Goodbye Vegas...Hello DaVinci

Martin L wrote on 6/12/2019, 3:45 AM

@vkmast - Quite Correct.... Just sent Martin a Private Message.

Thanks Grazie!

TheRhino wrote on 6/12/2019, 12:01 PM

With so many new CPU & GPU improvements recently IMO now is not a good time to justify the hours needed to become proficient with a new NLE when <$1500 in upgrades can make Vegas handle 4K very well... In April I spent $1350 to upgrade to a 5.0 ghz 9900K & Vega 64 and the time-saved has already paid for the upgrade... Prior to the 9900K I was dreading complex 4K projects. My source video is often 4K intermediates so I now place them on TWO (2) X 2TB Intel 660p M.2 drive RAID0 (3000+ MB/s reads) and render-out projects to a (4) x 8TB RAID 0 (400+ MB/s writes). (I recently changed the latter from RAID10 to RAID0... Backups of everything are copied over a 10G network to another workstations and/or NAS so I no longer need redundancy. VEG & other work files are also regularly automatically backed-up over the network... Editing 4K is still not as convenient as the peak of my SD work, but now very comparable to when I switched to editing 1080p on the Xeons...

aboammar wrote on 6/12/2019, 5:43 PM

@aboammar - I’m adding a further 8Tb of Internal storage.

@Grazie I did not mean in term of capacity, which also important, I mean in term of performance for the Windows and applications. You should install Windows and all important applications on the fastest drive possible, and currently the fastest on the market is NVMe M.2 SSDs. Also, the working drive (for raw materials .. etc) should be in the fastest drive possible. So my recommendation is to use one Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD 970 PRO 512GB ($150) for the system and applications, one Samsung NVMe SSD 970 PRO 1TB ($300) as a working drive, and 8TB HDD for archive and other things. If 1TB is not good enough as a working drive, then consider the Samsung 2TB 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 SSD (less than $500)

vkmast wrote on 6/12/2019, 6:03 PM

@aboammar please note this comment from @Grazie and my comment referring to his existing thread. Thank you.

aboammar wrote on 6/12/2019, 6:16 PM

Vegas Pro 16 is working just fine on both of my AIO and laptop workstations. I also own Resolve Studio 16, HitFilm Pro 12 and Premiere Pro CC 2019 and they give me more or less similar performance to Vegas Pro. However, I still prefer Vegas Pro for editing all my videos.

Normally, I edit all 2K and FullHD footages natively. However, I use proxies for 4K footages. I only use HitFilm Pro for motion graphics and special effects, and Resolve Studio for color corrections and grading. Premiere Pro is only kept for collaborative purpose and not planning to renew my subscription.

aboammar wrote on 6/12/2019, 6:17 PM

@aboammar please note this comment from @Grazie and my comment referring to his existing thread. Thank you.

Sorry .. I did not notice that.

karma17 wrote on 6/12/2019, 9:18 PM

Agree with @Kinvermark. Why do people feel a need to talk trash about Vegas and then say they have decided to use a free software program that has been around for years?

If you don't like Vegas, fine. Don't use it. But there is no need to insult the program and dismiss the massive improvements which have been made.

I have Da Vinci Studio and yes, we all know the story, it is tops in color correction currently, but in my view, that's about it.

For the type of projects I do, short films, ads, and occasional documentaries and longer projects, Vegas' rendering performance is perfectly fine. And I don't see Da Vinci rendering at any significantly different speed. Honestly, some of this talk of rendering speeds seems like people complaining that a microwave doesn't microwave fast enough. Not that I don't like faster renders, but come on, Vegas is getting better with every iteration.

In the end, pick the tool that works best for you, but no need to insult the program others use and not only use, but use well and effectively.

marc-s wrote on 6/12/2019, 10:57 PM

In the same boat. User since Vegas 3 but Resolve is 95% of my editing now. The few times I still use Vegas it always crashes when trying to render about ten times in a row (even a simple project) then suddenly decides it will render for no apparent reason. I've come to despise using Vegas due the the render crashes and preview issues. Too bad... it was such a great program.

wwjd wrote on 6/13/2019, 6:41 AM

out of curiosity, what is the crash rate of RESOLVE? anyone getting any crashes there?

klt wrote on 6/13/2019, 8:35 AM

@wwjd

I went for Resolve on Linux. Finished dozens of projects, mostly simple multicam shots, but also some "talking head" videos. All that only fullHD, I don't make any 4k stuff.

