@ s2r,

i came from conventional editing, starting with low band, through to on line with digibeta, abacas, assorted cg's, dve's, desks, whathaveyou....

i started nle with dynatech e=mc2, moved on to avid, media 100, etc., etc., and agree that the transition was made easier by the 'old style' interface - familiar to anyone who'd used 2 or more vtr's to edit with.

but i have to say that after using vegas since 4, i wouldn't go back to the old paradigm for anything - and the people i teach can't understand the 'clunky, old fashioned' gui's of what we think of as traditional.

what you say is perfectly true, but i don't think there's enough 'old school' editors around to worry sony, and those that are really should start thinking outside of their box.....

happy being 'modern'

leslie

Well if you listen to this casual conversation amongst the pros carefully enough... you'll note a slight change in attitudes towards FCP and Avid

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/searchlist/10924.html

I agree 100% with sync2rhythm's posts. Vegas is easily more intuitive to use than the 3 "As", but its interface is also not as standardized as those NLEs. It's probably because Vegas started out as an audio editor and worked it's way up to video, while the other NLEs were basically cloning the same design.

In a sense, Vegas is the Canon 5D2 of the NLE market. It's a Franken-camera equivalent of an NLE. Because Vegas is different, many people tend to look at it as being on the periphery of commercial video editing. But Vegas also has wide appeal. Whereas, I've read many a post, both here and other places about how some guy with a new DSLR hybrid can't figure out how to make Premiere or FCP do what they want it to do. This same class of users seem to have little trouble mastering the basics of editing in Vegas Pro. At the other end of the spectrum, I am constantly amazed at what seasoned editors can do with Vegas. Both those extremes say a lot for the design and versatility of the product.

What I'm referring to as 'Quirks' only have to do with 'Editing' the way I'm used to editing.
'Editing' being to follow the Convention of the VTR days as it's this logic that allows me to go from NLE to NLE without constraint. For me it's more logical to think of my GUI as the Hardware counterparts. Propellerheads Reason GUI is an awesome example of a Software's GUI mimicking its Hardware counterpart. Especially when you Flip it Over (tab) and view the Wiring. I'm just visual like that.

Our company has taken on many Interns and over the last two years, 4; from three different colleges have sat in the seat next to me. None of them knew anything about editing with VTR's so they didn't know what the IN/OUT and all that was used for. They were taught to drag the media to the timeline then adjust it. They were all learning on FCP & Premiere at school and had used Vegas.

After watching me edit using the 'old school' IN/OUT method and explaining it to them as if I was Charlie Chaplin cutting my FILM... they all understood and took it on as being a quicker & more organized way of editing. Especially when we shoot per a script. They also felt more In-Touch with the Art of the Edit which seemed to ignite more creativity and passion in them.

For me, when I edit with a client I feel more skilled in what I do when I'm using the 'Conventional' method of IN/OUT a'la VTR's vs Drag/Drop/Trim. This adds to my 'Percieved Value' and validates my rates. As we can see with Vegas already... you don't have to use the tools if you don't want to. There is always another way of doing the same task. So having the option there neither hinders nor hurts those that don't use them.

A simple solution would be to Have the Conventional tools there. Those that wanted them could set up their UI to reflect this... those that don't can set up their UI to their liking, minus these tools. Now those that want to be Retro, can be. Alongside those Modern editors. Thus not forcing either to alter their workflow. We already do this when another editor hops in the seat and selects his/her saved workspace.

Not dissing or arguing... just trying to make it fit my workflow/wants as I have to eat and pay my mortgage 'today'. Neither of which can wait for Vegas' rise to take over the NLE world come 'tomorrow'.

Posted by: John_Cline

That pretty much tells how professional and accurate the information in this thread is.

There are some Vegas 8.0c AVCHD editors who are having no problems at all. Im on 8.0c with a Q9650 CPU and have no problems at all.

AVCHD vs. HDV codec comparison
http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/avccam-features.asp

The codec is easily a big improvement in quality over HDV, but obviously, many people have problems editing the codec. You just don't hear from people with no AVCHD problems as much.

I'll give you two very important reasons. Unless you can afford very expensive pro cameras that record to some type of memory card, you have two choices, HDV or AVCHD.

