some people belive hearsay vs actual experience. It's got a free trial & runs on almost anything. No reason not to give it a whirl (not like other nle's that have high requirements & are limited in trials)

Firstly, VEGAS is not marketed as a Professional product like FCP & Avid. Hell... is VEGAS even marketed at all?

Plus, people don't want to download and TRY a new product when they are acustomed to something already. I think they are scared of the Learning Curve. (Especially when they are already using an NLE that has a steap one.)

Also, when it comes to NLE's... Name & Peer Recognition are HUGE.

Our Main editor swore by Avid... until he got a Hollywood job using FCP. Now he's a total FCP convert and talks trash on Avid. I'm still trying to get him behind the wheel of VEGAS... but as soon as I open it up; he looks at the interface, compares it to the look of Avid and FCP... laughs, calls it Consumer... and won't touch it.

They say don't judge a book by its cover... but IMHO VEGAS does need a makeover.

Maybe one day Sony will market VEGAS and get it/us the recognition it deserves. (I haven't even seen Sony marketing XPri.) Maybe VEGAS certification is a step in the right direction to becoming "Professional'.

All I know is that this is ALL a step in the right direction. It used to be that people would look in bewilderment. So that means things are improving.

Dave

here when someone will start in video editing world, i always ask:

- what software to edit u will use?
- Premiere
- why?
- "I DON'T KNOW, but everyone here use it"

so, what can we say?

i say:

"good, but after a month, please, try vegas."

I recently spent some time (as a client) editing with an Avid-only post production house. The suite I was in used Avid Symphony. My producer friend who accompanied me( a stereotypical Mac/FCP user who poo-poos anything Microsoft and not FCP) and the editor assigned to us took quite a liking to degrading Sony Vegas - in a fun-loving kinda way, of course. They feel it is not a professional product, akin to iMovie. They agree it's "great at off-line rough cuts, but you really need the 'power' of an more professional NLE for the final mix."

One thing I noticed during the edit, was how much clicking and clacking the editor did on the keyboard just to do something simple like trimming a section of video. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, "Just trimming the video." I thought to myself... I only have to click and drag an event to trim it in Vegas; why is there so much typing involved in Avid? Anyway, that's a whole other thread.

So, you know what I did? I downloaded the free version of Avid. Yup, there is one but you'll never find it going through the front door - I didn't. I had to Google it to find it. Yes, it's on the Avid site, but buried. Of course, the program is limited... but it was enough to make me wonder WHY IN THE HELL WOULD ANYONE USE AVID?

I installed it and went through the (very informative) on-line demos. I was able to learn the basics of editing and exporting in about two hours. At first, I felt as if I had become a member of an elite group of editors... since I was editing in the exact same interface as the post house I hire. I mean, my screen looked the same as my editor's!! Wow! Lookit me, Ma!

It only took a few minutes to chuck the whole thing and uninstall it. So many complicated techniques, so much red tape, so much clicking to do the simplest of tasks. Sure, I don't know the product well, but it was easy to figure out Vegas is so intuitive. I had to go back to Vegas and get clean again.

So, I'm in a quandary... I will always use Vegas, but am kinda embarrassed to admit it - as the 'professional video production community' looks down at it. Gosh... a product so good with professional capabilities, but probably will never attain a place in the upper eschelon of NLEs.

Thoughts?

I saw some comment in a review that with V7's flexible layout options you can make Vegas look more like some of the other editors (e.g. by putting the timeline on the bottom and the preview window on the top right).

Maybe Vegas could help other NLE's migrate by including some layout presets that more closely model what they are used to.

As far as somebody saying it looks consumer, if he had seen an open project with tons of envelopes and keyframes showing on the timeline, would it still look like a consumer app? But who cares. You know what they say about opinions... (like something else, everybody's got one). It's kind of a funny argument, because most of the pro apps have consumer "lite" versions with essentially the same UI.

I wouldn't sweat it. Use what you like. But while Vegas is a great app, it's barely a blip on the NLE radar.

If you look at all the top line video production programs at various colleges, Vegas isn't being taught at ANY of them. It's either Premiere, Avid or FCP. Common sense would dictate that you should NOT use Vegas if you're looking to get hired at most production houses.

You just saw first hand the power of Avid, something that no other NLE has been able to challenge. As you said you were editing exactly the same as any high end Avid system. You could take that project from that freeware and be up and running on a SYmphony in minutes.

