Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5.5 Outshines Most PC Video-Editing Solutions

Liquid Edition is the only product in the video-editing market that harnesses the GPU of a graphics card directly for all of its rendering and special effects. CRN Test Center engineers found this to be the best video-editing solution for a PC.

Generally, no CPU could ever outperform a GPU when rendering a 3-D scene. That level of specialized processing power frees up more bandwidth for its realtime saving feature. Liquid Edition's benefit in this area is that it saves unobtrusively without any noticeable degradation of processing power.

For solution providers, Pinnacle's Liquid Edition may be the most professional way to develop presentations and training videos of any kind. In fact, CRN Test Center engineers believe that on price and feature set alone, this product outstrips most video-editing suites in the market.

Liquid Edition automatically detects scenes in a video using time codes. Engineers were also impressed with the software's ability to preserve scenes from a clip where the lighting remains even as the camera pans. In testing, the software was able to process through the scenes faster than realtime.

Perhaps the most impressive special-effects feature was the dynamic slow motion. Users can adjust the speed or acceleration of a video clip simultaneously. With two simple curves that represent speed and acceleration, users can vary one independent of the other and then see the effects in realtime.

The latest iteration of Liquid Edition has a realtime color correction editor that works on frames, scenes and complete videos. From the clip viewer, a user can select a shot from a daily or clip and adjust its hues with little effort. The color compensation will propagate to an entire video immediately.

The product now boasts enhanced color correction, including secondary colors in a video clip. What's more, the color correction editor analyzes colors of objects within a scene, isolates them and changes them without affecting the other colors in that scene. In addition, the brightness of images can be adjusted while maintaining color balance in the same clip, and this version can achieve a gray balance of one to three points.

With a 3-D Vectorscope, users can see which colors have been excluded, and the range of colors, contrasts, shadows and highlights can be adjusted separately, allowing users to control every detail of a scene. Once a clip is adjusted, it can be used as a reference to pass its tones to other clips.

Liquid Edition now offers a histogram view of all RGB values contained in an image and has a HistoMatch button that propagates changes to multiple clips based on histograms. Color ranges also can be controlled to maintain a secure color space for broadcasting. A legalizer will keep color fields within the broadcast standard and cut off any ranges outside of it.

Test Center engineers tried out the standard version of the software and found that it produced professional results quicker than they anticipated.

Liquid Edition also supports projects and video rendering over a network. Users can save project files to a network drive and share them simultaneously. Pinnacle, however, recommends a high-bandwidth connection for multiple users that are sharing projects on a network and want to get video streaming at full resolution.

Test Center engineers tested Liquid Edition using two PCs connected via VPN through broadband cable over the Internet. Streaming files at full resolution requires fast throughput, and engineers had difficulty achieving video continuity when editing with the VPN lab setting. Engineers recommend that small shops keep shared files and client PCs on a single network.

Pinnacle designed more than 40 DVD templates specifically for Liquid Edition. Some of the templates are typically used in weddings, businesses and movies. Pinnacle templates are also compatible with other graphics authoring tools and with file formats such as Photoshop's PSD.

Liquid Edition's user interface now works with resolutions of up to 1,600 x 1,200, at which users can see the full digital video screen and therefore don't have to depend on interpolating from a preview screen.

Liquid Edition Pro, which costs $300 more than the standard version, comes with a graphics card that has an analog In port, a realtime analog Out port, an integrated graphics port and digital video In/Out ports. The price difference between the two versions makes it worth going for the Pro Edition since it comes with a powerful graphics processor.

CHANNEL PROGRAM SNAPSHOTS
>PINNACLE SYSTEMS LIQUID EDITION 5.5
PRICE: $$699, $999 for Pro version
MARGIN: 10 percent
WARRANTY: 1 year
DISTRIBUTORS: Broadfield, Ingram Micro, WYNIT
TECH RATING:

CHANNEL RATING:

CHANNEL OVERVIEW: Pinnacle Systems, Mountain View, Calif., is expanding its Signature Lead Partner program to include Standard and Platinum tiers. The vendor provides extensive marketing support, including demo artists who are available for sales events and training. Pinnacle's Backstage partner site includes technical and sales resources.

Note: Vendors can earn up to five stars for technical merit and five for their channel program. If the average of these two scores is four stars or greater, the product earns CRN Test Center Recommended status.