Joran,
all FXs in Vegas are real time. You play out the tracks and you hear the FX, by definition that's a real time FX. A non real time FX means you have to render it to hear it. Probably the only FX I can think of that I wouldn't call real time is Dynamic Noise Reduction although that's not a native part of Vegas, comes with Sound Forge.
The basis of Vegas is a multitrack recorder, ever seen one?
Events could be considered to be segments of tape spliced together. Each track can be patched through to FX units, events obviously cannot. Also tracks can be grouped into buses and those sent to FXs etc.
In the multitrack workflow one doesn't want to apply FXs to events because the process would by it's very nature be destructive unless you had the system keep undo buffers for every event and that'd be a nightmare. Also as DSE mentioned there's a major problem as very many FX2 extend the duration of audio events, I don't know how you'd expect this to work. I can have a drume hit event only milliseconds long but apply reverb to make it many seconds long, what should happen to the event, should it get stretched to be seconds long? But what if it buts up against another event?
If you have hundreds of audio events that need individual FXs applied then by far the best tool is a DAW, not a multitrack recorder.
Once you've got the events sounding right then you bring them into a multitracker.
Probably what you need to do is give us an example of specifically what you're trying to do, it sounds to me like no matter what application you prefer to use you've got serious workflow issues. This is a big problem with all software solutions to any problem, just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a good way to work.
Bob.

If by 'Dynamic Noise Reduction' you mean Noise Reduction 2, then it's real time too. I've used it on a number of occasions as a audio track effect, no problem.

Per-event effects have been implemented in CD Architect perfectly well. Try it out if you have it, then imagine it in Vegas - it would be a good thing! Behaviour is thus:

1) effects come after pitch/time stretch - if you pitch shift the event, the audio passing through the fx is at the shifted pitch. Try this with a delay plug in.

2) delays and reverbs tails continue after the event, just as would happen if you had added those effects to the track itself.

3) effects are pre-track volume envelope - if you wanted the reverb tail to cut off with the end of the event, use the track volume envelope to silence it.

How can keeping undos for audio event fx be any more of a knightmare than keeping undos for video event fx?

How can non-destructive audio event fx be worse than the current system of destructive 'apply non real-time event fx'? - ok, so it creates a take rather than being truly destructive, but it's effectively 'offline' as you can't hear the effect you are creating in the context of the rest of the production because you are sealed off a seperate dialogue box. Get the effect wrong and you have to start from scratch again, rather than be able to edit the existing effect.

Bob, I don't mean to sound like I've chosen you to rant at, but your post kind of summed up the thread quite nicely and gave me something to respond to!

It's extremely frustrating to see Sony implement good features almost randomly among their products. Examples:

Acid has folder tracks - why not Vegas?
Vegas has touch automation recording - why not in Acid?
CD architect has per-event FX - why not Vegas and Acid?
SF, Acid, Vegas (finally) support VST plugins - why not CD Architect?

Feel free to rant at me, after being to some of the 'pro' audio forums I've got a pretty thick hide :)

I use CDA almost as much as I use Vegas for audio. Nearly struck a problem with it that highlights what I'm talking about. I applied multitaped delay to an event but following that is a pause for 2 sec before the next track. What should happen there?
With time stretching you can have a graphical representation of what's happening but even so I've seen many posts where users have gotten themselves into a muddle using it.
As I understand it what we're seeing on the Vegas T/L are the events pre FX send. We don't see what's happening post FX but that's OK, can live with that. If we did see what was happening post FX how would that be represented? Feed a short impulse into a reverb and we've now got a much longer event. Technically I should be able to trim or fade both of those but how can this be shown on a track, wouldn't that get mighty confusing visually.
I'm not saying you shouldn't get what you're after, I just don't think it will gell with the Vegas paradigm very well. Bear also in mind that Vegas can, and for many users is, used to send to physically separated FX units. Some of these have very stringent requirements on how the data is sent to them, finally we've heard about why the UAD doesn't well with Vegas, I can see how fixing this problem with Vegas as it is is going to be very difficult, trying to send event level FXs and it'll just never fly.
There's another level of complexity that needs to be factored in. Quality. Now I'm just flying a kite here but I do know that just how FX and mixes are calculated is an enormously complicated area. Digital audio (and video) has many complexities to how it's decoded and then encoded. I'd assume doing all the calcs at once gives a better result. I don't know how that impacts event level FXs but it sure deserves some consideration.
Bob.
Bob.

