I read this last night and I think it was fair overall. Premiere does not have Multi-cam nor does Vegas - as you do mention "I realize they were limiting their comparison to built-in features, which is fair."

They claimed no "safe zone". There's a simple switch to turn on safe zone markers.

I admit that I was not clear on the wording and had to re-read it - at first it sounded like the article was saying the safety guides were not available when editing..period. End of statement. And if that were it than it would be wrong but if you read the flow of the article and the comparisons it mentions something about output and another window - and than I got what was meant - that during editing *when* viewing on an external monitor, the guides are not there. Which they are not. In Premiere Pro they are, just like the artilce says. Just to to be 100% sure as I type this I have PPro open with an HDV project and there on the external monitor - safety guides. Vegas does not do this.

They claimed there wasn't a 16:9 view so couldn't tell how the final output would look.

The way it reads in the comparison is that when you open up the pan/crop window in Vegas the aspect ratio does not match what is in the preview window. Which is true - it does not. For example open a 16:9 project and the preview window is at 16:9 but open the crop/pan workspace and that window is at 4:3.

The bigger the advertiser revenue, the better the review.

That said, I think the best multicam that I have seen yet has to be Final Cut Pro 5. I wish Sony would implement this somehow as I do find have one window to work with is a pain but it works nonetheless.

Wait until HDV support finally hits Avid next month. Then youll see the major mags fall all over Avid with glowing reviews. I miss the days when reviews were actually based on a product and its features and not the money spent to push the product.

.....For example open a 16:9 project and the preview window is at 16:9 but open the crop/pan workspace and that window is at 4:3.

You must have a different build of Vegas than I do, because in my version (6b) if you start with a 16:9 project and are using 16:9 media, the pan/crop and track motion both open up as 16:9 for me.

I have to think any build in V6 will do it -- this is from Vegas 5.0d:

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9598/pancrop1vx.jpg

I get the same thing the reviewer did/does:
That is; I know I'm working in 16:9, as it shows up in Pan/Crop as such as well as on my NTSC monitor (and is set as such in Prefs)(1440x1080). However, in my Preview window, it is compressed (squeezed) to 4:3.
However, if I change Prefs to HD (1920x1080), my preview window reflects true 16:9 (as best I understand it).

Ahhhh....wait, I figured it out.

I never noticed this before. Ratio in the Pan/Crop window is is not based on Project settings, it is based on media settings.

Do either one of these -

Open a 16:9 project. Import 4:3 media. Open media in pan/crop to crop for 16:9 - pan/crop window is at 4:3, not 16:9 even after you crop media.

Open a 4:3 project. Import 16:9 media. Open media in pan/crop to readjust for 4:3 - pan/crop window is at 16:9 not 4:3, even after you re-adjust.

And, as was pointed out in the article, there are no saftey guides in the pan/crop window so you have to look at the preview window to see the guides.

Not to say this is exactly what Jan was seeing but the pan/crop window aspect ratio does not go with the project settings. Matter of fact if you set the project to 4:3 and have 16:9 media open in the pan/crop window it looks a lot like "Figure 6". The other side is that if he did not click "Simulate Device Aspect Ratio" in the preview window, and that would also give almost the same results.

EDIT - Spelling

Right-click on the preview window and select "simulate device aspect ratio."

Sigh, I would take everything from tech hack Jan Ozer with a 75-foot double-trailer-truck of salt.

The rotation feature [in Premier Pro] proved necessary in our tests to correct a slight tilt in our camera setup.

No mention of that for the other NLEs, perhaps the PP output was the only one that was rotated, leading to a reduced quality.

"simulate device aspect ratio."
Weird, but that worked. Thanks much.
("Weird" only because HDV is the only setting that I have had to do that with; HD previews correctly as does, of course SD DV).

Amen. When Vegas 2.0 came out, he railed for 2 paragraphs on how slow the rendering was. Then 2 months later, it came to light that he was rendering to uncompressed. It would have been alright, had he posted a correction.
He also claims Vegas is unstable....
What do you expect from a guy who thinks the sun sets and rises on Ulead and Pinnacle software?