Also mention that Vegas has been very innovative

First to do 24p
First desktop NLE to have surround mixing


If you ever get face to face with them again, set up a loop and start doing color correcting and adding FX to the clip. Then turn to them and say, see Final Cut can't do that.

Strategic, I feel your pain. You already know this, but Marketing Agencies are extremely image / style conscience, with buzz words, rumors and tales of the latest big job bouncing of the walls. Apple has done a good job building their market in the late 80's,90's, but today there are many more options with PCs. Most Ad Agencies are still in the past when concerning editing/hardware options for SD commercials. The HD market is forcing a few doors open, thou Apple is trying to slam it shut.

So, I would be careful about making too noise, just let your performance change their minds. Once they figure it out, $$$ talking, then the pretty Apple system will be in the boardroom for show.

Being the first can be very rough, so be smart, be tough.

Just ask, should I use the best tool for the job, or the pretty one?

You may want to very nicely inquire as to why they are sending you less work. Then be ready to justify the value you bring to their projects. How you provide that value really should not be an issue.
I would be ready to name drop a few large well known projects that were done with Vegas but I would stay away from the hard sell. Some of these people are very insecure and can easily have their egos crushed. A big no, no, in such an image conscience bussiness. Good Luck!!!

You know what we need, a list of reference projects / shows/ who's using kind of thing. This probably wasn't viable in the past but now that Vegas is getting more industry recognition perhaps it's time for a few more of us to come out of the closet.
Bob.

If they came back to me after that kind of snub they would find that my rates had suddenly gone UP!

Strategic,

If you have the space, get an old Mac-based Avid on eBay for peanuts. For very very little money, you will get something that looks big and impressive and can edit up to 30 minutes of video.

Just before the agency critters come over, boot up the blinkenlights and put up some bars on ye olde CRT, then show your video from Vegas controlled from an NLE keyboard (any NLE) that doesn't look like an office computer keyboard.

Your PC can be hidden under your workstation/desk, that's where Mac users have kept their PC rendering systems for a long time.

There are also people who have old Avids (Media Composer, etc.) that they're not using but haven't had the heart to just throw away, you could offer them free hazardous waste disposal (this is not a trivial issue in California at least, when it comes to electronic equipment).

As a last resort you could tell them that what you are running is a secret test version of Apple's next generation FCP for Intel processors, and that it has to be tested on a regular PC until Apple's professional Intel boxes are available. :O) :O)

Agencies create based on what they think will bring them creativity awards from their peers, not based on what will bring in maximum business for their clients. There are exceptions, but they are really few...

I'm sure the FCP guys went through hell for years with "What, you don't use an Avid? Sorry, that doesn't sound right, I don't think we can do business."

It reminds me of an event I shot years ago on an XL1. This event was also covered by a guy with a big 2/3" Betacam SP camera.

Guess who is getting the reorders? I am, because my footage looked much better, and fortunately for me the people who order don't understand the status difference.

Strategic...

AMEN brutha, AMEN!!!

ouch Bob... why does it have to be 'the closet'... lol.

couldn't it be... 'from underneath the blanket'... or 'behind the curtains'... or 'busting out of the attic'?

Maybe you shouldn't let them into your office any more.

If their issue is actually technical, like they want to feel like they could have their editor tweak your stuff, then maybe you need to drag that old Mac back out of the closet (sorry Bigsole ;-) )
and run through moving a Vegas project over to FCP just so you can say you can provide it if they need it.

Otherwise, if they're just generally image concious then you can put some money into your suite. Get an Aeron chair, they're quite nice. And a color coded keyboard so that they feel like you din't just patch stuff together. Just make some aesthetic choices for the edit space.

You know, they may have lightened up about it simply because of Apple's announcement that they'll use Intel processors. Especially after the Macworld announcements that the systems were so much faster

Rob Mack

next time you could ask them "is it more important that the work looks good or that I have a Mac?"

Seriously. I said that to my boss when I said we should get out sister station a vegas system (wasn't a mac he wanted though.... it was premiere). And guess what... the guys in the next town up who swore (not sure what they use now) by their Premiere 6 with a Matrox RT2500 were ALWAYS two-three days late on their deadlines when giving us stuff to air.

All these suggestions are nice, but if this is an accurate representation of how the guy spoke:

"The Agency guy, “A PC? What da hell system is that? How do you edit on a PC?”

...you are dealing with an idiot, so going over his head will probably rock his undoubtedly already shaky boat with his superiors so that he will be looking to get even. Then the idiot wins and you lose.

I would wait him out and just present your best work and let it speak for itself. In other words, give it time.

John

Bob, I would LOVE to see such a list.

We know about Nightline. Any others?

(I know, I know. We've had this discussion before...why do we need such a list when we all know Vegas is the cat's meow, etc. Let's humor ourselves for a bit, shall we?)

No, you can't go over his head. It's good that they've started to come back for more edits and the best you can do is get the work done and be a joy to work with. If the work is good, timely, and they like you then they'll relent.

The shop I work for has been all Media100 since whenever (1993?) I wasn't here (although I did grip and electric work for them back then). Anyway, I imagine they had a similar experience. Back then M100 was the alternative to Avid-cheaper, fast, easy to use, and really good results. Obviously you were going to get the same response from all Avid shops, though.