Hello

I started this post because I wanted to know more about the main differences between Vegas and Premiere Pro when it comes to important features. I pointed to some examples of features that, in my opinion, are missing in Vegas. My intention was not to criticize Vegas!

I think that ”ibliss” knows much more about audio than I do; but ”ibliss” summarizes some of my frustration with the (lack of) real time event audio tools in Vegas. Thank you very much, ”ibliss”!

Finally: does Premiere Pro support real time audio event effects? (This is one of the possible differences I want to learn more about.)

Joran

first - sorry Joran for hijacking your thread a bit! It's just that since you mentioned it...

Bob -

"I applied multitaped delay to an event but following that is a pause for 2 sec before the next track. What should happen there?

Use the second track for the next audio event and kill the delays on the first track using the track volume envelope.
In any case, this senario would be a good one where you would want to use the non-real time stuff. Had you been using the effect at track level, you would have had exactly the same problem.

If the Event waveform display showed the waveform post-efftec, how would you be able to accurately edit the source audio. Finding the beginings, ends, transients etc could be nigh impossible with certain effects. So what you'd want would be a 'ghost' waveform (which could be toggled on and off via a toolbar button, naturally) to indicate post-fx at the same time as showing the actually waveform of the event. But I think this would be extremely confusing!

I don't see how implementing the event fx as they have been done in CDA would cause any problems with the Vegas 'paradigm'.

Another problem with the Non-Real -Time Event Audio FX in Vegas:

I apply a non real time audio effect on one event. I save the new audio event as a take. I come back a month later, listen to this new take, and want to change some settings. But, I don’t remember which audio FX I used a month ago. And Vegas does not give any information about the effects I used in this particular audio clip. Or am I wrong?

At least the video event FX tool reports which FX that is applied to each event. But Vegas don’t report which preset is used in that particular video event FX.

Joran

No I think you're right, same goes for video. If I apply an FX to a video event and render that to a new track I can well be in the same boat unless I keep the original track with it's FX.
Problem is with video a NLE can play it back at whatever rate the CPU/FX will render it out at, no problemo, you might only get to see it at 1fps but we can live with that, sort of. But you cannot do that with audio otherwise things will be very ugly and no one can live with that.
Please bear in mind I've never used non realtime audio FXs in Vegas so I'm no expert, just using logic to wade through the issues. Also my earliest experiences in audio were back in the days of R2R tape so the way Vegas works makes perfect sense to me, I'm just happy with being able to work faster than realtime!
Bob.

>>>Any Adobe Premiere users who have switched to Vegas and answer here are going to lean towards Vegas....<<<

yes and no...as the song goes "Haven't we been here before?"

Very short -
Vegas - very strong audio tools. Very strong as a finishing tool.
Premiere Pro - for me it is more stable when it comes to editing.

So I would not say I lean towards Vegas and I answer here all the time. How I lean depends on the question being asked.

For longer reasons from me do a search and read away.

"My main concern is not if Adobe Premiere Pro crashes more often than Vegas"

Dude, Vegas almost never crashes, and if it does, it's probabaly due to your system's OS.

Adobe what?
:)
Welcome to my website:
www.litoralsulvirtual.com

>>>Dude, Vegas almost never crashes, and if it does, it's probabaly due to your system's OS.<<<

Blame the user/OS answer huh? One size does not ever fit all.

One of my posts on the whole crash issue.

>>>Any Adobe Premiere users who have switched to Vegas and answer here are going to lean towards Vegas....<<<
>>>> yes and no...as the song goes "Haven't we been here before?"<<<<
You forgot to add the section right next to it, where I said: (except for those very few that either are in the middle of switching or still use both.)
Otherwise, I'm probably right.

Just to weigh in, because I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet -- DeShaker coupled with VirtualDub -- while not a "built in" stabilizer, is simply fantastic. Much better than some of the add ons you'd have to pay for. Gunnar Thalin is a good guy to boot, from what I've seen of his posts here and elsewhere on the web.