So far it was rock solid for me, no crashes without Fusion.

Made a few videos where I needed Fusion too. If Fusion gets involved, the likelyness of crashing Davinci increases a lot. I had more than a couple crashes with every project which contained Fusion composites.

Resolve is great, but it's simply not ready yet. 😉 Quite usable though...

steve-kauzlarich wrote on 6/15/2019, 1:17 AM

I use Vegas 16 and it NEVER crashes. Love the program. Been using it since version 4 I believe. 20 years. Sounic Foundry sure knew what they were doing. I'm so happy that Magix rescued it from Sony's boneyard.

dirk-g wrote on 6/15/2019, 7:14 AM

Agree with @Kinvermark. Why do people feel a need to talk trash about Vegas and then say they have decided to use a free software program that has been around for years?

If you don't like Vegas, fine. Don't use it. But there is no need to insult the program and dismiss the massive improvements which have been made.

Vegas is a product, and this is the forum for that product. And in internet forums for all kinds of products, you will hear the good and bad, and also comparisons to similar products. It's standard stuff.

You shouldn't take it so personally. People pay money for Vegas and it should work the same or better than any free product out there.

D7K wrote on 6/15/2019, 8:34 AM

Trouble with posts like these is that some firms pay for others to generate fake news and we've had our share of folks using "cracked" versions here. I wish there was tighter moderation here. If you like Resolve just go to their forum, after all it's mostly people user skills and equipment that causes the problem if you're not a paid troll. Good riddance of most of these folks.

Dexcon wrote on 6/15/2019, 8:43 AM

I find it just a little bit interesting that some of those who post that they've been long term Vegas Pro users now abandoning VP for Resolve Free or other NLEs often have very few, if any, previous postings on this forum (under MAGIX - now nearly 4 years old I think). If a VP user with 300 posts on the forum says that they're going elsewhere, I'll take note; however, I'm not so convinced about the reliability of what to me look like blow-ins making the same claim.

@D7K … I started writing my reply before your post. You've said it better than me.

dirk-g wrote on 6/16/2019, 4:31 AM

I wish there was tighter moderation here.

You mean you want only 'positive' posts about Vegas, not honest ones? That would get boring real quick.

dirk-g wrote on 6/16/2019, 4:48 AM

I find it just a little bit interesting that some of those who post that they've been long term Vegas Pro users now abandoning VP for Resolve Free or other NLEs often have very few, if any, previous postings on this forum (under MAGIX - now nearly 4 years old I think). If a VP user with 300 posts on the forum says that they're going elsewhere, I'll take note; however, I'm not so convinced about the reliability of what to me look like blow-ins making the same claim.

Granted, I have a whopping 5 posts in this forum, but joined back in 2016 like so many of the Sony Vegas users. We had no choice since the other forum went bye-bye. I think many of us lost interest when Magix purchased Vegas, and as such, don't bother posting here.

I've been using Vegas since 3, back when Sonic Foundry ran things. That was back when Vegas was actually AHEAD of the curve. It was innovative and stable. The word of mouth was what made people take notice. NLE's from Pinnacle, Premiere, Ulead and others needed to play catch-up.

The problem is that they DID catch-up and Vegas slowed down. The last version I bought was 12, and it suits me fine for the most part. I recently downloaded the trial for 16. I see some improvements, but the engine is still old. Watching the promo video Magix made for V16 leads one to believe it's more robust that it actually is. For example, they gush about the stabilizer, but it's a complete joke. As it's always been in Vegas. Many other things are still just...old.

If you still like Vegas, more power to you.

Dexcon wrote on 6/16/2019, 7:34 AM

@dirk-g ... I apologise if you've taken any offence at my posting - it was not intended that way. Your posting two before mine was fair and balanced. Combined with D7K's posting, which I acknowledged in an edit, my aim was directed at those who say they've been long term VP users (but probably haven't been), their purpose being to damage VP's reputation, and it's becoming more frequent IMO. It's not all that unheard of: take TripAdvisor - it's been known for competitor hotels/restaurants to post negative reviews on their competitors' TripAdvisor review page; and vice-a-versa, some TripAdvisor reviews read as though they've been written by the establishment's marketing manager - and they probably have been. I don't see any reason to assume that VP's forum would be protected from posts with suspect intentions.

