I woke up this morning and Cliff was throwing VEgas outta the window. Now we have a prodigal son returning to the fold, what IS gonna happen tomorrow?

But seriously, often I am asked how long Previews take and renders and so on. But when I SHOW people just WHAT VEgas can do, off-the-bat, their jaws drop. And then I sprinkle some Script-Dust over things I create and they can't make out out whether its a graphic or a word processor or DAW they are looking at!! - Luv it!

Yes I have issues with VEgas and now with the advent of MS7 and so on, VEgas will be shimmying down the red carpet no doubt. Nah, stay with the name Vegas. "Thank yah very much!"

Grazie

I first edited with Vegas when it was V5 and Sonic Foundry. It has always been hard to explain to people.

Some people are suggesting installing 32 bit and 64 bit. Why? Can't just one do the job?

Maybe I should just use 8.0 and XP Pro.

"Maybe I should just use 8.0 and XP Pro."

Based on what's been written here lately, and depending on what format you're shooting in, that may be the best path to follow right now.

Now Now Grazie - I haven't thrown the baby out with the bath water just yet ;)

To say I'm frustrated is an understatement, but right now, I'm also dealing with Cineform Tech Support because I can't get the latest version of Neo Scene to install correctly - Vegas Pro just won't see NeoScene version 1.4, but it sees version 1.3.6 no problem - according to CF Tech Support, ver 1.4 issues are showing up with others as well so this may all have a tie in that has yet to be resolved ;)

I've put a gun to the proverbial head of SONY Vegas Pro but I haven't pulled the trigger just yet...

Maybe I need to actually restore my base install and start over again - I've been avoiding it, but it may be something I have to do whether I like it or not.

Cliff Etzel
Videographer : Producer : Web Designer
bluprojekt
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Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q6600 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 4GB Corsair Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Drive: WD 640 7200RPM Black Series | Vid Card: nVidia GT7200LE

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB RAM | OS: Win7 x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 7200RPM

I just had a client drop off a job. Needs to be converted to NTSC and made into a looping DVD for a trade show. Whole video was done in iMovie.
Hard to argue that iMovie's optical flow processing does not blow Vegas clean out of the water, image stabilisation is just one click and it's done, slomo looks perfecto too. I'd have to bounce footage out of Vegas into AE to get this quality.
Now the fun begins, iMovie for some reason has made the client's little movie into 720p25 mp4, it looks fine however trying to use Vegas to convert this to 60i is not looking all that great. Again I could run this through AE to get a better outcome but meh, it's good enough for the money.
Vegas needs more than a name change, it needs a heart transplant. It used to be at the head of the pack but the pack did not stay still and for many things it's now at the back of the pack quality wise. No one pretends iMovie is a "pro" application so how can Vegas be called "pro" when it's quality of output is below the standard of even consummer grade applications.
On the other hand I have to declare why I got this job. The client has had grief from the beginning with his new Mac, he's about to throw it out the window. Apple's tech support doesn't and he's pretty steamed up having lost days of work with looming deadlines. He's more than ready to buy my system off me or get me to build him a system to run Vegas but you can see from recent posts here why I'm in no hurry to go down that road.

Bob.

I've mentioned on a couple of other threads that I use 8c for editing and 9c-64 for rendering. 8c won't render worth a nickel, and 9c is a dawg for editing. The only hitch I know of is the large-dimension still problem in 8c - which can be solved by rendering out a pan/crop of the large still in 9c, then import the rendered video back into 8c for additional editing instead of using the original still. I've had this problem with both .JPGs and .PNGs.

Otherwise, both seem rock solid for these respective functions. However, I've not been doing much editing recently, so can't know for sure. Does anyone else use this two-step? Is it as stable and reliable as it seems? If so, Vegas would seem to be still just about the best editing solution around . . .

Hey I like the sound of that..........Sony ProEdit.

Yes, Sony ProEdit sounds great. It would also help differentiate their pro and consumer lines. Having Vegas Movie Studio and Vegas Pro share their name does not help at all. Many people confuse them for the same product.

Bob: Let me give you a forexample...

