Hello Gus,

Nice to hear from you. Here are some answers to your questions:

Q:  What exactly is Chrome HD?

A:  Liquid ChromeHD is a full-featured realtime non-linear SD/HD editor based on a the Avid Liquid software and the Cinewave hardware. It offers a number of I/O options in both SD and HD via multiple break out box options. All of this is complimented by Firewire support and includes native HDV editing on the timeline.

Q:  Who/what is the market for Chrome?

A:  This product is targeted towards the professional and broadcast industry

Q:  Does it do full bandwidth, uncompressed 10bit HD?

A:  Yes, it does uncompressed however, the current version of Avid Liquid ChromeHD is 8-bit. It’s on the wish list of all Liquid ChromeHD users that Avid should  address this by offering 10-bit support in a future release.

Q:  What is the difference between Chrome and Symphony HD, DS|HD and Adrenaline HD?  Would I use it with these products or instead of them?

A:   I’m not familiar enough with these Avid products at this point to fully answer your question.  However, I  recognise that all of these Avid products(including: Symphony HD, DS|HD and Adrenaline HD) are well respected by the editing community as being leaders. Likewise with Liquid you will find that it’s oh so good to edit on. It’s really a class act with exceptional editing capabilities with German engineering running the software engine.
 
Q:  Is there anything else that is key that we should know about it?

A:   Please ask away and I’ll do my best if you have any further questions. But here are some of ChromeHD’s technical specifications:

Liquid chrome HD Technical Specifications:

Product HighLights
Software
o Liquid v6.1 (RT FX, HD, IBP, Audio, FX, GUI, etc..)
o HD Uncompressed realtime effects
SD and HD (HD SDI) breakout box support
RT up/downscaling at output for SD and HD

System Requirements:
Turnkey:
HP XW8200
Boardsets:
For upgrades from chrome using an HP XW8000, ChromeHD functionality will only
support SD resolution.
o Requires removal of TARGA3000 with 3D-DVE module and replacement with
TARGA Ciné board.
o VGA adapter may need to be upgraded to RTFX supported adapter (see chart on next
page).
XW8200 in the same configuration as the turnkey.

Supported Breakoutboxes
Pro Analog (legacy only)
Pro Digital Plus (legacy only)
Pro D&A
Pro HD
ChromeHD Breakout Box (identical to Pro HD and Pro D&A together)
The chrome HD card has 2 digital tether ports. The SD BoB is attached to one, the HD to the other. An SD BoB is required, the HD BoB is optional.

Output Formats:
SD:
- NTSC, PAL
HD

Upscale/Downscale Combinations
SD NTSC timeline to HD output:
- 1080/59,94i, 24psf, 23.976psf
- 720/59.94psf
SD PAL timeline to HD output:
- 1080/50i
HD timeline to NTSC output:
- 1080/59,94i, 24psf, 23.976psf
- 720/59.94psf
HD timeline to PAL output:
- 1080/50i

Liquid chrome HD Specific Features
RT up/downscaling at output for SD and HD
SD and HD (HD SDI) breakout box support incl. RTFX output support
Genlock input (no TLS)
Dualstream 1080i 30 playback with HD SDI output on XW8200 turnkey
6 channel audio out

Liquid Main version 6 Features:
Full screen viewer (full monitor display for SD or HD)
Native P2 MXF support (playback/edit on P2 cartridge)
MPEG2 I-50 and DV MXF support
IBP rendering (mp@ml)
XSend P2
XSend XDCAM
XDCAM FAM mode support
XReceive/XSend eVTR

Liquid HD version 6 Features
HDV real-time effects
HDV MPEG IPB editing
HD real-time effects
capture and playout HDV via 1394 (generic OHCI IEEE)
Audio
New audio track mode (mono/stereo)
New audio mixer
Audio track effects
Send buses
Advanced audio routing
VST Plug In support
Audio timewarp (incl. in video timewarp)
AC3 encoding including virtual surround and Dolby Digital 5.1
Surround mixer and output
ASIO host, support of all ASIO compatible soundcards
FX Features
Matte-tracks on timeline
Enhanced quality in 3D FX
Classic FX included in CPU RTFX: 2D, 3D
Parameter curve keyframe editing
Channel processing (blur, Gaussian blur, 2d/3d (clip/trans.), invert, position, posterize)
Individual FX quality control in RT FX editors
New advanced FX controls
Privacy FX: Blur and Mosaic RTFX with cropping

Editing
New advanced sequence dialog settings
Multicam editing
Input wizard (incl. scan for all media types)
Output wizard
4 point editing (auto-apply timewarp)
Presets for Studio and Premiere (keyboard, toolbar)
Backup/restore projects and media
Modify clip properties on multiple selected clips
Unlimited subtracks in timeline
UI
New interface design
Inlay selection for 1st, 2nd or both fields
Networking
Intercom function (chat with other Liquid editors in network)
Basic Functions
Multiple resolutions, formats and framerates can be mixed in project
Sequences based defineable frame rate and resolution
MXF support
Timeline timecode embedded into dif (title tc datafield acc. SMPTE) and MPEG at fuse
DVD
DVD Export -> [DVD]
- AC-3 support (incl. surround downmix) via Splicer
- Dual layer DVD burning (all CD/DVD media capacities, incl. 8.5 GB)
- MiniDVD burning
- Path (VIDEO_TS) to CD/DVD {integration into Backup modul (path can be any data)}
- (S)VCD image (.psd)
- Set disc volume name for DVD, SVCD, VCD
- No menu for single stream export with timeout=0 (auto-play): video starts immediately
- Advanced audio bitrate setting (64-448)
- Handling of more than 99 titles per disc / handling of more than 99 chapters per title
- DVD image is now .iso image
- Native IBP files do not need to be re-encoded at export (splicer) [DVD; ESA]
Export Sequence As…MPEG Elementary Stream -> [ESA]; Capture -> [CAP]:
- HD support: advanced profile/level/bitrate setting for custom video sizes; support of 422P@HL,
MP@HL, 422P@ML, MP@ML [ESA; CAP] (422 support optional)