Kinvermark wrote on 6/16/2019, 8:50 AM

@Dexcon

Don't worry, your post was absolutely fair comment! And a really good observation.

@dirk-g

If people are allowed to make unsubstantiated and mostly inaccurate negative claims, then surely we have the right to refute them?

Like this bit of nonsense:

For example, they gush about the stabilizer, but it's a complete joke. As it's always been in Vegas. Many other things are still just...old.

None of which is true.

D7K wrote on 6/16/2019, 8:56 AM

I wish there was tighter moderation here.

You mean you want only 'positive' posts about Vegas, not honest ones? That would get boring real quick.

No, I mean like your post about the stablization in Vegas 16. It is very good if you spend sometime learning it rather than posting fake news. I have MercalliPRO which I think is the gold standard and on many clips the new VP16 stabilization can come very close. Tight moderation means to me that unless you show examples of what your issues are with all the needed information for one can help. Also I really don't care if someone thinks a different NLE is better is this a forum where users are helped by serious long time users with issues and for me anything else is noise. I don't care about "boring" I can about useful information.

AVsupport wrote on 6/16/2019, 9:09 AM

trialling the latest Resolve beta, I found again that:

- dual monitor support is not as good as in VP, doesn't handle mixed resolutions well, and no 'Program monitor' without dedicated hardware

- and whilst initial timeline playback appears faster and smoother [using 4K XAVCS], once you apply 3rd party plugins, the overall performance I saw was worse than doing the same in VP.

- yes of course the grading, but I'm not a fan of the interface, and roundtripping sux.

waiting for VP17 and supporting development if they keep doing their job ;-).

karma17 wrote on 6/16/2019, 1:43 PM

@AVsupport Agree completely. There are several OFX that won't run in DR. And as far as interface goes, yes, there's no competition, hands down for Vegas. And with regard to grading, it can become as complex or as simple as people want it to be and DR has high-level functionality there, but for me, if something is shot decently to begin with, as it should be, often fairly basic adjustments are all that is needed. A Lut node, lift, gamma, gain, tweaking the 3-way, contrast, sat, skin tones, maybe a mask here and there. All things that can be done in Vegas. I also have Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite, that plugs in nicely to V, and as far as I'm concerned, there's little I can't do. And yes again, round tripping sux. Magix has really come a long with Vegas and I'm excited too to see just how far they are going to push it. My guess is eventually into being one of the top three NLEs.

karma17 wrote on 6/16/2019, 1:54 PM

Saw this video on You Tube and thought it was a fairly unbiased review of Vegas against Premiere, and I really appreciated that. Often, people seem to have an agenda or should I say almost a vendetta against certain programs. It was nice to see a review that honestly seemed to balance the positive and negative. And this review is a little old, so things have even improved more for Vegas since this was done.

Turd wrote on 6/17/2019, 9:10 AM

Saw this video on You Tube and thought it was a fairly unbiased review of Vegas against Premiere, and I really appreciated that. Often, people seem to have an agenda or should I say almost a vendetta against certain programs. It was nice to see a review that honestly seemed to balance the positive and negative. And this review is a little old, so things have even improved more for Vegas since this was done.

A little old, but a great link!

The "pro" on HitFilm says Vegas is definitely not a compositor??? Seriously??? The Magix PR machine needs some oil!!!

Former user wrote on 6/17/2019, 5:26 PM

Interesting "Balance." May I contribute, since I own both VEGAS Pro and DaVinci Resolve Studio (using the v16 Beta at the moment):

Sounds like the OP has made up his mind. Fair enough, but it makes me wonder why he bothered posting at all?

Some more balanced "facts" for others:

1) Davinci render performance is fast. In many cases much faster than Vegas. Output formats are limited, however, and never as good/ size efficient as Handbrake x264/265. Vegas can frameserve to Handbrake and has other hooks into FFMPEG through Happy Otter Scripts and Vegasaur.

