Pinnacle Could Change The Game

New technology from Pinnacle Systems could well cause a paradigm shift in the way video-editing systems handle sophisticated special effects, according to a CRN Test Center review.

Pinnacle's innovative technology promises to reduce costs and increase performance of prosumer and professional editing systems, where there is a requirement for sophisticated video compositing,or the layering of audio and video special effects ranging from simple dissolves to 3-D animation.

The Pinnacle Systems Liquid Edition 5.5 video-processing software, which began shipping in September, uses a system's GPU and CPU to layer up to 10 special effects simultaneously. Previously, compositing/editing systems with that much power relied on expensive special-effects PCI cards to keep rendering time down.

On lower-cost video-editing systems without such a card, special effects had to be limited or rendering time increased as the system's CPU strained to perform the necessary calculations.

Pinnacle's solution to that problem is genius and obvious only in hindsight: It uses a high-end video card for compositing as well as viewing images.

That is possible because video cards today are designed to do realtime, special-effects compositing to support today's intricate games. They can support effects such as page curl, lens flare, water drop, water wave, magnify, spotlight, explosion, stained glass, reflection and 3-D object mapping.

Eliminating the need for a full-size and somewhat redundant special-effects card lowers the price of the solution and results in a smaller bill for materials and reduced stocking costs.

It may sound too good to be true, but there's no performance trade-off in this approach, the Test Center found. AGP bandwidth is 16 times that of PCI so data-transfer performance is increased by using an AGP video card. That makes it easier for the application to handle multiple data streams.

Also, an AGP video card has direct access to system memory, so processor-interrupt time is reduced to further enhance performance. The memory on a PCI graphics effects card is redundant in this respect as well. What's more, a PCI card requires assistance from the processor and direct-memory-access controller to use system memory.

The system processor is not left completely out of the mix, however. The software uses the CPU to generate realtime effects such as dissolves, wipes, color correction, blur and chroma/luma keys.

A Liquid Edition-based system can be scaled to increase performance when it's proven its return on investment, or to leverage advances in technology by upgrading the processor or video card. That sets the stage for upgrade sales and support.

Pinnacle began shipping Liquid Edition 5.5 in mid-September though distributors Ingram Micro, Broadfield and WYNIT. The base package of the software comes with a Firewire capture card and is priced at $699. A Pro edition includes an AGP video card with built-in Firewire support as a one-stop-shopping solution and carries a retail price of $999. Solution provider pricing offers a 10 percent margin, the company said.