I simple terms, it's a “Super EDL”. It's a Pro feature. Vegas doesn't have it.

To educate yourself on AAF, do a search for AAF Format.

Thanks Zipps! Sounds spiffing. I'll do that search right away! Always willing to learn from others.

Best regards,

Grazie

I see it has its birth in 1998 in Microsoft - yeah?

Webopedia:
Whether AAF ultimately achieves this goal will depend on whether the software companies that develop authoring tools adopt AAF.

Broadcast Engineering:
Great article even I can understand!
http://2002newsarchive.broadcastengineering.com/ar/broadcasting_aaf_superedl/

quoting from BE is this:
"The AAF Association has had a hard time communicating the benefits of this technology to the average user. But as soon as users understand how it will save them time and money, provide better quality and maybe even offer more creative choices, the demand will grow strong and loud."

I'd like to know how other NLE Pro platforms have taken to this?

Zipps, do you know where this is currently being used? Would be really neat to know. Maybe this is something that Sony Vegas is considering? What is your opinion of this? What advantages would this give us on Vegas4?

Thanks again for the invitation to go seek - excellent!

Grazie

I know that Premiere Pro is supposed to have AAF support now and I believe some of the bigger names have already had it.

I would imagine that AAF is definitely being considered for v5.

JBJones

Going back to the original question, I doubt that Sony's take over was anywhere on the radar when the Vegas development plans were being drawn up. Even if it was, I think AAF support would have been deliberately left out. AAF still hasn't been finalised, and the idea of producing interoperability software against a draft standard, for a consumer market, doesn't strike me as a good idea. Adobe have demonstrated AAF, but only between their own products (so far as I know).

Ian G.

Zippy et al: You personally would actually use AAF export for what specifically?

For example:

a) I absolutely need AAF export in Vegas because I need to roughcut a project in Vegas for eventual finishing on a [name it]. No fibbin' .

b) I absolutely need AAF export in Vegas because I saw it was on the Premiere feature list.

c) Other

also: Have you lost out on any jobs because AAF is not supported in Vegas? If so, we'd like hear about those jobs in detail- what kind of work is this? Can we see/hear some examples?

Anyway, we'd really like to know whether AAF is something people will really use or is it a "nice to know its there" type of thing. Its silly to spend too much time on a feature nobody will actually use when we could be concentrating on letting you FINISH completely within the Vegas environment. Still, if you guys really want AAF, tell us exactly why, and we'll consider it for a future release.

EPM, nicely put.

G

SonyEPM, you really need to work on this or he'll post again. He'll post again I tell you!

Also you really to work on an easier to way to create fire. The rubbing-the-sticks feature is pretty poor.

Lastly, I think that you are mistaken that Zippy is actually editing any projects.

>Lastly, I think that you are mistaken that Zippy is actually editing any projects.

He certainly does seem to be on a dedicated mission to find ANYTHING he can WHINE about. Seems more and more suspicious that any new user could find this many issues in such a short time if they were actually trying to use the product to really edit video for honest projects. How many variations on a theme does the average person use to do the real day-to-day work?

This AAF thing may be the most telling in a while. I had never heard of it either. Well, some of Zippy's bitches are the kind of nits a company usually hires QC product testers to find. Such a deal to get him for free.

EPM, no, I don't need AAF. Wouldn't have a need for it if were available. Please, just keep doing what you're doing. You're doing GREAT!

Oh, by the way...

The, Rub Sticks, No Fire, stuff has been great. Busterkeaton is an appropriate name -- verbal slapstick.

My take is AAF would be of little value if any to most. Ditto on any further enhancement of the bins. As I see it that's mostly just duplication of what you can already do in Windows and do quicker.

Adding "features" that just change names of takes, changing the thumbnail view, etc.. are more in the category of 'make work' fluff than actually helping get done with your project faster or work better.

My pet wished for feature I think could help many... simply adding a scale to the background of some FX filters like Color Curves so you could more precesily make adjustments would be a nice addition. Even just a simple grid pattern would be a big help.

Also more in the bells and whistles category would be a means to select a single template that would render seperate audio/video streams for output to DVD-A instead of needing to render twice.

I think that some people can get some use out of EDL/OMF/AAF type exports. Not everyone, but some.