I have to agree a match-color corrector has been something asked for for the last two or three Vegas releases and it seems to go either unnoticed or isn't possible somehow (strange, given the magic the programmers can work under the hood otherwise).

I find the "ex-users" comment full of some unnecessary hubris -- when was the last time you read of Vegas being installed into a semi-pro studio? Oh, right, once -- and where is that article now?

Living in NYC and having a peak into several smaller media companies, it looks like an even split between Avid and FCP, with FCP claiming the majority in several smaller shops I've been to. When in the rare occasion it's neither of those two, it's PPro. I love using Vegas, and for DV and certain transcoding tasks, I think it's the best NLE out there... but let's be real, here -- I don't see Vegas unseating PPro or the other two anytime soon, and in NYC you can't get a regular, paying video job in a studio to save your life with just Vegas on your resume (freelance, maybe...)

So when you ask which is better or what separates the two, beyond mere technical considerations, this is something to consider (rather than laugh off).

- jim

jlafferty:
Just wondering what codecs you are using with Deshaker.

JJK

I use HuffYUV, generally.

Joran: Although I'm a satisfied Vegas user, I agree on your two points from a pure user's perspective. A color matcher is something Vegas could definitely use (Avid DV has done well with a matching tool) and my workaround for using one particular audio FX on the event level is to put those special events each on their own track. There's no limit on the number of tracks in Vegas.

Forget them both and buy Edius.

Hi Joran,

I use Samplitide Pro for all my audio work and one of many reasons is its ability to split the tracks into as many events as you like and put as many different effects on each audio event as you need.

So I also found Vegas to be a bit limiting at first in its audio implementation but then I made Samplitude the audio editor/multitracker that Vegas calls and they seem to co-exist nicely. And Samplitude will also accept Vegas movies within it in the other direction.

It's similar to what other users are doing with Sound Forge (which I also have but don't use) and as a couple of users above have mentioned it's a workable workaround. But I agree it would be very nice indeed to just be able to do it right on the audio event just like we can with video events.

The biggest advantages Premiere has are:

- MainConcept MPEG2 Editing plugin
- Extensive 3rd Party Plugin and Hardware support

This was just released for Premiere Pro:
http://www.matrox.com/video/products/axio/

Personally, I feel the Premiere interface is clunky and archaic. If Vegas could somehow garner the 3rd party support that Premiere has, it would dominate. I think Adobe's interfaces in general blow (compared to Macromedia, Sony & others)

Hi Tony (Trock)

Nice hearing from you. Samplitude V8 Professional! Wow, I wish I could follow you – but I’m not a millionaire, neither measured in Norwegian kroner, nor in dollars!

To all you others: I think I have to dig more deeply into the (non-real-time) event audio effects in Vegas and Sound Forge and the Sony Noise Reduction plug-in.

I love this post, because I’m learning something new!

Best wishes,
Joran

As far as I know, no, Premiere is quite weak in the audio area, the main reason I went from it to Vegas. The latest PP I think adds Audition which lets you do much the same as Vegas with SF, in other words you've got to jump out of PP and into Audition. It is a while since I sat through a Premiere demo so I could be wrong regarding later versions but certainly it seemed a clunky way to work compared to Vegas.
Thing is though the biggest differences between any NLE isn't what it's capable of it's how much work you are prepared to put into learning how to use it. Avid and PP follow a more traditional workflow than Vegas, probably better for longform with high shooting ratios than Vegas. Certainly to get the best out of them you need dedicated systems. One of my clients just did a 3 minute promo on an Adrenaline, very fast system but not really the right system for what he wanted. The job took 15 hours to cut and he was far from happy with the result as he wanted a lot of complex compositing.
Problem I see is what's happening in the last few years is various NLEs trying to become Swiss Army knives, tasks that traditionally were sent off to other departments are now being done by one guy on a single system. Quite apart from the issue of one person being versed in editing, graphics design and audio there are I think many technical issues underlying having a single system that excels at all these tasks. Just look at the top shelf audio tools like Protools, it produces a noticeably better sound than Vegas but it only renders in real time.
Bob.

Protools, it produces a noticeably better sound than Vegas

If you spend a little bit of the difference in price on some good plug-ins, why shouldn't you be able to match and/or exceed what Slowtools can do out of the box?