Misc. Feature
subtitling/CG interface API
WM 9 support: load and use a custom profile created with the WM9 Profile Editor for
WMV export
Media management: different path for import and capture

Supported Formats, Resolutions and Framerates
RT playback: DV/DVCPRO 25, IMX, MPEG I/IBP 422p/ml@ml/hl, DVCPRO 50, SD/HD
Uncompressed.
Native capture (IEEE): DV/DVCPRO 25, MPEG-2 IBP (mp@ml/hl)
Encode capture: DV/DVCPRO 25, MPEG-2 I (422p@ml), IMX, MPEG-2 IBP (mp@ml), SD
Uncompressed, HD Uncompressed
Render: DV/DVCPRO 25, MPEG-2 I/IBP 422p/mp@ml/hl, IMX, DVCPRO 50, SD/HD
Uncompressed
Fuse: DV/DVCPRO 25 (MXF, DIF, AVI), IMX (m2v, mxf), MPEG I/IBP 422p/ml@ml/hl
(M2V, MXF, partially AVI), DVCPRO 50 (MXF, DIF), SD/HD Uncompressed

Thank you again for your questions; since I'm sure this will benefit others as well.

Best Regards,

Q:  What is the difference between Chrome and Symphony HD, DS|HD and Adrenaline HD?  Would I use it with these products or instead of them?

Hope you dont mind me joining the fray here. To properly answer that question woudl require one to do a "feature by feature" run down. And if we did that, it would be a back forth issue, similar to.. "Liquid has scroll wheel support, Avid doesn't" ;)

The reality is, Chrome HD is an editor which addresses a professional need, but without the advanced capabilites of Media Composer or Symphony, like 24P end to end, Film and a variety of others.

Media Composer, Nitirs, Symphony, can all be ran into Unity. Chrome cannot. Chrome however does have the ability to be networked in a similar environment, but it may nor be a solution that survived the Avid merger.

Since the Liquid software is the same on either system, the only difference becomes the hardware used for I/O. Chrome has genlock, Liquid does not.

In a standard SD environment, this editor can go head to head with any other editor over standard features. It was when we begin the journey outside of that area, that we begin to see the differences that make Symphony a Symphony and Chrome a Chrome.

Many of us are hoping and praying that in the future we will get the option to use third party boards such as Aja or Decklink. The holdback into 10bit HD is not the software, it's the hardware.

--Joe

Dean, I can help but notice all of a sudden everyone is talking about Chrome HDV.  Where did the "V" come from?  Is this because it is only an 8bit system?  Why is it HDV and not HD?

Chrome handles the new HDV compressed long gop format as well as uncompressed HD over the HD-SDI break out box.  See the complete list of specs above.  When the HDV codec was introduced it was impossible to edit because of the reference frames.  If you cut between reference frames then you lost your compression.  The only way to edit this was to capture the entire footage and re-encode into a format that could be edited.  There were third party programs that did this.  Pinnacle was the first company to offer native Long GOP editing and their codec is one of the main reasons that AVID purchased Pinnacle in the first place.  That codec now appears to reside in the latest version of Xpress.  We who own Chrome and Liquid edition would like to see a fair trade for the DVCproHD that Xpress had for the HDV codec that Pinnacle owned.  I guess we will have to wait to see if that happens.  Now that said you can capture DVCproHD over the HD-SDI input but then it comes in at a higher data rate and eats up drive space.  With the introduction of the Panasonic P2 HD camcorder, it would be nice to see native injest of that codec into Chrome.

Robert

Robert,

Thanks you are 100% correct with your explanation.

Gus,

In my Liquid ChromeHD specification above I forgot to mention two very basic but important features of Liquid which should have got a proper mention.

Firstly, Avid's Liquid system is capable of background rendering thus allowing you to continue to edit complex timelines while the system is background rendering. This is a big advanatge because by the time you finish editing a project there will be no need to wait for the system to start rendering thus wasting further time in the edit suite.

Secondly, most editing software does a backup save of  the project file every so often (as dictated by the user) to allow one to recover from a disaster crash.  Avid's Liquid has a unique instant save feature which allows it to save every keystroke as you edit so if an unfortunate system crash occurs you have a guarantee that absolutely nothing is lost (and this feature does work very well!)

Jfigura wrote:

Many of us are hoping and praying that in the future we will get the option to use third party boards such as Aja or Decklink. The holdback into 10bit HD is not the software, it's the hardware.

Jfigura wrote:

"Liquid has scroll wheel support, Avid doesn't" ;)

Actually, we finally got scroll-wheel support in XPro 5.1.5, which has spread to Adrenaline and (I'm assuming) Symphony Nitris when it's released.  It's amazing how important/well-received such a minor improvement was!

Seriously though, thanks for the enlightenment.  As an Avid editor who pretty much knows nothing about Liquid, it's nice to hear factual information coming from the folks who use Liquid every day...regardless of its hardware configuration.