One reason to pursue a thing like this is to create greater interoperability with other software. By doing this you can expose more people to Vegas who might otherwise never look at it.

It might be that this could be an add-on tool. The great thing about add-on tools is they generate more reviews which means more press which means more interest which means more sales which means more users which means more demand for useful tools...

The other great thing about add-on tools is that they take some of the load off of the core development team. They can work on core features (including the infrastructure for plug-in tools)

Bins is another issue. There IS room for improvement there. The main thing I'd like to see is something akin to an alias- an object that points to just a specific range in a media file. For instance, lets say I want to use a section from the middle of a file over and over. Yes I could just go find it and copy it from the timeline but it would be handy to save it just as-is in a bin. And if I want to change it's speed or reverse it and save that object in a bin that would be great. The bin object would be a "by-reference" object. It just points to other media rather than having to render that bit to make a clip.

On the poster frames... here's an example from my life. We've been shooting tabletops all day. I get in there to position the product and the camera operator rolls before I get out of the shot (damn him). Now in vegas the thumbnail I get is a wide shot of me, futzing. Great but I'd rather see a frame that tells me what shot this is. You can see what I mean here.

Another implication of setting poster frames. Lets say I've saved my project file but deleted the media. A year from now I need a few of the same product shots so I open the project and capture the media. Wouldn't it be great if Vegas actually saved the custom poster frames in the project file?

You can see here that a small feature could have bigger implications.

And being able to name generated media? Hate to say it but that's pretty obvious (and hurts no one). This is just another facet of the "by reference" object I was talking about.

Okay, back to aaf/omf/edl. The shop I work at does all of it's work in Media100 and Media100's 844 system. These two have a little interoperability via OMF files. I am the sole user of Vegas and, in that shop, I use it ONLY for frame grabs and for reference to tapes shot over the last 3 years. (It's all shot on DV but edited in these non-DV systems. They've been using the m100 forever and aren't about to change to Vegas-ever). The truth is that Vegas is much more efficient for what I do and doesn't tie up expensive hardware. However, no one will look at it because it can't fit into the existing environment. (In fact, the DV deck has no 1394 on it, only SDI. I use my own DSR11)

I guess that the point is that the more Vegas communicates with other systems the more inroads it will make. I think that Vegas is a great tool for most small shops-especially if some of your work is for the web.

And people should remember that just because a feature exists it doesn't mean you'll be forced to use it. No need for alarm.

Your point about more visual feedback in the tools is spot-on. I can't imagine this not happening in the next release (probably mid 2004?)

Rob Mack

Thanks. Feel free to use it on any other forum you frequent if they have a habitual idiot posting.

Maybe we'll start a meme

Rob,

I think we're overlooking the little hint in SonyEPM's post. He talks about spending time allowing users "to finish completely in the Vegas environment." I think that is major news, if it comes to pass.

Maybe you can elaborate. It seems like you can finish completely in vegas right now. But maybe my head is too wrapped around other ideas. (Fact is you can finish certain types of things in vegas)

Do you think that Vegas could ACCEPT edl/omf/aaf files from other NLE's and be used to finish those projects?

That's kind of roughly where I was going with the pro edl/omf/aaf argument. The lure of supporting this sort of thing is to attract new users from other camps. Possibly getting Vegas into shops that might otherwise not use it.

Tell me more...

Rob

The point is if people are already using high end NLE's, what makes you think they would switch to Vegas just because it supports some advanced edit list ability or other fluff? My beef with those looking for extra fancy and little used features found in some ultra high end NLE's is the old apples to oranges arguement. Those pricy applications have those kind of featues and a price tag to match. I for one don't want to see Vegas engineers wasting time and effort that only benefit 1% of current users in some pipe dream doing so will attract more users. Isn't that the main reason the SoFo division that made Vegas is now part of Sony?

SoFo's management had a bad habit of chasing after one dream after another and never focused on what it did best. To survive as a compnay SoFo was forced to sell off the best assets which is why it now says Sony Media Software at the top of the forum and no longer SonicFonndry.

