Cautiously dipping my toes in Vegas Pro Waters

Cliff Etzel wrote on 7/15/2014, 12:36 PM
I'm still cautiously dipping my toes back into the Vegas Pro waters once again after having used Adobe's apps (currently using PPro CS6, Audition CS6, Photoshop CS6) and Lightroom 5.5 now for the past 3 years now.

IN private discussion, friend and colleague Perrone Ford says stay as far away from Vegas as possible - as he was, at one time, a regular participant here but has since moved on to AVID Media Composer for his work (no thanks on that front). I'm still weighing the pros and cons of Vegas Pro 13 right now but it seems release 310 has become one of the most stable versions in a long time from what others here on the forums are saying - especially if you're willing to go the Radeon route for graphics cards (which I'm considering).

Currently I'm investigating a better solution for Audition as IMO, it's one of the best audio apps for post production available - their noise reduction feature puts Sound Forge 10 to shame IMO. I haven't been willing to invest in SF11 as I don't see any real difference and I use Noise Reduction extensively in my post workflow.

Maybe there are those who can state otherwise on the matter of Sound Forge.

My biggest concern is stability in post on the doc work I'm doing more of - projects that tend to be less than 30 minutes in length. The vast majority of footage shot on DSLR with Magic Lantern and custom profiles during acquisition and using PluralEyes for dual sync audio in post. The options are pretty limited these days - I've even considered going to the MAC platform and using FCPX but that's another issue in itself and for owner/operators like myself, budgetary constraints dictate purchasing decisions. On the Windows platform it's really only 3 options: Adobe (being held hostage), AVID (expensive and archaic in workflow) or Vegas (great methodology, but stability has plagued the app for several years now).

Resolve Light seems to be the best solution for color grading and bypassing all of Vegas' color correction tools and using it purely for cutting footage. I could be wrong here - anyone want to chime in stating otherwise? What about Magic Bullet & Colorista in Vegas?

Cineform appears to be the best solution for transcoding from what I can tell for editing in Vegas. DNxHD or ProRes in QT wrappers seems to plague Vegas and the gamma shift issue is one I'm not willing to battle with.

Just thought I'd brain dump here and see what others have to say on the various items I've mentioned.

Cliff

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 7/15/2014, 1:50 PM
My own sense of feeding VegasPro13 DSLR common format files is really NOT a good idea. It all depends on the particular camera, format, and length of production with consideration of how many clips do you use in an average edited minute of timeline. The less the ratio of clips to minute, the more likely you are going to have some better stability.
As for making trips out to another app to do color grading - that also is a heavy weight concern. If you can keep yourself grading on the Vegas timeline itself - the better off you are.
Cineform is one of the best solutions for transcoding and grading at the same time.
For the sources I use, it is the best! But again if DSLR is your problematic single sourcing, I can say you have my sympathy.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 7/15/2014, 3:38 PM
Eventually I'm looking at getting the Canon C100 with the Atomos Ninja Star external recorder but the investment is substantial and not doable at this time but it is what I want to go with since my background as a photojournalist and editorial photographer for over 25 years is conducive to the ergonomics of that camera.

No sympathy needed though, I've produced a fair bulk of my work with them and once the transcode to an intermediate is done, it's no different than when I shot with video cameras.

My biggest concern is Vegas Pro stability with Cineform as it's what I have standardized on. If I thought for a minute I could get away with Prores, I would as it's industry standard in collaboration with other editors from what i"m seeing. But Vegas isn't QT friendly and that's a something to take into consideration IMO.
videoITguy wrote on 7/15/2014, 6:00 PM
To be clear on your references - ProRes as an industry standard file format is outside the realm of VegasPro unfortunately. Yes you can read it, and with third party you can write it - but again it is really an alien on the VegasPro timeline, hence I would avoid it in workflows.
On the other hand QuikTime (QT) libraries are a part of VegasPro and actually vary useful. For example you can re-wrap Cineform files between .avi and .mov containers - hence work in integrated file types. DSLR in common .mov containers can also call on the Quiktime to support VegasPro. My earlier comment was to point out that not all DSLR work is so compatible. So I would summarize that Quiktime -QT is actually your friend in Vegas workflows as a rule.
There are really several developing file structures that may and will lend themselves to file interchange such as Sony XAVC and MXF, but these circumstances are going to depend a lot on who you are collaborating with.
Laurence wrote on 7/15/2014, 7:05 PM
Vegas 13 is wonderfully stable and just a joy to work with. This is on the same computer that crashed several times a day with both Vegas 11 & 12. Yes, I finally feel safe again recommending Vegas to everyone.
tim-evans wrote on 7/15/2014, 7:21 PM
Working on my Red Raw R3D projects which is all I have used 13 for so far I would say 13 crashes about as often as the last version of 12. For me it is always the same thing - introduce either Magic Bullets Looks or some Waves audio plugins and start hitting the CTL S
Silverglove wrote on 7/16/2014, 8:22 AM
May I ask a question? What are the issues with ProRes? I'm using nothing but ProRes exclusively on V13 as it's the format delivered to me from the TV network for an hour long show that I edit. I also convert any other video that I use within this project to ProRes (via compressor) I have not had a single issue with the format. Now, I am using the new Mac Pro with dual FirePro D500's but alas I'm running V13 on Win 8.1 via BootCamp with the latest version of QT. It is working flawlessly for me.
videoITguy wrote on 7/16/2014, 8:31 AM
Silverglove, no offense to be taken - but you are a Mac guy?! As I understand your operations you are completely on a MAC Platform, and you never choose to write a ProRes file in a Windows platform and Win PC hardware. What is more you do not indicate what your output is created by (the app) and how it goes out of your house (the format)...important considerations.
Steve_Rhoden wrote on 7/16/2014, 8:33 AM
I have no issues what so ever, editing long form ProRes files, Never had.
It seems to be a conflict with something some users may have installed
on their system.
dlion wrote on 7/16/2014, 9:34 AM
i shoot with a t5i running magic lantern.