Yesterday I cut a simple 16 minute piece with four, count 'em, four crossfades, along with a fade in and a fade out. In FCP it took 45 minutes to cut because to do a simple crossfade you have to put the clip in the viewer and then put enough time before the In point and after the Out point to allow for the crossfade, then drop it on the timeline and go through the same thing for the next clip. Then you have to render the crossfade to look at it, and if it's not what you want, exactly, you have to do the whole thing all over again. Then I had to export it as a QT .mov file to bring it into compressor to make an mpeg 2 for the DVD. Total time: 1:41:09

For grins and giggles I went into Vegas and made the exact same 16-minute piece. Total time to mpeg2 was 00:36:12, in part because Vegas lets you just click on the clip and drag it into the previous one to get a crossfade, and the further you drag it in, the longer the crossfade lasts. ANd I don't have to render to see how it works.

I will admit things were a little faster before Snow Leopard, even though SL was supposed to make things faster. I've had a number of annoying issues since I installed Snow Leopard, but maybe some of them are attributed to my lack of Apple knowledge.

Capturing tape is less complicated in Vegas, too. But that's a moot point now because I'm using an EX3.

Admittedly I'm not looking forward to having to deal with drivers and viruses again. And I'll miss the skinny little keyboard and the Mighty Mouse. And the quiet... I sure hope I can find a PC that's as quiet as the Mac.

I don't know. There must be something wonderful about Apple and FCP because there are so many folks using them. I just find they stifle creativity because they're so friggin' anal about things. I gave it a year. Now I'm done with them.

mtntvguy said: "There must be something wonderful about Apple and FCP because there are so many folks using them."

It's called influential marketing and using the worlds largest dongle for a video editing app...

Cliff Etzel
Videographer : Producer : Web Designer
bluprojekt
--------
Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q6600 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 4GB Corsair Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Drive: WD 640 7200RPM Black Series | Vid Card: nVidia GT7200LE

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB RAM | OS: Win7 x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 7200RPM

"Admittedly I'm not looking forward to having to deal with drivers and viruses again."

Drivers still can be a nuisance, but when I installed my new nVidia card, I opened WinXP as usual and the driver was already installed for me. Had I not known about drivers, I would never have even guessed that a new driver had been installed automatically - no messages, no buttons to click . . .

Win 7 64 was a bit more complicated. It installed a driver, but the new driver from nVidia website was much better. And so it goes.

Regarding viruses, I've been using the latest free VMware Player on my Win7 64 bit with a free pre-built virtual appliance from bagside - I use his Ubuntu 9.04. Ubuntu is a version of Linux, which attracts few virus writers. And if I ever get a virus, I'd just delete my current installed files and copy the originals to any disk on my machine and start again - the virus would surely not be able to get out to infect the rest of my files.

Recently my wife's old (and too slow for a virtual machine) Windows computer got a pop-up message that wanted to take her to some URL in order to clean her computer of a supposed virus infection. Instead, she had me use Ubuntu to go to that website and to browse around. I quickly figured out that if she would have clicked "OK," she probably would indeed have acquired a virus. But with Ubuntu I felt no fear and quickly was able to avoid a problem for her.

This combination of VMware Player and Bagside's creation allows drag'n'drop between it and any hard disk on my system, and I can cut-and-paste text, pictures, etc., from any website/application both to and from Ubuntu and Windows. It's also quick on my aging Q6600 machine, running at stock speed. The Bagside download plays pretty much video or audio files that you'll find on the web without having to install any player, and includes simple word processor and other useful apps. When I plugged in my printer, it automatically loaded a driver and I was printing in about 10 seconds. I like it.

You might try it and find that it is at least as immune to virus attacks as a Mac . . .

Mtntvguy check out the help files on FCP except it’s called trauma counseling

You know what they say “it’s like riding a bike, you quickly realize it sucks then get yourself a motor vehicle.” Welcome back on the freeway

I completely agree on the name. I always feel embarrassed when I say it. People usually ask me if I edited on Final Cut and I say "No Vegas... it's it a really good program though" The name is silly, has nothing to do with video and makes it sound like a toy.

Perception is something. Just look at how many people think you need to edit in Final Cut because of the perception Mac has created.

Bob,

25p to NTSC should be a breeze in Vegas. There are several ways you can go about it, (I know I'm telling you some things you already know, but maybe I'll hit something you missed?). There is always the 4% trick, going from 25 to 23.98? Vegas does a marvelous job of that including audio (final cut, compressor, and even pro tools can't get the audio right for this.) Also, you can just place it on a 60i timeline and be sure to DISABLE RESAMPLING in the clip. That should take care of the frame blending BS and give you clean pulldown.