Count me in as one more bloke who's happy with Vegas the way it is and I finish all my home videos in Vegas alone. Heck, even my special effects for intro titling was done by keyframing object properties in Vegas instead of After Effects (wait, I don't have After Effects=)

AFF? I didn't even know it exists. And for that matter a lot of complaints I read on the Vegas forum were for features I didn't know I'm supposed to need. For example, I read complaint about Vegas' poor titling application. I don't get it. Because what I do is gather all the assets (text, stills, etc..) for titling special effect from other applications (Photoshop for one) and keyframe their properties in Vegas. Vegas has great ability to keyframe object properties that its easy to create nice titles!

Well, I am sure Sony would be working on improving Vegas, AAF or what-have-you.

By the way, Billy Boy, that was a very interesting Zippy mouse over there! It was even funnier than a Zippy post, hahah=)!

Glad you liked it.

Can't take credit for creating the mouse character. Its one of several hundred animated GIF's that came in a package called Animation Explosion 500. I picked it up for under 10 bucks in the surplus software bin a few years back. The mouse has several other poses and there's a lot of other good animations in the package as well. Fun to play with. It was just a five minute project purely for fun. ;-)

BB,

I think you make some strong arguments so I'll try to match them.

My shop uses two higher end edit systems. One is mac based and the other is PC based.

Neither system is facile for streaming media. Each system requires a render and then a second render in Cleaner to get a web file. Using these for streaming media is like swatting flies with a shotgun.

We do a lot of different types of projects and vegas would be perfect for some of them. We're busy enough that if we could offload a project from a high end system to Vegas then we'd have that much more time available on that high end system. If we could take our old timelines and bring them into vegas we could definitely free up the expensive system for work that really requires them.

Last year we bid on a job to prepare presentations from a conference for webcast. Two days of shooting ith 2 cameras and then some really down and dirty trimming, titles, and compression. (about 30 hours of tape to capture afterwards-figure five days just to capture the footage after shooting, a few days to cut, time to render which ties up an edit station, and then time to re-render as WMV file). They wanted to pay $10,000. We did the math and found that we couldn't do it for that with our systems Especially because it would cut into other ongoing work that was under deadline. However, I think Vegas would have been perfect for it. The problem was getting Vegas in the door.

Now this example doesn't really address edl/omf/aaf but I hope it illustrates that Vegas could have a place in a mixed shop. These people don't need to switch to Vegas. Hell, Vegas costs about as much as a cameraman's day rate. It should be no big deal to put it on a system and go if you knew it would integrate well.

Personally I'd rather see the "fluff" as plug-ins. If people really need them they'll buy them from Sony or from third parties. But in order for that to happen the development team has to really get behind it and push. That alone will take time and resources but ought to yield a better payoff overall.

The thing is, Vegas isn't just being used by churches and wedding photographers and people making movies of their grandkids. There's plenty of interest from people a little farther up the production chain because Vegas could fit well at the bottom end of their operations. Eventually those people would realize that they could be doing an awful lot of their work with Vegas. They need a migration path.

Rob

Vegas already supports more options, file types, and has more features than any other system. After three years with Primere I have been so thrilled with Vegas. Anyone who actually uses Vegas and dosen't see that it is the most stable, most features system one can buy either dosen't know how to use it or exists in some deluded never-never land.

"Happy with Vegas the way it is." is really a good point and it's often made here. I think the two camps can be summarized like this:

-I'm happy with it the way it is
or
-I'd like it to be improved with xyz

Obviously when a piece of software revs there will be new features. And vegas will rev to a version 5. To my mind, the goal of that revision should be:

- Enhance the interface while keeping the basic design. You keep the existing interface but make some of the tools easier to use. More feedback. Sources of confusion, like pixel aspect ratios, addressed.
- Render speed. This can always be addressed. Truth is that, given a choice, people would rather not wait for renders at all.
- Stability. Aside from the occasional problem with some 1394 drives, stability is great. Just need to keep it that way.
- Project management. Improvements to make long form projects easier-like nested clipsand timelines, by-reference clips in the pool, etc. Improvements to project backups. Better integration of the vidcap file into any backup.
- Media aquisition. Review the vidcap tool. Integrate it more closely with projects. Provide tools to import text based log files for batch capture
- Interoperability with other software. Promote plugins. Work on tools to import and export from other NLE software.
- Competitive features. Where other products have good ideas Vegas needs to do them one better.

And all of this needs to come in around the same price as Vegas 4. I'd say that whatever won't fit into that price point ought to be provided in plug-ins.

Rob Mack