Have you tried QT uncompressed? Quality should be impeccable, but at the cost of large files. Should be great for up to 3-minute spots.

QTs made from inside Vegas the normal way stink. Uncompressed will work of course, as will some other codecs with mixed compatibility.

I got Procoder 2.0 ($499 list, $299 online) and all my QT problems went away. Great software with many other uses.

Quicktime Pro ($29 download) is said to also generate good QT files (I think it uses a medium version of the Sorenson codec for this), I just haven't had time to compare.

QT as an industry standard in broadcast, that's pretty funny!

They are referring to the many post guys using QT, not broadcast per se.

Vegas has subpixel rendering which makes the output from a lot of simple daily tasks look better than anything FCP can produce (without exporting/importing against another app).

Multicamera in Vegas is in Vegas itself (with an inexpensive script) and superfast to work with, while with FCP you have to export the footage, pick and choose, and then import back to FCP.

Most effects that have realtime preview in Vegas need to be rendered in FCP. How much fun is that wait?

Work with the audio? No problem, just export it, work on it externally and then import it again. Did I say the ProTools software for that is really expensive?

Large video files in FCP can crash the machine, etc., etc., etc.

Just go to any FCP support forum and let your jaw drop as you read what their users are going through... You'll sleep hugging your Vegas box after that...

I must be pretty out of it. Vegas supports quicktime renders without having to buy QTPro? I guess I never noticed that. I know V5 required me to upgrade QT so that's what I did.

QT Pro is cheap enough and there are plenty of codecs in there. Surely you could make a decent looking DV25 QT file?

Granted, uncompressed would be sharper.

Rob Mack

I work frequently with a Final Cut user and he use directly in the timeline whatever i capture in avi without problem. Render your work in AVI and tell them to try it!

Saying that QT is the the facto standard in brodcast is ridiculous, btw. So many peoples work with PC based solutions...

If you render with Sorensen codec directly from Vegas, you definitely have a poor quality/size ratio problem. You must pay more just to get the full version of the codec and better all around performance.

I agree. One thing that has always pissed me off about Mac and FCP peolpe is all their talk about Quicktime. Basically that like saying video file. Useless cutesy term that tells you nothing.
By the way, soundvideo, please don't think I'm yelling at you. I'm definitely not. Anger is directed solely at Mac people and their silly language.

Are people setting up the Sorenson 3 codec properly? I used it from within Vegas (using the free Quicktime codecs you get when you download the player) for my trailers at http://www.the-silencer.co.uk

Vegas has the keyframes set wrongly. For PAL the keyframes for Sorenson and MPEG4 should be set to 250. But with the default settings for Quicktime rendering they are set to 25.

By changing to 250 I got MUCH higher quality with much smaller files. I can't remember offhand what the NTSC setting is though.

Just found it. Set the keyframe to 300 for NTSC footage. And make sure that the datarate limiter is turned OFF.

Of course you wouldn't want to use Srenson for broadcast footage, but I hope that info was useful to someone! :-)

It was actually!
To be honest I've spent (and wasted) large amounts of time fixing or trying to fix both audio and video problems all of which came from FCP users. Now my full on FCP using mate says 'they don't know how to use it' well hells bells, how much should you HAVE to know to do something as simple as drop a CD audio track onto a FCP timeline and not either get it clipped or full of sample rate errors. I've used MGI Videowave, Premiere, WMM, ULead apps and Vegas and not one of them is capable of turning out the disasters I've had from several FCP users.

But then again in all fairness to Apple these poor fools were silly enough not to have bought the latest version of FCP and they couldn't afford a new silver box either.

Anyway be that as it may, I just give the Macolites AVIs, it seems even early versions of FCP will happily open AVIs straight from Vegas.

Bob.

" I just give the Macolites AVIs,"

Just give the MAC/FCP users a kick in the ass like they deserve. Obviously they have a childish case of penis envy going on. Also they obviously have never used Vegas, to even rightfully compare it to FCP and call it "prosumer". It's the same argument us Vegas Audio users have been hearing about Macs with Protools in comparison to Vegas. I say, bullsh*t morons, I've used both, and wouldn't you think I would have chose the better choice? All those FCP users in a few years will be saying the same thing about Avid and FCP, when they realize the better stuff is coming from Vegas, and the truth of the matter is that it's really the editor behind the software that determines what is Pro and what is Pro-sumer.

For now just throw the same B.S. in their face...It's FCP that is really "prosumer", real professionals are using an Avid.

"Just found it. Set the keyframe to 300 for NTSC footage. And make sure that the datarate limiter is turned OFF."

wonderful. thanks. where'd you learn this, btw?