm very pleased with it. It has a few odd quirks but then what doesn't. Also, no prizes for guessing which gui I utilise . . . . . yep 'Trad Look'!

 

 

there is a Huge contingency of Liquid Xe users in Alaska. Massive really. 

bswenson:

there is a Huge contingency of Liquid Xe users in Alaska. Massive really. 

Ohhhhh I'm a "happy bunny" now, here is a name I remember well from the early days of the Liquid forum (before it got swamped by enthusiastic amateurs), always well worth reading Brad's advice!

A little late to the "new/old" forum, but here I am!

 

I am also a owner of Chrome Xe, however I do not have a proper system or the aja lhe board yet to make it "whole". Just running the software side on a HP xw8000 and saving up to pick up the proper system and aja board to really enjoy it.

 

The VM/DDPR ... bcastvideo webboard with  Clesson Duke support....the Liquid Silver system / thx Brad for your support a few years ago / ....

I'm another happy Chrome XE user ... and still there. Based on the HP XW8600 machine works fine for me / about 25 projects finished without any problems /.

 

Luck and technology willing, I'm about to become an Xe user. I've had the software and board set sitting on a shelf for more than six months. After much indecision I decided to buy a motherboard, CPU, RAID array, video card, etc. and start building. We shall see..........

Good luck. 

Count me in ! Not that i am very advanced in the usage of Xe, but i'm trying :)

And for now i am still wondering if the problems i am dealing with are bugs in the software or or simple misknowlege of it !

As the Developers in Munich told me long ago:

"There are no bugs, only misunderstandings"   

> There are no bugs

 rofl. Really good joke. Not.

in profesional envirement no one has time or joy to come on forum and waste his or her time. i m working on tv station we have severla crome,several liq pro and even several liq6 for voice over only, and we have a department called IT section when sometimes we have problem they come and fix in several minut.

Be ounust sometime i say why this *** is not stoping to work. Crome is profesional envirment tool, that my be one reason few people are poping up.

By the way we have over 10 editors and no one is on this forum as member sighnt up becouse they are not speeking english. i m just curious, loking around as you see my english is not good as well.  that can be another reason :-)

OT but I originally mentioned my build on this thread. I've mostly finished a Chrome Xe system using an Evga nForce 790i Ultra SLI board, a Diamond 1650 card, a 9550 Core2 Quad processor and a HighPoint RocketRaid 2322 external raid. So far runs great and was suprisingly easy. I never started from scratch like this before. I have a feeling that Xe runs on most systems these days. I think an overabundence of paranoia led marketing to be way too conservative in thier build advice. Probably hurt the product something fierce.

Marketing has NOTHING to do with setting the Specs for what is approved, this is set my QAE (Quality Assurance Engineers) also Tech Support has a hand in this.

I had mentioned the "Bugs vs Miscommunication" thing, this is not a joke. I cannot count  how many times sitting in Munich, find a bug, test it, verify it and then only to go to Ali's system (Ali is the Godfather of the software) and the Bug 100% Could NOT be verified. wouldn't happen. didn't happen.

 
Why?

Every computer is different and to avoid problems, the Closer your system resembles the Head of Developments PC, the better off you are. Plus from a support view the fewer possibilities the more efficiently the product can be supported.

the problem with wide distribution is that the problems multiply dramatically. bottom line, there is no easy answer to the question of what PC hardware/software can be easily used with an other hardware/software. Compounding the issue further is that different regions/countries of the world have different suppliers so not all "recommended" components are always easy to get.

 

 

I'm probably benefiting from building a system where most of the supporting technology that was cutting edge and risky when Xe first came to market is now routine and pretty thoroughly thought through.

I get that it may be better to have fewer customers and have them satisfied versus more customers and have them angry. And I get that running down bugs on every permutation is impossible.

