Another Vegas Friendly Article ... from eMedia Magazine

DataMeister wrote on 12/19/2003, 7:13 PM

Well here is yet one more article with positive information about Vegas. This time they reviewed 5 different NLE's and gave the good an the bad of each. The NLEs tested were

Adobe Premere Pro
Apple Final Cut Pro 4
Avid Xpress Pro
Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5
Sony Vegas 4

The article is called "Take 5" and is here...
http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=8066

Nearly all of the tests were about quality and show favorable reasons to use Vegas or perhaps Edition 5 over the other three. Congradulations, Vegas programers. Keep up the good work.

And perhaps give us a simple to use image stabalizer plugin for Vegas.

JBJones

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/19/2003, 7:19 PM

It's actually their first 'good' article on Vegas, the reviewer really muffed it last time he reviewed it. It was good to see him do a fair review this time, and actually use Vegas for the review rather than write about what he'd read about Vegas.
Vegas has a simple to use image stabilizer. It's called Boris Red. Expensive, but the alternative is something like Dynapel, and in either case, image stabilization looks HORRIBLE in post. Use a tripod, or shoot steady. That's the better answer. Image stabilizers blur everything, that's part of the process, and it never looks acceptable for professional purposes. Image stabilization is more suited for Movie Studio than Vegas, IMO.

craftech wrote on 12/19/2003, 7:49 PM

I don't know if I would go so far as to call this a rave review:

Intro:
"Video Editors are like elephants, your impression is partly formed by how and where you touch the beast. Even worse, to a large degree, your impressions are formed by what you use and know. Even the most objective reviewer would have a hard time characterizing an editor he or she has worked with for many years as unintuitive, while new editing environments always seem foreign and forbidding. When focusing on objective criteria, like output quality, how do you account for the reality that a reviewer will generally prove more proficient with a familiar program, and know which knobs to turn to produce absolute top quality? In our search for an "objective" comparison of video editors, here's what we came up with."

Test 1: Overlay Tests: Vegas(but at more than twice the rendering time of the others), Edition 5.5, Avid, Final Cut, Adobe
Test 2: Color Correction: Edition 5.5, Vegas and Final Cut tied for second, Avid, Adobe
Test 3: Slow Motion: Edition 5.5, Avid, Vegas, and Final Cut all tied for second(Vegas had the longest rendering time), Adobe last again
Test 4: Image Stabilization: Adobe, Final Cut, Avid. Edition 5.5 and Vegas don't have it so they weren't even rated.

Conclusions:
"Apropos of the elephant metaphor that opened this article, we understand that this article barely touches upon the enormous feature sets of each product, and ignores many of each product's key strengths. Still however limited, the functions analyzed here represent critical, make-or-break capabilities of each editor"

Hardly a rave review.

John

DataMeister wrote on 12/19/2003, 7:58 PM

However the color pictures in the print magazine have captions that pretty much give Vegas and Edition good comments on quality (reguardless of render time) and dog the other three apps.

Check out each of the sample comparisons links througout the article for each test.

JBJones

farss wrote on 12/19/2003, 11:32 PM

I found it quite objective and avoids the pitfalls of trying to objectively rate things like ease of use even thogh most of us would rate VV the clear winner on that score.
It does highlight an often overlooked point, with any half decednt NLE the final result will have more to do with the competance of the editor than the tool he uses.
BTW, if you factor in the cost difference I thought it showed VV pretty much the clear winner.

Chienworks wrote on 12/20/2003, 5:33 AM

This was very curious, in the color correction illustration page, http://www.emedialive.com/articles/readarticle.aspx?articleid=8112, did you notice that a different frame was used for the Vegas shot than in the other four? Dunno if that has any significance or if it was just a mistake by the testers.

craftech wrote on 12/20/2003, 5:48 AM

Chienworks,

That's a little easier to see than the magazine. I didn't realize that it was online. I get the magazine every month and those photos are on a small strip 1" x 4.5" which you can barely see in the magazine let alone compare.

John