EDIUS 4.5 Video Editing Software, by Michael Hanish

The winners in the toughest ratings fight have one thing in common: Thomson Grass Valley™ multiformat and HD digital news production systems.

They're installed at leading station groups in the top five U.S. markets -- and at leading news outlets worldwide. With a complete workflow that spans acquisition, production and playout, it's clear that when you're watching the news, you're watching Grass Valley technology at work.

For more information about Thomson Grass Valley products, please visit thomsongrassvalley.com.

From the Editors

EDIUS 4.5 Video Editing Software

by Michael Hanish, December 17, 2007

Freelance producer, designer and technical and strategic consultant.

Michael Hanish operates Free Lunch, a video/audio/multimedia production house, and occasionally writes product reviews for TV Technology. The following is his review of Thomson Grass Valley’s Edius 4.5 video editing software.

Edius 4.5 is a Window based non-linear video editing application from Thomson Grass Valley. It comes in two feature-defined versions: Pro and Broadcast, with a variety of upgrade options available. System requirements are fairly modest by modern standards: Windows XP (Home or Professional, SP 2 or later), Intel or AMD 3 GHz or faster CPU (Hyper Threading supported), 512 MB RAM (1 GB suggested for HD or HDV editing) and a free USB port for the copy protection dongle. Obviously, a sound card, a suitable display and appropriate storage are also necessary. The Edius software, engineered by Canopus (noted software and hardware developers), can work with or without additional I/O hardware.

FEATURES

(click thumbnail)

In its software-only version, the Edius software boasts such feature highlights as real-time performance and playback (minimal, if any, rendering for titles, composites and output), mixed format editing, multiple format export and the Canopus HQ CODEC, a high quality HD CODEC with an adjustable bit rate and 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, recently updated to add alpha channel support.

As you can see from the illustration, Edius is set up in the (now) standard interface format of source and record windows and linear timeline, all of which is customizable. Icon buttons control most capture and editing actions, which means less burrowing down into menus. Keyboard shortcuts are extensive and fully customizable; you can even import and export sets of keyboard shortcuts.

Edius has a huge list of supported codecs, any and all of which can be mixed in a timeline. The Pro version includes support for standard definition DV (multiple flavors: Microsoft, Canopus, lossless), Quick Time, Windows Media, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Flash, AVI and high definition HDV, AVCHD and MPEG HDD. Edius Broadcast adds support for DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, Infionity JPEG 2000, Panasonic P2, VariCam and Sony XDCAM and XDCAM HD file-based codecs. Edius supports pretty much any frame size and frame rate you can throw at it, from 720x480 interlaced or progressive, 4:3 or 16:9, to 1920x1080 interlaced or progressive, 24 or 30 fps. It is also equally at home with NTSC or PAL.

New in these versions of Edius (Pro and Broadcast), in addition to the newly added alpha channel support in the HQ codec, are multicam editing and nested sequences. Multi-camera editing allows you to edit up to eight sources, all of which are viewable simultaneously in the Master Output window. Switching between sources is as simple as pressing a key on the numeric keypad. When the edit is finished, you can choose to either keep all the footage, used and unused, in the timeline, or to compress the edited tracks into a single track to save space, keeping only the footage used. Nested sequences, something many of us first became familiar with in After Effects, are sequences (complete with transitions, filters, titles, effects) imported back into a master sequence and treated as a standard clip while maintaining full editability of its parameters.

Both the Pro and Broadcast versions of Edius are shipped with some additional software that is quite useful, and round out the feature set. The first is TitleMotion Pro (provided by Inscriber). This is a full featured titling program, capable of producing smooth rolls and crawls, and installed with more than 200 templates to make style creation even easier. Also included is Bias’ SoundSoap plug-in, a simplified but highly capable version of their broadband SundSoap Pro noise reduction software.

IN USE

Product Capsule

Applications
Video editing

Key Features
Real-time performance, built-in HD CODEC

Prices
Pro edition, $699; Broadcast edition, $999

Contact
Thomson Grass Valley | 800-547-8949 | www.professional.thomsongrassvalley.com

Installation of the Edius package was smooth and eventless, and the application ran without any problems. Using the Edius package, even at first sight and without delving into the manual, was intuitive and pretty much without surprises. All the operating conventions we’ve come to expect in an editing interface apply with Edius—cut, copy, paste, and drag. Each feature is a click or keystroke away, and I have yet to crash the application or be surprised by its behavior.

I tested Edius on a small documentary project on the poet Grace Paley. The footage was a fairly wide variety of standard definition sources, including old and rather nasty looking 4:3 VHS, along with fairly recent 16:9 DV-originated shots, as well as After Effects pan and scan images. Clips are captured to a bin, or directly to the timeline. Waveform monitor and vectorscope features are built in and are fairly useful for clip matching and color correction.

Applying effects (including clip-based color correction) is as simple as making a choice from the Effects Palette and dragging it onto the target clip. Effects controls are available by clicking on the effect in the clip’s information palette. Effects, as everything else in Edius, operate in real time.

At the completion of the project, I needed to output to tape as well as to DVD. For most projects, you can play out the Edius timeline to FireWire and tape, or you can export the timeline to virtually any format as a file and print it to tape. Rendering is very speedy, even in the case of conforming an HDV project.

Exporting to a DVD can be done directly from the Edius timeline, or even multiple timelines within a single project. Choosing Print to DVD from the Export menu brings up the DVD Creator utility. This allows you to add menu titles for each sequence, as well as chapter titles based on In and Out points set within each sequence. A style screen allows you to choose and customize a layout template for the DVD menu or menus and buttons. The completed DVD disk image can be burned directly from the Creator Utility, or it can be used to write a disk image to the hard drive for later testing and burning. MPEG-2 streams are encoded behind the scenes at a rate determined by the speed of the system and size and complexity of the sequences. Needless to say, this is not the method for authoring complex behaviors in a DVD, but for quick output and one offs, it is speedy and brilliant.

SUMMARY

Edius Pro and Broadcast are fine pieces of work, clear and easy to use applications, easily capable of real-time editing, effects, compositing and output, all at a very reasonable price point. The software manages to be quite feature-rich without being dense and hard to navigate. The addition of the Canopus HQ codec for HD work is a real bonus—it’s efficient, color accurate, and provides variable bit-rate support. Edius can also be combined with the Thomson Grass Valley/Canopus I/O board for an expanded, hardware-based system. All in all, Edius 4.5 has a worthy place in the list of NLE software.