Absolutely incorrect. (also, love how you put "facts" in quotes)

Resolve covers all the proper bases for Output Formats:
1. AVI, MOV, MXF (OP1A and OP-ATOM), and MP4 Containers
2. Cineform, Grass Valley HQ/HQX, DNxHD/DNxHR/DNxUncompressed, ProRes (macOS), XDCAM, XAVC I/S, MPEG-4, H.264, HEVC, and obvious Broadcast High-End Video Formats
3. Wave, AAC Audio - Largely Irrelevant. It's an NLE, not a DAW.
4. MC/PT AAF, FCP7 XML, FCPX XML, PP XML, CMX3600 EDL

Formats like WMV/WMA, and a lot of QT7 stuff, are legacy and simply aren't relevant. Resolve does not export for DVD/BD, cause it isn't worth supporting that at this point in time. You can stay on VEGAS Pro for that.

The only interchange formats that I found reliable out of VEGAS Pro was FCP7/Resolve XM (caveat - video tracks will be backwards when exporting). I tested all of them, heavily, with both NLEs (Premiere Pro, Resolve, FCPX) and DAWs (Pro Tools, Cubase Pro, Logic Pro X, Samplitude Pro).

MC AAF was very unreliable. PT AAF resulting in clips/channels on random tracks - beyond unusably bad. The FCPX XML support hasn't been touched since added, so unless the other NLE reads XML 1.1, good luck (Resolve won't read this). Same thing goes for it's PP XML/PRPROJ support.

Most NLEs will take FCP7 XML. Just make sure you check the track order after importing a VEGAS-Exported XML file.

VEGAS Pro does support more Export formats, especially the consumery and obsolete/deprecated stuff... Resolve Ingests far more formats than it Exports, however - which is common with high end NLEs. VEGAS still requires QT7 for some formats. Resolve implements CODEC support natively (like Avid and Adobe).

Resolve can easily render out a high quality Intermediate (i.e. DNxHR), which FFMPEG can use to render more "efficient" H.264/HEVC files. This is irrelevant.

2) Davinci timeline preview performance is NOT better than Vegas. It sometimes appears to be better because it caches transitions, text, etc. in the background. But you have to wait for this to happen, and it can take quite a while. Setting Vegas to preview-Auto will almost always get you decent playback; not true with Davinci equivalent. Davinci STUDIO ($300) does have some h264/h265 hardware decoding support that HELPS with nasty editing formats like h265 drone footage; Davinci Free does not include this. AMD VCE support is only in beta at the moment.

Resolve's Preview Performance absolutely decimates VEGAS Pro's. Resolve Studio is $300. An upgrade to VEGAS Pro Edit is $149 during promotional periods. VEGASAUR is $99. Upgrades to Pro or Suite are largely comparable with Resolve Studio's pricing, or more, outside of promotional periods (which seem to increasingly be all periods, these days!). The free version of Resolve is a nice application that is superior VEGAS Pro with a few caveats (like the lack of an HDR/3D/VR workflow in Free, and no HEVC export - basically "Professionals" have to pay for those workflows), but if you're actually going to compare the two seriously... compare the paid SKU with VEGAS Pro's. If VEGAS was worth paying for, Resolve Studio certainly is...

Also, the disparity in preview performance between Free and Studio only exists with LongGOP CODECs, due to the lack of GPU Decode Acceleration.

Even with QSV Acceleration, I find VEGAS Pro almost unusable with LongGOP media above Good (Auto), and even there it bogs down easily once you start using effects. ESPECIALLY UHD/4K media (doesn't support 6-8k). My machine isn't even close to low-end - I edit 4K in Resolve Studio. VEGAS just performs terribly. Resolve does not have this problem, and it's ResolveFX (all 60+ of them - which do not replicate functionality on other pages... so that number is very impressive) play in real time even on relatively meager system.

For professional workflows, the footage is largely NOT going to be H.264/HEVC/AVCHD/XAVC S. It will be a format like ProRes or DNxHR… and even without the Decode Acceleration on those formats, Resolve will easily lap VEGAS Pro in preview performance. It isn't even close, really, especially once you start adding effects. If the only reference for resolve you have is the Free Version with H.264/XAVCS/HEVC footage, then you have no idea what you're missing...

