I have been using Vegas for awhile. I was curious about FCP.
A friend had it. I felt the bins and trimming were wierd.
Not a very good work flow. The actual editing and placing
of clips and transitions was clumsy compared to Vegas.
The quality of digitized clips and print back to tape
was not as good as Vegas. And the MPEG 2 tests I did
with the MAC looked like crap compared to the MPEG 2
I can render in Vegas.
And now with the 24P support in Vegas the MPEG 2
24P looks really clean. I can generate .m2v 24P files
from Vegas that will work in most DVD auth apps.

One other point of consideration is what kind of computer do you own already?
Because FCP is MAC only.......Vegas is PC only.
Depending on which software you choose you may have to buy a new computer.

I would go about this by reading reviews of both products.
Going to a forum for a specific software is not going to give you objective feedback.
The FCP folks will tell you hands down FCP is better and the Vegas camp will ring the Vegas Bell.

Investigate both editing apps and for goodness sake, take the time to test drive both apps.
There is no absolute answer to your question.

I have tried many editing apps and Vegas has become my favorite to work in.
For many reasons I have avoided the MAC direction. Mac is a direction because the platforms don't speak well with one another. I still use complimentary applications with Vegas. Some projects are better suited to be done with a real time hardware assisted editing app.
I can run the two side by side and that is a big advantage over the MAC road.

There is very little that FCP can do that Vegas can't and in most cases Vegas can do these functions better because of the brilliant software design.
But now we are getting into personal choice.

Line up your pro's and Con's of each choice and then test drive to see what your preferences are.
I have a hunch what your decision will be but try to keep to the facts and purchase the one that you feel most comfortable, work flow wise.
Both are able to produce broadcast quality, so to me that is not a big issue.

Best of luck,
W

It's funny how a vegas user mentioned that they felt FCP's workflow was wierd. It's funny because FCP pretty much follows in the long tradition of NLEs and the workflow that's used (i.e. source/record monitors,etc.). In fact, it's vegas that has deviated from this tradition. Whether that's good or bad is yet to be seen (of course SoFo sees it as a positive).

I've been editing on FCP and Avid for ~4 years now. I'm currently evaluating vegas to see if it meets my needs. I wrote a long comparison between FCP and Vegas over on Creative Cow, but it seems that the whole thread it was contained in has (mysteriously) disappeared.

At any rate, FCP has many good features, including scalability (DV,SD,HD), precision editing tools (trim window,roll/ripple/slide editing, etc. Vegas, in my opinion is equally as powerful (especially with v4.0b update with support for 24p and HD). Basically, what we have here are two powerful programs each with their advantages and disadvantages, making it hard to compare either. FCP's workflow is more traditional and may be easier to jump into, whereas I've found that people complain about the high learning curve of Vegas (evidently because of its more non-traditional workflow), though I "got" it in about a week or so. The list goes on...

With FCP 4 (which isn't out until june), apple raises the bar, so to speak, with many features...uh...already available in vegas? While true, the update does add some other tools such as Soundrack to help you score your project (you would think a company focusing primarily on audio programs would've thought of this first...), as well as a pretty powerful title generator.

While FCP 4 looks great, it is really only catching up to vegas in many ways, RT extreme is supposed to allow better realtime preview of effects by forsaking framerate and image quality. Have I heard of this somewhere? hmmm.
Of course, the support for 24p is well known, so need not be covered.
And while FCP comes with a new media compressor for final output called...Compressor, there is still no support for 5.1 audio.

However, Vegas still has some catch-up of it's own in relation to FCP. Media management features are not fully matured. Most notably: multiple timelines in a project (necessary for larger projects), timeline nesting (one timeline within another), reference files/wrapper files (small file that contains references to source and render files so rendering a complete sequence isn't necessary for it to be brought into a another program), subclips (selected sections for a source file that appears in the bin as a media item of its own. Very useful for multiple takes of a scene, or simply breaking up larger clip into smaller, more manageable ones, WITHOUT creating a new video file for each one). These are all features that FCP has (most of them were present in v1.0 of FCP), that vegas lacks. In fact, many of these features of staples of many "pro" NLEs (such as Avid). It's very likely that Vegas-only users don't even know about these sort of features and don't know how useful they can be.

In the end, I'm leaning toward Vegas as becoming my primary editor for a few reasons:
1.SoFo listens - it doesn't take them a year and charge $400 for an update even though it adds immense new capabilities.
2.Vegas' development is proactive - v4.0b came out pretty fast even though it had these new and decidely complex features. Therefore, I believe that this trend will continue and Vegas will evolve much faster than other NLEs.
3.Vegas is just plain fun - I don't know how SoFo did this one, but it really is. I have fun while editing, so much so that I haven't edited any projects on FCP for quite awhile now.

HTH

Another advantage of FCP is OMF import/export. I'd love to have that in Vegas! Still, I left FCP for Vegas as well. I just really like working with it better than with anything else.

Laurence Kingston

I use premiere at work (it is the worst program i've ever used too. I'm not bashing, I'm talking from experience). I downloaded the V4 beta to make a video for my dad. I only used V4, even though I could of used Premiere. It took me about a week to figure it out, and I've edited a 2nd video for my dad with the beta in under a week, and edited a 30 minute movie on VHS from years ago that a fiend and me made. 2 years ago I made a video of my son in premiere at work, and it took me 2 weeks to do (I already knew how to use the program). If FCP is layed out and looks anything like Premiere, I'd probely never use it.

But, if I had a Mac, I'd probely use FCP cuz Vegas isn't available on PC, and wouldn't want to buy a new computer to use it. :)

There is a Southern California Vegas User Group.
The next meeting is Tuesday the 22nd, 7:30pm, at 1740 E. Huntington Drive,
Ste 302/303, Duarte.
Indie Producer/Director Lance Bachelder is the "host".
His email address is: dvstudio@attbi.com
It's a great group.