Since then we built up a great business delivering finished products. We don't do any work that requires another edit house to work with our project files so it doesn't matter what we edit on. We'll soon drop M100 for Axio/Premiere. It still won't matter.

On the other hand, we have an editor we were farming out the overflow to. These were ongoing projects and we really did need him to be on the same edit system so we could manage the source media and revisit his movies with updates (It's training material). I kind of doubt that we'll continue to use him for this unless he at least adopts Premiere (shudder).

You can't keep every client. Be happy they're coming back. And spruce up that edit bay. Hell, you could do that just with furniture!

Rob Mack

Get a used/junked Mac and spend a weekend putting your PC's components inside :D

Seriously, though... my advice would be -- get a used Mac or PowerBook, get FCP of some flavor, and bone up on how to look "comfortable" working with it. Then, if someone comes by give them the dog and pony show on the Mac, working on whatever project you choose.

Worse case scenario, at least you'll have native support for EVERY CODEC IMAGINABLE and your resume will look great with both FCP and Vegas when the time comes to find other clients...

At least, that's my plan...

I'm not really qualified to comment in this thread since I bought Vegas to create/edit my holiday video and stills onto dvds.

Reading this thread I realize that I have gotten a much better program than I thought and that it is probably a classic case of overkill.
I did, however, first check out various open source and budget ware and didn't get the possibilities I was looking for.

One thing I *can* comment on is some of the advice given in this thread.
I wholeheartedly agree with those that say - "do not step on the guys ego".

Let your work speak on your behalf.

Ayath

That is a common and yet very strange mentality. We live in a day of educated stupidity. People today do truly know a lot more than people used to in general but this has lulled us into an educated pack mentality. Follow the pack they know what they are doing.

But do they?

I have had similar problems using Sonar. Just as a gag I replaced my Sonar splash screen with a new splash that includes a large graphic reference to being Pro-Tools compatible. I also chose a skin inside Sonar that resembled pro-tools just to stop the occasional sneers. ALthough no one has thought that I was actually using Pro-Tools they were more apt to assume that I must be using a fringe-culture equivalent.

I have even heard people running SAWstudio get grief for not using Pro Tools which strikes me as a bit too upity. I'd ten times prefer to go with SAW than with PT.

I am quite pleased with Vegas and quite pleased with Sonar. Between the two I can do anything I need to and anything anyone asks me to. SO I actually have no need to go elsewhere.

Whenever I hear of things like this I wonder how many carpenters get taken to task because their hammers aren't Stanleys.

I'm not even sure if that is the correct terminology, but the recent discussion of 3-Point editing being of the past got me thinking about which is better and why people choose, or gravitate towards, one style over another. This is just my .02 cents as I think out loud.

I tend to like the freestyle flow of Vegas over the more regimented NLEs such as Avid and FCP. It's not that I'm so creative that I can't work within the bounds of 3-point editing, it's just that I'm not that organized (usually) going into an edit session. I think Avid tends to be good when you need strong media management tools and have a producer sitting behind you telling you what they want. IMHO, Avid doesn't lend itself to trying lots of stuff on the fly and sort of "winging it" like Vegas does. Avid is good for turning out video that was planned in advance and that needs to follow a certain schedule or workflow. The stuff I edit usually never comes in as expected, so I seem to do lot's of damage control editing (you know what I mean). I've tried to learn Avid, but I sit there and think "man I can do this faster in Vegas" (or Speed Razor back in the day).

I think the standard Avid interface is what makes production houses buy it. They want to know they can hire an editor and have them know the system from day one. Freelance editors, hobbyists, or smaller shops like many of us, want a tool that allows us to create as we go and also a tool that is good at many things since we will be doing mostly everything ourselves. A big shop has a sound dept, a graphics team, etc, so Avid doesn't have to have the best audio tools or the best compositing tools, etc. That's a little off subject, I know. I guess my point is that for the solo person, something like Vegas is king because it's designed to be intuitive from a solo point of view.

Just my .02 cents.

"Whenever I hear of things like this I wonder how many carpenters get taken to task because their hammers aren't Stanleys. "

Bravo! I love a good analogy! It's like....uh....

"That was all two months ago & the Agency is now having me do some work for them again, not as much as before but some. I found out why they brought some work back…Some of their clients wanted their spots to look like the ones I did in the past. There editor & FCP system could not replicate the work. In addition when it came to a fast turn around there guys using FCP never made the deadlines. Where every time they needed a miracle – I delivered with Vegas."

I hope you charged them a SIGNIFICANT increase over your previous work. I would have.

Strategic, I found a very easy answer to most of the worries that Mac people have, I tell them I can output my video in Quicktime format if they need it. I tell them I will make sure I have the same Quicktime codec plug-ins and that I can burn a DVD Data disk and send it to them. And it really works btw.

When my son was in college, he needed some video downloaded from some online archives. I downloaded them (legally) loaded up in Vegas then output to Quicktime, burned a CD and he took it to school and loaded it up in the schools' FCP suite and took it from there. No problem what so ever.