Hi All

Fuzzy John wrote on 11/2/2003, 10:37 AM
I am a newcomer to Vegas and also a newcomer to digital video editing. I am gonna be doing this at a personal level, but I like to use quality, powerful software.

For a little over a week I have tried several other "trial" versions and one by one they all failed me. Vegas is the one that survived.

The trial version that Adobe provides for Premiere absolutely sucks. The retail may be better but I am not willing to spend that much money without getting to do a decent trial.

I also tried Ulead's MediaStudio Pro which seemed powerful but it drove me crazy with settings changing by themselves and not being able to get back. I was also disappointed because the final rendering to MPEG2 seemed to be rather poor mainly when the scene changed rapidly. It could have been that I did not have the right options set.

Vegas demo does not allow rendering to MPEG2 but I was very pleased with the quality of the AVI. And I just hope that once I buy the retail of Vegas+DVD the MPEG2 files will be OK.

The camera I have is the Sony DCR-DVD300 and the software that comes with it (Pixela ImageMixer) is just about useless. The only need I have for it is to retrieve the video clips from the camera. Hopefully in the near future Sony will include a stripped down version of Vegas with their cameras.

I have read quite a few posts in here and I do have some questions of my own:

1. I have not seen in Vegas the ability to import video from the MiniDVD directly. Is that possible with the unlocked version? I know that Ulead's MediaStudio Pro can do it. If not, what other choices do I have (freeware or shareware). I would like to be able to import the files from MiniDVDs formatted in Video mode as well as VR mode.

2. I would appreciate a link to a website that has a decent tutorial in video editing.

3. I suppose that in order to preserve video quality I should stay away from MPEG2 until the final rendering and that I should do all editing in AVI format. Would that be uncompressed AVI? Is AVI compression lossless?

Thank you,
John

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 11/2/2003, 11:18 AM
1. I have not seen in Vegas the ability to import video from the MiniDVD directly. Is that possible with the unlocked version?

I don't know. I think that's more a function of your drive. I wouldn't put one of those mini dics in any of my drives. They've been known to self destruct and really tear up the drive.

2. I would appreciate a link to a website that has a decent tutorial in video editing.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/%7Ewvg/tutorial-menu.htm

3. I suppose that in order to preserve video quality I should stay away from MPEG2 until the final rendering and that I should do all editing in AVI format. Would that be uncompressed AVI? Is AVI compression lossless?

If you have a digital camera Vegas will bring it into the application in digital format and you can save it back to DV tape with the DV NTSC or PAL avi templates. The advantage is DV AVI while compressed some is still very high quality and far less in size than uncompressed AVI.

While you should stay away from editing MPEG-2 if you can, meaning you have either AVI or DV source, sometimes you can't. I do it all the time. While somewhat problematical, with a little effort you still can get very good results editing MPEG-2 as source with Vegas.

As far as render quality, Vegas comes with a tuned version of the Main Concept Encoder. MC is a German company well respected for their encoders. Some think that the included MC encoder is one of the best MPEG-2 encoders you can get short of spending $$$$$$ for a hardware version.
MyST wrote on 11/2/2003, 12:03 PM
Here's a link that will help you learn more about Vegas.

http://www.blue7media.com/vegas/


M
jetdv wrote on 11/2/2003, 3:16 PM
You may want to look at the "Beginner's Corner" articles in the Vegas Tips, Tricks, and Scripts Newsletter
DGrob wrote on 11/2/2003, 5:28 PM
Welcome. Man, are you in for a treat. I came here by happenstance and have never had so much fun with a camera, a mouse and a keyboard. Stick around. DGrob
Fuzzy John wrote on 11/2/2003, 8:53 PM
Thanks all for the feedback. I can see already that I am in for a lot of fun. Tomorrow I will go ahead and order Vegas+DVD.

John
eejackson wrote on 11/2/2003, 9:12 PM
FuzzyJohn:

I too am pretty new to the world of video editing and to V4.0. I recently switched over from Pinnacle Studio 8 which at the time I thought was the greatest thing since sliced bread regardless of all it's limitations, bugs and constant crashes. This spring, my husband and I went to a local video seminar and we were so impressed with the Vegas demo we saw, that we came home and immediately made the purchase.

The users formun is priceless. I have had some very minor roadblocks with using V4.0, but I put up a post here and I kid you not, within minutes, someone has helped me work through my problem.

Good Luck...you won't regret making the pruchase

Lori J.
snicholshms wrote on 11/3/2003, 12:16 AM
Welcome aboard!
You will have a ball with Vegas! There's so mush it can do. You'll never get tired of learning new stuff. It's by far the easiest professional level NLE to learn. It's got the best support network of discussion forums filled with very knowledgeable users.
Check out:
http://www.creativecow.net/index.php?forumid=24
http://www.dmnforums.com/
and
www.vegastrainingandtools.com for some great training DVDs at a very reasonable cost. Get these!