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Pinnacle announced version 6 of its Windows-based Liquid Edition software at the IBC exhibition in Amsterdam. Company experts visited our Midwest Test Facility for an extensive demo of the new software, which adds some important new features. Top of the list of improvements is an enhanced user interface, making the user experience easier and more familiar to Windows users. There's also heavy attention paid to the new HDV format, bringing Edition's real time preview capabilities to even higher resolutions than ever. Here's a First Look at this new release, set to ship in October (2004).

Not only is this version 6.0 an update to the application itself, with just a couple of exceptions it brings feature parity to all aspects of the Liquid line. Pinnacle is also introducing new hardware with this release, including the prettiest breakout box (BOB) we've seen here (see graphic below). Created by Porsche Design, this BOB is attractive and respectable enough to be called a Robert, and should certainly find itself elevated from behind-the-desk status up to an honored and more visible position atop any editor's desk.

Breakout box by Porsche Design -- Wow!

Of course, with all the buzz surrounding the HDV standard and its ability to incorporate DV-style workflow and bitrate into high definition picture quality, Pinnacle aggressively upgraded its software to handle the new format. With Liquid Edition having already proven itself able to play back three layers of HDV in its 720p/30 iteration, Pinnacle says this new version is ready for the other shoe to drop, that being the 1080i/60 version of the HDV spec that we've all been waiting for, along with the 3-CCD camcorders that are on deck for release from Sony and others.  

With 1080i/60 HDV footage, although the data rate is similar to that of 720p/30, the frame size is bigger, with the number of pixels generated from the same data source being greater. Even so, Pinnacle tells us Liquid Edition may be able to edit dual streams of 1080i HD using the fastest PCs on the market, and by next year, the company predicted the ability to do three streams of 1080i HDV. Leveraging SmartRT, Pinnacle's well-established technique of using both the graphics processor and the CPU to crunch the numbers for lots of real-time editing, the company will attempt to prove the scalability of its software as larger frames are thrown at it. With our demo, Pinnacle wasn't showing us version 6's 1080i HDV capabilities just yet, but promised to let us sneak a peek as the release approaches. Another question we (and many other content creators) had was, what about 24p? Can Liquid Edition 6 edit 24p footage? Pinnacle's Liquid Edition Product Manager Patrick McLean answered our question with a "yes and no" response: "The answer is yes, we edit 24p," McLean told Digital Media Net. "However, this is misleading. [Liquid Edition can] edit 24p, just like it can edit 1080p60. However, capturing it is unfortunately a little more complicated. There are a number of tricks you need to employ to capture 24p from, for instance, the Panasonic camera, which involve knowing which are the real frames and which are not, and we have not implemented this yet. So no, we do not have a 24p end-to-end workflow yet," McLean said.

Even though the software does have its limits, it becomes immediately apparent when you use Liquid Edition that you have your hands on some high-performance software. Pinnacle claims to be the only editing software developer whose product edits in the native format of the HDV camera, a compression technique called MPEG-2 Long GOP. Other software and hardware packages have trouble editing this kind of compressed footage, because each frame depends on those before and after it for its highly efficient compression. In order to deal with this, other software must first convert the clips to another format, called i-Frame. Pinnacle's Liquid Edition doesn't have to do that because of its speed and its look-ahead (and behind) capability, among other technical tricks. With this efficiency, Liquid Edition along with industrial-strength hardware is able to fulfill the promise of the HDV format, and that allows users to enjoy that same no muss, no fuss DV workflow they've been using for the better part of a decade.  

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