The Truth About Chrome

Pinnacle Systems recently invited DV411 up to their corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California to take a look at the long and very eagerly awaited, Liquid Chrome.  As many of you may know, I have been a Targa 3000 freakazoid since it's premature release back in 2000 (remember the 840 and 440 chipsets).  Regardless, I saw it's potential.  It was and is (there have been just s few board revisions) an extremely well designed board, it keeps cool and does a lot--maybe even to0 much.

Targa 3K was released before the technology to effectively run the board existed; u160 SCSI and 64 bit PCI had just been introduced and were not completely tested at that point.  Integrators all over found ourselves looking for ways to slow the damn thing down to the point where it wouldn't crash every five minutes.  Our choices of software didn't help either, with the exception of edit, from Discreet Logic, (which forced the Targa down to 2 streams of realtime).   For the most part there was nothing that allowed for a professional level of stability.  Needless to say sales were tough, one needed a client almost as geeky as me in order to stay off the phone doing tech support.  Still....every time a new bit of tech came out, a chipset here, faster ram there, I was ready to put a Targa on it.

So now three years, three operating systems, six chipsets, three CPU cores, two SCSI doublings, three PCI bridges, five ram styles and three editing software packages later, Pinnacle gives us Liquid Chrome.  So step right up and read all about it.

So Cutter what do you think about Chrome?  Is it everything you look for in an editing system?

Why yes it is, thanks for asking!  I was thoroughly impressed with the chrome package when I saw it in Mountain View, and I'm not easily impressed.  Sure I could nit pick all day about the minor irritations, but truth be told, I was on the thing for twelve hours and I couldn't crash it...and I can crash anything.

What did you find most impressive?

• Well first off, I can't stress the stability enough. My biggest problem with the T3K in the past has been stability.  There have been many many factors in it's past that have lead to it's reputation as the "Fix It Again Tony" of realtime boards.  Of course the fact that Pinnacle advertised it's actual limits didn't help.  Every Targa client I've had has tried to punch the thing to eleven and of course its failed.  Add multiple codec support and you're in integrator hell.
  
• I can say this about Chrome.  Although I did not get a chance to capture any of my own footage, I, personally was working on a timeline that contained uncompressed YUV, DV25 and Mpeg2 I-frame footage, RGBA composite tracks, Deko Pro titles on both the chroma and luma channels while doing slo mo's (rendered) and heavy color correction.  AND IT DID NOT CRASH!!  For two days!!!, I personally was doing this. I was scrubbing hard over fifteen minutes of timeline, repeating footage, peaking audio, keying RGBA over DV, transcoding, force rendering and calling it names, every trick in the book, but no crashing.  It was almost as impressive as the guy who did all the cabling at the last NAB.

Ok...we got stability, what about the software?

• Liquid / Edition is really kind of nice.  Sure the GUI is a little bland and I will nit pick a little later, but all in all very professional.  There is a lot of good here.  Pinnacle has made some very good strides in data management and storage support.  Since of the fall of Discreet Edit, there has been a huge lull in affordable long form editing software.  Liquid is proving to be a worthy successor.  It's customizable timeline and effective bin structure as well as Picon storyboarding is very helpful.  As a documentary editor myself, these features are enough to raise Liquid high over the heads of Premiere and Speed Razor.  Add that to the new low price of Liquid Purple, and  we now have a financially viable offline package.   Well then, long form on the T3K here I come, again.
  
• The second thing is the secondary Color Correction, or as James puts it CX.  I've worked on DaVinci's, Flames, and even an Inferno once or twice and I can say without a doubt the the CX function is not as good. But it is the best thing I have seen in a hardware or software package for under $100,000. and it comes for free with chrome (it used to be a $2000 option with silver and Purple). Of course there are limits to how bad your footage can be, but it can be pretty bad. I was doing white balance fixes on really bad DV footage that were as painless as can be. I was changing fingernail colors with barely a sweat. NTSC/ PAL correction, it was all very easy.
  
• I guess a third thing, which doesn't matter to me but does to many others, is the "Avidness" of everything.  A lot of you Avid lovers are going to flip when you see Chrome.  All those things you whine about Avid not having, Liquid has; nesting, ripple, overwrite and film style, programmable keyboards, slip and slide, etc.  It's even gray!
  
• You compositors are going to have a good time as well, unlimited video and audio tracks. Simple track stacking ala SR, integrated GUI effects editors. RGBA support, easy realtime keying when used in conjunction with the CX function. Also very painless.
  

• One thing I will single out effects wise is the Time Warp. Yes it's rendered, but it's really fast.  And you can do really high quality spline based Slow Motion, acceleration/deceleration, dynamic key framing, or screw it, flat key it if you want too.  It's really flexible and very high quality when used with YUV codec.

So let me get this straight, you're saying everything is hunky dory good and perfect, YOU, CUTTER, ARE SAYING THIS???!!

Ok, you're right there were a few things that bothered me, but I swear they're really minor bugs. Dana will solve everything in the morning ( 8) come on guys, laugh with me).  Seriously, though everything pretty much was hunky dory, but since you asked...

• The biggest irritation was found in the logger.  When the auto-naming function is enabled it only uses a single digit e.g.. "demo footage_1 then 2,3 NOT I repeat NOT "demo footage_001, 002, 003"  This could conceivably be a giant hassle later on in the EDL process, probably involving lots of notepad typing, ICK. Anyway, Pinnacle's tech gurus, Patrick and James assured me they were going to look into it.  As well, I fully admit to perhaps doing it wrong, but I doubt it.
  

• Since we are now able to edit in different codecs, it would be nice if there was an easy way to tell the difference on the timeline. For instance a little "DV or MPEG2" on the clip or perhaps color code them e.g.. Purple for dv25, Silver for Mpeg2, Blue for uncompressed (get it, HAH! knee slapper there :)
  

• I would like to see the dropped frame counter include audio as well. Maybe it's never happened to you, but when dealing with long form, it happens to me.
  

• I guess the last thing would be a clip mute button.  As it stands right now, you only have the ability to mute entire tracks.

See I told you, just nit picking, most of the stuff save for the "Logging Issue" has very easy fixes that we may see shortly in the second build. Otherwise everything was great.

Right...soooo...anything else??

Why yes, now that you mention it, this would be a good time to tell you about price and availability.  Right now the pricing is as follows:

• For current T3k owners your looking at $4995 until the end of September then Bam!  The price doubles.

Or

• If you'd like DV411 to build it, the boards and software costs $14,995.00 which comes with your choice of digital or analog bob.  One of our machines will cost between $4K and $7K depending on storage.  OR you can buy Pinnacle's complete Liquid Chrome XW8000 Turnkey System for $19,995.  (Pro not included).

For more information about pricing go to Liquid Chrome