Sebaz:

HDV & AVCHD high level are very different formats and the cameras are very different.

HDV is not a pro format and is intended for recording to consumer DV tape.

AVCHD (MPG4) high level is a professional format.

Sebaz - I have no idea why people gets upset when you criticize a product they use. If you have complaints and voice them that is a sign you care. Some of the weird responses you get are surprising to me. The idea that because a format is hard to decode and encode it should cause crashes is absurd - obviously it will create slow-downs, but crashes? It's data, not code. On the other hand...

>> I've experienced at least two drops per tape

There must be something rather serious wrong somewhere. I have taped a lot of stuff in my time and I hardly ever get drop-outs. I have never heard of anyone ever who gets that many drops. Seriously, something bad is happening and it seems to be only you (in the case of that many drop-outs).

>> tape being such a fragile medium

Actually, tape is probably the least fragile medium currently used in camcorders. That is, unless you seriously abuse it that is. Anything I put on a memory card or an HD I will have significant worries about - for the stuff on tape I am generally OK. I know it will decay, but not as fast as the others.

>> Flash memory might not turn out to be as reliable
>> as we'd like to think it is.

I think the general consensus is that Flash is a highly un-reliable medium at this stage.

>> Editing avchd is much tougher .... it's a avchd thing..... NOT a vegas thing.

This is true to a degree. AVC is data, not code. Processing it is hard. This means that you should expect stuff to be slow. Slow means that it is AVC. Get a faster PC. It's the "only" solution (OK, when GPU rendering grows up that is OK too).

On the other hand, data doesn't crash anything. If there are crashes that is not the fault of AVC. Again, it is just data. It can be difficult but it can not crash anything.

I've only been at this for three years, but with P2 and tape. I can honestly say, I have no worries about solid state, and strongly dislike tape (but I don't come from a background of growing up with decks and tapes and having all that fit my workflow-thankfully).

I have never, ever, ever, had any problems with P2. Never lost any footage. I have not heard of anyone having problems, and I have heard they are tested in very rough conditions. I think the same applies to SxS (don't have SxS). I feel much safer on P2 than tape.

P2 and SxS are definitely different from SD cards, and I have just begun using them and AVCHD. Maybe I will have some problems. But professional still photographers use them in many extreme situations. Nat Geo photographers use them (some still use film). And its not supposed to be your storage medium. So I am fairly optimistic about them.

My first tussle with AVCHD (Vegas 8 and quad core) this week has been going well. Definitely MUCH better than my first tussle with HDV (Vegas 7, then 8, dual core and quad core). I hope it doesn't get worse-but I am cautiously optimistic!

kairosmatt

I probably should have said, "the current state of AVCHD sucks" and that's more on the editing side not the recording side.

AVCHD, or more specifically h.264 encoding, is an definite improvement over MPEG2 as far as image quality is concerned. At the same bitrate one would expect h.264 to look better than MPEG2. However, at higher bitrates (25Mbps and up), there is very little visible difference between MPEG2 and AVCHD. Also, that Panasonic literature says that MPEG2 development has stopped. This simply is not true. The specs for MPEG2 encoding are etched in stone, however MPEG2 decoders continue to improve.

At this specific moment in time, AVCHD is more difficult to edit because it requires more CPU horsepower to process, particularly High-Profile@Level-4.1. Most people couldn't edit HDV smoothly on the machines of the day when it was first introduced, now that affordable CPUs are more powerful, editing HDV is about a easy as DV was years ago. The just-introduced i7-975 chip might be the tipping point. I still think wavelet-based MJPEG2000 is the way to go.

By the way, I don't use tape or memory cards. I record primarily on sticks from a fixed position, so I have been recording directly to hard drives via laptop for years. I've never had a single glitch in hundreds of hours of footage. The Matrox MX02 Mini looks very, very interesting for my purposes. Records 1920x1080 10-bit 4:2:2 either uncompressed or using I-frame only MPEG2 at up to 300 Mbps on a desktop with PCI-e card or a laptop with an Express Card.

Will Matrox Mpeg-2 files play in Vegas? I've heard Vegas has problems with I-frame only versions.