i have zero problem with canon movs in vegas 13. i edit them natively on my i7. i don't transcode them. if i need to render a particular clip or segment w/fx i'll go with mxf, it works flawlessly with the movs and requires no recompress on rendering.

i also use a zoom h6. i just did a shoot of a percussionist using the onboard ms stereo mic and a rode shotgun. quality blew me away. it was easy to sync (i'm also a musician) with the camera audio, which was also good due to ml and no agc.

vegas 13 isn't perfect, i have occasional issues, but no (knock on wood) loss of work fiascos. and nothing related to canon/ml movs.
Silverglove wrote on 7/16/2014, 10:34 AM
video... No offense taken. No, I'm not a Mac guy. I'm a Windows guy that uses Mac hardware. The final output for this TV show (AXS TV) is mpeg-2:

http://mixhitz.com/vegas/Capture.PNG

Cliff Etzel wrote on 7/16/2014, 10:55 AM
videoITguy - it's been my past experience as well as those of others that more than 50 QT files on the timeline and all of a sudden Vegas starts having memory related issues. Now I haven't really pushed Vegas 13 yet as I'm in the middle of initial cutting of interview material I"m shooting for a documentary but I've debated on whether to just jump over and cut the whole project in Vegas Pro 13.

One of the challenges I have right now is that Vegas Pro doesn't like importing a Premiere Pro project with multiple sequences in it. It wants to dump all the sequences on the timeline at one time which is kind of annoying. So it means I need to go into my project, delete all but one sequence, save that PPro projects as it's own project and then import into Vegas 13 and then save that as a new Vegas Project. Working as a FCP XML file it does the same thing so it's Vegas Pro related. When I export out my XML from PPro to Resolve which I'm also testing, Resolve asks which sequence I want to bring in. Something that maybe the Vegas developers could add on in a future update?

I"m primarily a shooter first and an editor second, and it was one of the resons I chose Vegas back in the day when I discovered Vegas 4. The handliong of audio and video in one app is what mad eit my favorite app for editing. Ever since the move to HD Vegas has been less than stellar for me but given the recent thread by JohnnyRoy about which cards provide the best stability and performance, which IMO should have been done by SCS from the Go Get like Adobe and AVID have done, Vegas might have gotten more traction with users like myself.

Having said that, I'm now wondering if Colorista II and Magic Bullet aren't the weakest link in my current post workflow if I tried to use them in Vegas as they are pretty stable in PPro CS6, I find the color correction tools in Vegas crude compared to PPro but maybe it's just because I'm use to Adobe's tools. What about Vegas wanting to change the gamma range and having to apply a chain event to offset that- I've read of others having pretty dramatic shifts in gamma when uploading to Youtube and Vimeo.

Thoughts?
dlion wrote on 7/16/2014, 11:56 AM
don't use colorista, but i do use magic bullet looks in v13 quite successfully.
tim-evans wrote on 7/16/2014, 12:29 PM
As far as Magic Bullets Looks goes let me revise my prior comment. It works pretty well with one instance and using keyframes. The problems I have had are when I have used multiple instances on different clips....Vegas becomes less stable.

Maybe mulitiple instances is just not the way to use it.

My comment on Waves Plugins stands though....when introduced as Audio FX I have less Vegas stability
Laurence wrote on 7/16/2014, 4:04 PM
One thing I've noticed with Waves plugins is that if you select one side of a stereo audio pair (as is common when you record a mic to channel), it looks like a mono channel and you would think that the best option would be to choose one of the mono versions of the audio FX that Waves offers. I have found this not to be the best option however. The mono looking audio tracks seem to behave as a stereo pair with the same things on both sides, and if you choose a mono Waves DSP effect, it will boost the volume unnaturally and invariably crash. Choosing the stereo version seems to work much better.