As to all the clicking. Yes it's a pain. But let me ask you this. Have you EVER seen an Avid system get vision and audio out of sync making a cut. Want to show someone the power of Vegas, having them see you do that really impresses the pros.

Bob.

Hey Bob,

I'm a little confused by your comment (which probably says more about me than you). Are you saying that Avid, despite its cumbersome workflow, still shames Vegas when it comes to reliability and final result?

I've been a Vegas guy for almost four years now. Never used anything else other than Premiere. I remember the first time I looked at Vegas. Thought it looked and functioned oddly and probably wasn't worth the investment of time. But after five minutes of fiddling with it, I was hooked. The speed and intuitiveness of the interface just made me feel so much more creative. Hard to explain.

I remember loading Premiere one last time to look at an archived project. I think I actually winced. Unless it's changed radically in the last few years, I wouldn't go back there for anything.

I honestly could care less whether someone looks askance at my using Vegas. As long as the pros here tell me that, technically speaking, it's every bit as capable at producing great video and audio as the others, I'm happy.

Both FCP and AVID have lots of clicking and typing to do simple stuff. I just got a FCP system and all that I can say is that I work in Vegas 100% faster. Adding a dissolve transition is like launching the space shuttle in these programs, I swear! I've managed to get some important keyboard short cuts down and can edit almost as fast as Vegas but it's a pain. The whole transition work-flow blows chunks on FCP, IMO.

Why is Vegas the only NLE that does cross-fades when overlapping clips? Makes so much sense.

With that said... FCP isn't the entire story over "there." Motion, Live Type, and Soundtrack are so well integrated it's almost sickening. Right click on a clip, or a whole range of clips, hit "send to Motion" and you are there. Make some changes, hit apple+S, then apple+tab to get back to FCP and your changes are there waiting for you. Motion is slick, not as deep as After Effects but good for about 99% of what I do. Instead of key-framing the same thing again and again, you apply a behavior for stuff like bouncing, spin, re-size, text drop, etc. It's visual, so you just extend the behavior bar to increase the amount of time the behavior takes or shorten to quicken the behavior. Lot's of cool templates. Also, Live Type is a wonderful titler with a similar system for animating text.

Vegas is a much better NLE, but lacks in some areas (motion key-frames, titler) that FCP makes up for in spades. All in all, it's about equal. Free-form-make-it-up-as-you-go-Vegas vs. Think-before-you-edit-and-use-the-trimmer-FCP.

The Avid/FCP work-flow is so entrenched in the industry that it's almost like how MS Word has become the default word processing program. Sure, there is better stuff--no doubt, but if you are trying to work with 99% of everyone else you can't afford to be the odd man out.

I wish Apple would by Vegas and steal the time-line editing style for the next release of FCP :-)

"Adding a dissolve transition is like launching the space shuttle in these programs, I swear!" LOL!!!

Seriously, there is like 4 chapters in the 1,800 page manual devoted to teaching you how to make one clip fade into another clip. When you apply the transition (about 12 steps) it beeps like a dump truck backing up until you release the transition between the clips. You have almost no say in whether the transition gets applied to the clip on the left, the clip on the right, or both clips like you wanted in the first place. If you right click (alt+left click) and try and cut or delete the messed-up transition, Final Cut closes and your hard drives automatically reformat and the "Spinning Beach ball of Death" (apple's version of the MS "Blue screen of death") comes up and you have to reinstall the O/S, the apps, and redigitze all of your footage.

You *can* operate Vegas essentially the same way as an Avid system, with the same keystrokes, excepting a few key elements such as insert edits, and there is a single key script for that.
Personally, I prefer the keyboard format of editing in Vegas, but that's just my own pref. I do like Avid Express HD, and occasionally sit with higher end systems, and it's nice to be able to transit to them. FCP drives me a little nutsy sometimes; Canopus Edius 4 has it on the ball quite nicely, but it's still not Vegas by any stretch. Edius is very much a mouse-oriented application, however.

Basically yes.
But you've got to understand this is horses for courses stuff.
A boradcaster can easily have $100Ms tied up in facilities, studios, edit suites etc. And their staff are paid a wage. Productions are bottom line costed too. An hour in an edit suit costs the production X dollars and comes out of the productions budget.