 

I have to reply to this because I fill that avid really let a lot of chrome 7.2 users down it was a great product. I had 3 but sold all except one which I rarely use. I made the switch to FCP dual quad core. Being with chrome since it was ( fast six O one) I knew it inside and out. I was very disappointed when avid dump it when I had 3 and a liquid pro.  I wanted to go with something that was being developed on a continual base and that 3 party soft ware was being written for. The number one was FCP. I love it, it will run circles around my chrome and there are more 3rd party software written for it that I can buy. Not trying to put xe down but FCP is very cutting edge. The biggest thing is you don’t find anyone wanting freelance editors for any liquid products.  I live in Dallas and the biggest demand for freelance editors is FCP so had to make the switch for my career if I was going to stay in this field.

 

I know I may sound like someone who is upset and I was at first like all the other chrome users. But since I made the switch and understand FCP I love it. We even have user group that meet the first Monday of the month and there are anywhere from 20 to 60 that will meet to help each other to share tips and tricks and problem solving. You can’t get that with liquid. This FCP is the new avid a lot of studio are here in Dallas are switching there avid for FCP if you are an old chrome user I would highly recommend when your chrome dies you might want to give FCP try.

I use my Liquid everyday and it does everything I need it to. And if you trust Steve Jobs to be committed to FCP and other Pro apple apps, IMO you are in for a rude awakening. The "rumors" are all over the industry that he is just itching to dump those products. That is why I believe that Avid is a stronger partner for the long run then apple. It never hurts to be as well versed in many apps as possible but for me there is no compelling reason to switch anything today. 

Those rumors are just that... rumors.

While I find them all interesting it does seem a little odd that Apple would get rid of the one major thing that really puts them on the map.  Most post production houses that use Apple computers do so because of FCP.  If there was no FCP and the choices were Avid and Adobe Premiere there would be little reason to buy an Apple computer.  Sure a Mac Pro is a nice computer but the point is that there are other nice computers out there.

If Apple does sell it off chances are it wouldn't chnage a whole lot anyway.  Just because another company pulls in the profits doesn't mean it would be a bad thing.  Perhaps a company who could dedicate more man power and resources to just FCP could make it even better then what Apple could ever do.

Considering that just about everybody and their brother uses FCP today I highly doubt in a million years that we would see it fade away.  Like the guy just said if you want to find a job in this biz then chances are you will be using FCP.  That isn't just a dumb statement either.  It is a fact of the job market right now.  I just checked a few job sites and every single job related to editing wants FCP.  I would love to see a posting for a Avid job but the reality is that they just are not there.  I would love for there to be more jobs for other nle's but sadly that is just the way it is now.  In a way it is kind of lame because so many small studios assume FCP is the only tool out there.  In a way it is kind of ironic since Apple and FCP are supposed to be the open minded tools in the world but yet the users are some of the most closed minded people I have ever met when it comes to other software or the fact that not everybody uses Apple.

Anyway love it or hate it but if you want a good job chances are FCP will be crossing your path.

I could not disagree more, go back 10years and you would have said the Exact Same Thing about Avid Media Composer. Every freelance job then was Avid MC based.

Go back 20 years when I graduated from College and nobody had heard of Avid, OK a very very small few, everyone then was a CMX Editor. 

Go back 40 years, nobody had head of CMX everyone was a Steinbeck or Moviola  editor.

 Nothing lasts forever. 

I don't and never have followed the logical trend, I forge my own path, I am not a freelance editor. Now I will agree that if someone is strictly a freelance editor then it helps to know as many editors as possible, Avid, Adobe, FCP, liquid, edius, M100, EditWare etc...........

I have two very close friends at Apple, one is the PM for DVDpro and the other a developer, both I worked with at FAST, they are both nervous and why not. Jobs has consistintly proven that he does what he wants and that he thinks grand. I truly believe he wants out of the "Desktop Computer" world and more and more into the "Appliance" world. Supporting FCP on a Professional 24/7 on site Broadcast world is not something Apple does well. there are many strong reasons to beleive that Apple is not in this for the long haul. Yes this is my opinon. that is all.

And again my origional post is simply stating what has been hashed over a ton, not using Liquid today and switching just to switch is, IMO, not a very good reason to switch. FCP can't do blu-Ray, so that's not an arguement... and that's a great point really, Jobs doesn't like blu-Ray, Jobs does what he wants.