Here we go again... it's just a name! The Beatles was a stupid name, too.

mtntvguy, so you did a project with 4 edits that anyone can do in Windows Movie Maker or iMovie and used a pro application instead and now you claim it to be the reason why Vegas is better than FCP?????

>>>>mtntvguy, so you did a project with 4 edits that anyone can do in Windows Movie Maker or iMovie and used a pro application instead and now you claim it to be the reason why Vegas is better than FCP?????<<<

If it takes FCP so many steps to do something that simple isn't that reason enough?

"... so you did a project with 4 edits that anyone can do in Windows Movie Maker or iMovie and used a pro application instead and now you claim it to be the reason why Vegas is better than FCP?????"

Patryk, that's not what he said. Did you read the OP's first post?

He was providing just one example--out of a year's experiences--comparing what was involved using FCP then Vegas. To suggest otherwise isn't being fair or accurate.

Patryk Rebisz said:

Please consider the possibility that mtntguy were just giving us an example of a simple everyday task that is simple in Vegas, but much more time consuming in FCP.
After a year on FCP it's a fair bet he might have done a few other things.

Protools is along the same lines. There was a recital at my church and the performers hired a local musician and recording engineer to record it for them. He sat next to me in the sound booth so that he could get a feed from the mixing console into his Macbook. While i was at it i did a backup recording in Vegas too. After the recital was over he started packing up and talking about how he had a long evening ahead cutting up the recording into tracks and authoring the CD.

During the 4 minutes it took him to pack, i had the tracks cut up and marked, dead space removed, fades added, normalization & compression where necessary, and already had the CD burning.

He was incredulous to say the least. Then he asked me to perform a crossfade just so he could see how difficult it would be. I dragged one clip over another and ... his jaw dropped. He left muttering something about never wanting to touch his Mac again.

Oh, don't get me started on Protools.
Today I moved very close to taking on the mix of a full length feature, bounced to me from Protools.
I think I now understand Protools. Look it's a beast, well the full version is but it does many, many things that are just impossible in Vegas. Same goes for Avid and FCP. Trying to getting Vegas to do the audio timecode dance, try working in a collaborative environment with composer, foley, VOs and ADR people. Tasks that are automatic in Protools are impossible in Vegas.
I really hope I can pull this all off. If I fail the entire effort goes down the toilet because nothing I've done in Vegas can be ported to an online system. Thankfully I'll not loose money as I'm doing this for free.

Bob.

Patryk: I didn't say Vegas is better than FCP. I just said I bought into the hype, tried FCP for a year, and then decided it wasn't for me. It's likely I would feel the opposite if I grew up on FCP, despite it having an excruciatingly slow workflow. If all you do is edit, and you aren't under the gun for time, FCP has some stuff to offer. But oftentimes I have to shoot edit and upload a piece in time to make air on the evening news. I just couldn't get fast enough on FCP to be comfortable that I could always make deadline. Everytime there was any pressure, I turned back to Vegas. So for me, and admittedly not for everyone, it makes sense to say the FCP experiment didn't work out.

But I guess it's like airplanes: I learned to fly in a Cessna, so I like flying them more than I like flying a Piper.

I think if I'm going to spend as much time trying to learn something new as I've spent on FCP, Compressor, Color, et al, I'd rather spend it on learning After Effects. Now that's some cool stuff!

There are some things I'll miss about the Mac, too. Like I said before... it's really quiet and I love that about it. I also like the aluminum case and keyboard. In fact, there are so many things I like about the Mac I am tempted to keep it and just run Windows as its primary platform. But there are glitches with that. One, a petty issue I'll admit, is the Mac makes display text look like it's from a dot matrix printer under Windows, but it looks great on the OSX side. I'm not stupid, I know Mac does that intentionally to discourage us from using the Windows side. There are other similar glitches, too.

Don't get me started on iTunes... one of the most anal applications Apple devised.

Anyway... don't get your shorts up your crack, Patryk. I mean no disrespect to you or any other FCP enthusiast. I just came in here to maybe give some others who are thinking about making the switch a little information to counter Apple's hype about how easy it is.

It is not easy. And it took a lot of the fun out of my work.

Pee Ess: I am going to keep the MacbookPro for those times when I really need to have FCP available. I have had clients insist on me giving them .mov files to take with them from the shoot location, and that is why I bought the MacBookPro.