This is without Render Caching on. That's an option, not a requirement (the default is off, and to only Cache Fusion output after 5 seconds of inactivity - and I doubt most beginners are going into the menu and turning it on immediately, unless their machines are potatoes)... Most Pro NLEs have this option. Even Pinnacle Studio render caches by default :-P That is what "Prerenders" in VEGAS Pro are (so this "workaround" exists here, as well).

In either program, it is far better to use proxies or intermediates. This is the standard professional workflow. Both have automated methods to do this, but Vegas with Vegasaur or Happy Otter Scripts is more flexible and easier.

You can edit H.264 and a lot of HEVC (lower resolution/framerates) without Proxies in Resolve Studio without any issues. Optimizing and Transcoding is still optimal because even without performance issues, per say, scrubbing is not great with those formats due to the GOP structure. Premiere Pro has similar performance with H.264 and HEVC. I don't think the QSV vs. NVENC is the only factor. I simply think the engines in those NLEs are far superior to that in VEGAS Pro. Premiere Pro doesn't use NVENC, only QSV... but it also has a CUDA-optimized playback engine backing it, like Resolve.

3) Editing fluidity is far better in Vegas. Once you get a complex timeline in Davinci, and you try to get your edit timings tight, you will start to see the brilliance of Vegas.

This reads like propaganda...

Resolve has better Far Better Media Management and Metadata handling. It has better Trim Tools. It has far better keyframing and retiming on the timeline than VEGAS Pro. It has Multiple [and] Stacked Timelines. The UI operates at a consistent 60 FPS. It is far more stable, and it has higher quality decoder and encoders, which helps it to perform better. The editing in Resolve is every bit as good as VEGAS Pro.

VEGAS is not Media Composer. Seriously...

Resolve has a ton of QoL and workflow features that require [in many cases] paid addons for VEGAS Pro, and a full set of interchange options that actually work properly/are kept up to date. You want to Batch Transcode Clips in VEGAS Pro? Have VEGASAUR ($99, on top of VEGAS Pro), or have fun marking 300 regions on the timeline to use that stock Batch Render Script (your AE will hate you).

4) Applying motion transforms (e.g. Ken Burns effect) and easing in Davinci is currently a nightmare. No automation at all, and you have to fiddle around endlessly to get the look you want. Many are complaining about this ; maybe they will fix it?

Dynamic Zoom is 2 clicks in Resolve, and only because it isn't the default Timeline Viewer tool choice (Transform is). Select it, and what you're talking about is trivial to set up. This has been in Resolve for a while, so clearly you just haven't used the application enough to know what it's actually capable of.

For Easing, Resolve has curves for this built into the timeline... It has curves for keyframing (including OpenFX and ResolveFX) as well as Retiming.

In Vegas this is a breeze, with (notice a pattern here) great support from Vegasaur, etc.

The only pattern I'm noticing is you're dependent on a $100 tool with a bad UI/UX for worse results/workflow than you get out of the box with Resolve, PP, MC, and FCPX.

5) Colour in Davinci is unsurpassed by any other program. Nothing more to be said. In my view it is worth the hassle of a roundtrip workflow from Vegas.

VEGAS Pro is only - at best - on par with Resolve for editing, and that's being generous. For Media Management, MGFX/VFX, and Audio it is far behind. Color goes without saying... Additionally, the performance simply isn't there, and VEGAS Pro has almost no scalability to speak of. The interchange options are subpar and out of date, so even "round tripping" can be problematic for some people...

And that's ignoring all of the other functionality in Resolve, which completely negate the need for much of the plug-ins that have been bundled with VEGAS Pro (Pro) or Suite.

Fusion VFX/MGFX, Object Removal, Optical Flow and Speed Warp Retiming, an Excellent Stabilizer. World Class Keyers and Trackers, ADR Tools, Foley. The Resolve FX are as good better than anything equivalent you can get from 3rd parties, and it's native functionality completely obsoletes plug-in packages like Ignite Pro, Mercalli, Colorfast 2, etc.

Additionally, there are a lot of high end plug-ins that don't support VEGAS Pro, as well... Unfortunately.

P.S. Decklink Card is barely more than VEGASAUR, and works with almost everything on your machine... not just Resolve (unlike VEGASAUR).