And Once Again Vegas Comes Out On Top

Cliff Etzel wrote on 9/26/2003, 3:41 PM
I just received Adobe's Video Collection Professional Edition for a review I am writing for a site I publish called Underwater Digital Video.

I was wondering what all the hoopla was about with this latest incarnation from Adobe and was surprised to have this suite sent to me at no charge. Everything I had read about it seemed to make it out to be the PC version of FCP and was to be the cat's meow for NLE editing on the Windows Platform.

I have used VV3 for a several months and found it to be the easiest NLE to use and decided that I would use it as the benchmark for usability and speed of production of the sample video clips that came with the Adobe Collection.

My Benchmark: I took the same clips and brought them into both applications and was going to assemble them into a 60 sec commercial spot. Since I was was more familiar with VV3 - I started there.

I reviewed the original video clip, seen here, that Adobe had made and didn't particularly care for it so I decided to try and improve on it. I had recently finished creating an original music piece in Acid Pro and thought that it was catchy enough to take a 60 second snippet from it and use it in the test video.

In VV3, I was able to assemble the clips, lay down the music track and render out in only a couple of hours.

Now it was Premiere Pro's turn.

Not being familiar with the program was a disadvantage since this was going to slow my speed in duplicating the 60 second spot as quickly as I did in VV3. I pretty much decided that I would do the best I could and just assemble the spot to resemble as closely as possible the piece I did in VV3.

Once I began to understand the workflow pattern of Premiere Pro, I began to assemble the clips, add transitions and finally the audio.

I was out of my element here with Premiere Pro.

Not only did it take longer to assemble the video spot, taking into account for the learning curve, but audio was more difficult to manage and synch correctly within the Adobe Application.

I finally rendered out in each application to a final file - deciding on Real Media 9 as my choice for showing the final results via the net since format is cross platform. The final piece I took creative license with can be seen here

I have discovered that the latest and greatest from Adobe isn't necessarily the best.

Sonic Foundry's (now SONY's) products continue to amaze me at their quality, ease of use, stability, and productivity workflow.

If I hadn't actually experienced it first hand, I wouldn't have believed it.

I think that Adobe has made a big leap forward with their NLE offering, but when it comes down to being productive and efficient, Vegas Video still comes out on top.

Cliff Etzel
Blue Digital Media [ http://www.bluedigitalmedia.com ]
Internet Publishing :: Digital Imaging :: Digital Video
.: a cool visual antidote for a digital age :.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/26/2003, 3:47 PM
Hey, write a comparison for DV magazine. They seem to not have anyone who wants to write a VV4 review (but someone wrote a VV3 one and said VV3 was replacing Premiere for them!)

Also, can i borrow your copy? I wantd to download the demo so i could compate it to VV4, but the ony demo is of Premiere 6! That's OLD! Way old!

Cliff Etzel wrote on 9/26/2003, 3:57 PM
LOL - once I get done with my review as compensation to Adobe for sending the software, I will not be needing it any longer - If I could get the same kind of deal from SONY with VV4, I would do a full review as well.

Personally my VV3 that I paid for surpasses PPro that was given to me in many areas.

I do miss little things like being able to put the preview window at the top, which I prefer and the timeline at the bottom as well as having an easier method of scrubbing the timeline. I don't do enough work yet to miss using bins, but I hope to be doing more work and may need that functionality in the future.

I'm by no means a pro (yet). My background is as a documentary photojournalist (stills) and have moved to doing video - so I'm not sure at just how "Professional" my review might be considered. It was more a real world new user or someone who has a little experience trying to do the same thing in two different applications.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of VV3 ;-)

Cliff Etzel
Blue Digital Media [ http://www.bluedigitalmedia.com ]
Internet Publishing :: Digital Imaging :: Digital Video
.: a cool visual antidote for a digital age :.
filmy wrote on 9/26/2003, 5:00 PM
LOL! That is too funny freediver.

>>>I was out of my element here with Premiere Pro.<<<

I use both VV and Premiere so feel free to send me off your comp copy for a real comparison.

wobblyboy wrote on 9/26/2003, 10:55 PM
Sounds like you campaired VV3 to Primere Pro and VV3 came out on top. Imagine what the compairson would be if you used VV4.
filmy wrote on 9/26/2003, 11:08 PM
>>>Imagine what the compairson would be if you used VV4.<<<

And if he actual knew how to use Premiere as well imagine. Like Billy Boy likes to say - "apples and oranges"

Hey to be fair - lets give both VV 4 and Premiere 6.5 and/or Premiere Pro 1.0 to someone who has never edited anything before. someone who has never used another NLE. that would be fair because there would be no bias and no real comparison to other NLE's. Well, ok maybe that would not be fair - these aren't aimed at newbies or the casual user. Maybe give them Screenblast Movie Studio 3 and something like Win Producer.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/26/2003, 11:16 PM
I'd compare VV4 and Premiere Pro. I use VV4 at home and Premiere 6 at work. I want to see if adobe "fixed" some of the things I hate about 6. And I can use it pretty well. Not as good as Vegas because Vegas allows you more freedom in the way you want to do thing, but hey, that's part of the comparison!

So, if anyone knows where/when/if there is a demo i'd be glad to give it a try.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/27/2003, 12:16 AM
> lets give both VV 4 and Premiere 6.5 and/or Premiere Pro 1.0 to someone who has never edited anything before... that would be fair because there would be no bias and no real comparison to other NLE's.

I got close to that. I’m a professional musician but I’m just a hobbyist when it comes to video editing. I got started using Pinnacle Studio DC10 and when I outgrew it, I first did some work on a copy of Premiere 6 we had at work but I thought Premiere made even simple tasks harder than they should be. I used it for a month on a major project so I really gave it a try. I used motion paths and composited overlays and really tried to see what it could do. Not happy with the workflow, I downloaded a trial copy of Vegas 3 and I wound up buying it a week later. Vegas 3 was just a more productive and more capable environment. I now use Vegas 4+DVD and find it extremely easy to use. So I wasn’t a novice but I had no bias. Vegas won fair and square.

~jr
BillyBoy wrote on 9/27/2003, 3:13 PM
As far as comparing Premiere Pro to Vegas I think many WILL have bias one way or the other. If you've used Premiere's earlier versions, you probably like the copycat features now part of the "pro" version making it look/run more like Vegas and FCP. However if you've used Vegas for awhile, there isn't a heck of a lot to get excited over in the latest Adobe offering no matter how much some swoon over it. Worse, and so typical of Adobe, they don't even allow download of any demo of the pro version series, instead the last time I checked about a week ago they were still offering the limp versions nobody wants.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 10/5/2003, 5:22 PM
As an update to my comparison - there are some real serious memory issues with Premiere Pro that Adobe isn't willing to address and it appears to be affecting quite a few people according tto their posts in Adobe's PPro forums.

When playing the same project created in each application on their respective timelines, here is what I have found:

*VV3 - uses approx. 82 MB of memory and about 70% CPU with no dropped frames or audio
*Premiere Pro - uses over 220 MB of memory and 100% CPU with pretty severe dropping of frames and jerky audio

Both are set for real time preview.

My review of Premiere Pro is already turning into a scathing one compared to a previous version of Vegas Video. And you can forget about Adobe Audition - it is another example of non-user friendly software that can't compete against Acid Pro or Sound Forge.

So far - Adobe is 0 for 2.

Cliff Etzel
Blue Digital Media [ http://www.bluedigitalmedia.com ]
Internet Publishing :: Digital Imaging :: Digital Video
.: a cool visual antidote for a digital age :.