In this environment averyone does their bit and does it right. Sound guys record spot on audio, graphics do their things and the editors cut, oftenly to a supplied EDL. If the audio is bad it goes back to audio with a very nasty note. That just cost the production money. And they book edit suites, say for 4 hours, 4 hours are up you're out of there cause someone else has got that suite booked. Same editor, same suite, next job. Didn't get in done in 4 hours, tough book more time, when it's available, ah but wait it goes to air in two day, tough!

In that environment no one wants to make a stuff up, you can bet your bottom dolaar you screw up and everyone knows about it.

You as editor might thing say the audio could use a bit of sweetening and think you'll be a good chappy and fix up audio's screwup. Yeah right and if it goes pear shaped who gets blamed?
And you want the director and producer to spin their wheels while you do it or do you just tell them maybe they should get audio to fix it?

I've never worked in that environment, I never want to either. I've done a couple of supervised edits, just real low key stuff where everyone's good mates and I wasn't charging $100s per hour and even that's pretty intense.

Bob.

Some editors take one look at the Vegas interface, see it as unfamiliar and assume it's not easy to use. We know they are being short sighted and missing out on a very powerful tool. But editors, especially in the pro space are creatures of habit. Ya gotta give Apple props for breaking in so strongly, but Avid int here infinite wisdon, made it too easy for them.

I tell my custoemrs that for vlaue and bang for the buck, Vegas is in a league of it's own. The new HDV editing is very nice, and it was a long time coming. While I agree with spot that Cineform and initermediary solutions provide a superior solution, the simple truth is that for most Vegas users, the new HDV editing is just what we wanted.

I'm still dissapointed that Sony still doesn't have a hardware partner or solution of there own. I also think they are missing theball by not using GPU acceleration. I was hoping for Blu-Ray support in this rev, perhaps we'll get it as a dot (or in Vegas case alpha) update.

Vegas 7DVD at $499.95 is tremndous value. A handful of resellers are offering a new coupon that gives you not only $75 off, but a free copy of Cinescore. Now that's a GREAT deal.

Gary
Videoguys Vegas page

I use vegas, i like the workflow,, I also use edius, and sometimes avid ,i really don't care what anyone uses, if it works for them great !
Who cares,, Sony obviously has the base they want and thats the way it is,, they aint goin broke with vegas, and they dont have the headaches they would have if even 20 % of vegas users were broadcast, so use it and enjoy it and dont worry about the Jones's,

.dse said..............Canopus Edius 4 has it on the ball quite nicely, but it's still not Vegas by any stretch. Edius is very much a mouse-oriented application, however.
I disagree,edius keyboard functions are very good to me, set them how you want,,,, Still like vegas better though.

Give an expert Vegas user and an expert user of _any_ other app package that lists for under $1000 USD a pile of diverse/common a/v media. Give both users 48 hrs to create a 30 second spot mastered for

XDCAM HD,
Digibeta,
DVD,
WMV,
a psp + ipod video 'cast,
a .wav file for radio,
plus a soundtrack cooked onto a redbook-ready CD...

and I bet the aggregate Vegas-generated output will look better and sound better than the output of any other app's no matter who judges it.

I'd say thats money in the bank !!!

Yes indeed that's Vegas's strength.

It's also Vegas's weakness and that also needs to be acknowledged.

ok farss, i'm thick as a brick,, splain please

In order to be able to handle such media you have to throw all the traditional constraints of how a NLE system works out the window.
That's good and it's bad.
Traditional editing systems were totally timecode based. Now that's a BIG problem with media without timecode, they just couldn't cope, you had to dub the media to something that did have timecode. A right royal PIA. Except for when things go pair shaped or you have to move projects to other systems.
When I first started out with Vegas I was pretty damn arrogant about how good it and I was and how I could run rings around the old hands. SInce then I've learned some painful lessons.
This is not to dump on Vegas by any stretch, it's still the only NLE I use, I still amaze others with it's capabilies.
But when you hit the brick walls of Vegas's limitations there's no way around them. It's part of the design I believe. You want to fix them, well in the process you'd kill off all the things that make Vegas what it is.
Sure I'd love them to be fixed, if they could without destroying what it is that makes it so usefull....
Over time as the whole industry moves to file based acquisition these issues will fade away but that's going to be a long time coming.
Please don't get me wrong. This isn't a dump on Vegas but you've also got grasp just what Vegas is before you go dumping on systems like Avid else you can (as I have done) get a lot of egg on your face.

Bob.

Vegas is one of those programs where the user can do at the speed of what he is thinking. The more I have to pause to do something within a program the more that program owes me in terms of time and productivity lost.