Final Cut Studio and Adobe Production Premium consist of a suite of applications – Premiere handling video editing, After Effects taking care of the effects, and so forth. Instead of a suite, Avid Liquid 7 is one all-encompassing mega application. Video and audio editing, effects, authoring, etc., are all handled in the same application.

New features available in version 7 include SmartSound, DIVX Capture and Editing, Windows Media 9 Editing, Real-time Time Warp, Image Stabilization, HDV Preview, and more than 50 new effects.

This product retails for around $499, which is significantly less expensive than the competition. You can also upgrade from any previous version of Liquid for only $199.99.

The Avid Liquid Pro version also includes a breakout box that adds analog and digital video and audio I/O, including 5.1 surround sound monitoring abilities.

Features

The features and tools offered in Avid Liquid 7 make it more suitable for event videographers rather than post production film editing. The program is capable of handling complex edits and you may manage to cut a feature film, but why waste the time when you could accomplish much greater results by using Avid Media Composer or Final Cut Studio?

There are two modes for using the application; classic or regular. We recommend using regular mode because it allows quick and easy access to a bunch of new features.

Liquid 7 offers a good deal of customization including keyboard shortcuts, several preset workspace layouts (but you can’t customize them), and even customizable toolbars.

You can also create individual user profiles. This is very useful if you have more than one editor in your office. Create your profile, configure the application as you wish, and save your settings. Next time you log in everything will be as you left it.

Liquid 7 claims to have an open timeline, but you can’t drag and drop clips into it. If by “open,” they mean you can bring in clips of various formats in the same timeline, they are accurate, but this is not what we consider a truly open timeline. Liquid also lets you mix SD and HD footage in the same timeline.

Basic color correction is available in Liquid 7 and if you can get it to work it does a good job. This feature is not very user friendly, however, and will take a while to really figure out.

Audio Editing

Audio editing is also integrated into the timeline, as is everything else it seems. SmartSound is now part of the application (it was previously a plug-in) and offers the option of creating custom audio tracks at any length you need. These tracks can be based on a variety of factors including tempo, genre, and music styles. You can get pretty specific too; if you want a clip that is 1:45 it will create one, complete with punch in and punch out.

In order to use scrubbing in an audio clip you actually have to enable the feature, and then turn it on by pressing the Scroll Lock key. This was a little strange. It may be better if the audio scrubbing feature worked like video scrubbing, which was pretty self explanatory.

Support for 5.1 surround sound is also available in Liquid 7 which is pretty impressive considering the low price tag.

Version 7 has native Windows Media 9, DivX and MPEG-4 editing. It also offers HDV editing support but there are some minor configurations that must be made before importing HD files.

Support

We really love online chat support so naturally we were excited to see that Liquid 7 advertises this as an option on the “Avid Liquid 7 Support” site; that is until we actually tested it. The support technician told us they don’t support Liquid 7 via live chat. We found that the best place to find support for this product is the user forum where an actual Avid Liquid 7 user can help you find a solution.

If you are considering purchasing a professional video editor you should take a look at our top three. Sony Vegas Pro is not much more expensive and offers much more. Also take a look at our top three contenders for video production software.