That seems a logical response John - just that, FCP hasn't been around all that long - if my mind serves me correctly, it's similar in age to Vegas, but I guess being MAC centric, it would have an edge in that regards.

So, is anyone doing doc work and editing in Vegas?

It makes no difference,, the average viewer of any film doesn't give a rats @## what edit software was used.. Whatever works use it. I can build a deck with a black & decker screwgun, a dewalt , a portercable, a makita, i personally like the portercable but doesn't make my deck any better .

Winrock - I only ask to see what the actual experience was in the editing process for something like a documentary. Any glitches in editing long form docs is my biggest concern - I haven't realy done any serious longer than 10 minute projects and I'm wondering how Vegas handles a project of that size. I appreciate your analogy with the deck and tools - ;)

We do long edits with Vegas all the time, hour long documentaries, 2 hr award presentations , etc,, not a problem at all.
Gotta go buildin a deck ya know!!

The reasons that Sony Vegas is pretty much ignored by the "major players" around Hollywood is simple.

Apple and Avid spend a great deal of time, energy and money making their products visible to the production community. Sony (at least as far as I've seen around Southern California) does practically nothing.

I just finished 4 days of hanging drywall.... ;)

why is it that VV6 still seems to be viewed as the black sheep and get's virtually no respect amongst the indie short and long form documentary shooters out there?

Been discussed before on this forum, but it seems like a real big one is lack of marketing investment. People who feel their choice of editor is perceived as important want to be associated with the name that everyone knows. Training and certification is, I believe, part of a product's marketing. Why do you think Microsoft started "expiring" peoples' Windows NT administrator certifications when Windows 2000 server came out? It was part of their marketing strategy. Vegas is a late comer in this part of having a marketing strategy. They should really push this.

But of course marketing is more than this. As others have pointed out, Sony doesn't seem to be pushing Vegas as part of their "total solution" strategy. I saw a Sony ad in Videomaker magazine that says Sony has your total solution (capture, edit, view) that only mentioned their Vaio desktops in the "edit" portion, nothing about Vegas. What are they thinking? Maybe the guy who decided to buy Sonic Foundry has left Sony and the remaining execs don't know what to do with it. (Pure speculation). Or maybe this will change and Vegas 7 will get pushed more by Sony when it comes out. Maybe their are some new features in VV7 that will be strategically tied with other Sony offerings? Who knows.. (Well, somebody on this forum is probably beta testing VV7).

Maybe Sony should differentiate Vegas for its audio capabilites and its integration with other audio programs (like Sound Forge and Acid). How many good audio programs do the other editors tie in with? I don't know squat though, I am only speculating...

If you're doing your *own* documentary, it shouldn't matter what NLE you choose. It's when you want to get a production job that having FCP or Avid experience becomes a factor.

Vegas will never be as popular as FCP. Plain and simple. And who really cares? Not me.

Use what you like.

Thanks to all who have commented - It just feels more comfortable to edit with V6, AP4 and SF7 when doing my daily BS work. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on a key element that might come up in the editing process. :-)

I spent a year editing with 6-7 hours of footage on the timeline, shuffling clips and audio tracks. Never a crash, and that beats nearly all other NLEs.

Mac operating systems used to be far superior to PCs in handling graphics and this gave them the advantage for video and desktop publishing. Also Mac promoted its applications as "sweet" ways of working. PCs were cheap, applications died frequently, and MS promoted commercial office applications. So we have in the public mindset Macs for "artistic" work and PCs for office processing. Now we know there are many more "non-office" applications available for PCs than for Macs, and we know Vegas is a great video editing and post production application. Sony itself seems caught in the PCs are not used by "artists" and so Vegas will be used only by the sort of people who have PCs and who knows what they want. One would think someone in Sony marketing would understand a little better the computing world and be promoting Vegas as a professional tool (rather than as a high end amateur application); probably those artistic marketing guys all use Macs.

Why is everyone suprised by this. It's SONY. And Vegas will peobably become the next "beta". You would be hard pressed
to find more the 50 people here in Madison that even know about Vegas.

Terry

Aside from the question of whether anyone has ever heard of it, maybe there are some other practical concerns. You'll have to think through the process and plan ahead, then look at the NLE choices to see if anything really stands out.

I have been an innocent bystander for a few years while a doc called "Ballets Russes" was being put together. Here are some points I saw with their process:

You can originate in DV but you never want to render to DV. Always go to a better format. No problem for Vegas, but you'll have to be clear from the start about where you're going. Vegas doesn't make you pick a final output type.

You need to consider I/O systems. Vegas doesn't provide much help here but you should decide if you need to ingest footage over firewire or over SDI. You also should be looking ahead to how you'll output it. To you want to output over SDI to hardware that will uprez to HD? Do you need to output to an HD deck? There are ways to do this with Vegas, but other systems provide a lot more support for the hardware you might need.

What about compositing? Vegas can do a lot but you might want more. In the case of Ballets Russe, they did a lot of that work one Media100's 844 system. Really fast and it allowed more things to be tried, but it was on the sharp pointy side of the bleeding edge. Never again, I hear.

The filmakers for Ballets Russes hired a series of very experienced editors to help in the collaboration. It made a big difference to get other perspectives, even though the filmmakers had made several docs before and had gotten a couple of Emmy's for their efforts. I think they hired the consultants because they were seasoned filmmakers.

These consulting editors didn't have much Media100 experience, but they were able to learn the system and do good work. So don't think that Vegas is an impediment there.

The biggest issues I can see with using Vegas are technical. You need to chart a course and decide if Vegas can work with other gear you might need down the road.

I'd certainly try to break the timelines into smaller chunks and work on them separately. Other than that, I think you can do very professional work in Vegas if you plan well.

Rob Mack

One thing they are smart enough to realize is that these forums are integral to the survival of the software. I am sure that those who stayed on from Sonic Foundry convinced them of that. Without the forums the software would probably die. Vegas user growth will be very slow and may be limited to a relative few compared to Avid and FC Pro (for the Mac), but seems to hold it's own against Premiere.

What's so bad about that?

John

Great advice, rmack. Simple and well thought out.

Said it once before but worth repeating here. When I decided to recut our feature length DV film, we hired someone who edited several of Woody Allen's early movies. The arrangement quickly turned into him sitting beside me as I worked the Vegas controls which he was unfamiliar with.

Late in our 6-week recut, he started asking "what's this NLE again?" On one occasion he said, "You just did something in half a minute that it would take 15 minutes to do in Avid or Final Cut." He's more involved in sound work currently, and especially appreciated Vegas' multitrack audio features.

In fact, most of the sound people who've looked at my home system are familiar with the Vegas name.

Agree that we must have broad knowledge if each project is going to planned for best outcomes. Brings to mind that old saw: if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
I think there are reasons to be concerned about Sony's promotion of Vegas because that influences its support and development. This forum is very important and to an extent is almost the only promotion Vegas gets. When I was getting into video from film I asked around and the general opinion was FCP (which I knew about anyway). But I have many interests that employ software that only runs on PCs, so going MAC wasn't attractive (and generally the IT guys in my previous defence work had good arguments in favour of PC). So while exploring for a camera that wouldn't seem too terrible against my 16mm work I talked to a guy who'd been on a VASST Vegas course and although he was a Premier user he reckoned Vegas was the thing.
So what does this tedious story say? People know about FCP, even when they don't edit video. Even Sony distributors promote FCP. People hear about Vegas on the grapevine. And now Macs will run PC software.

WOW Mack!!!

Having been a still shooter most of my adult life - the transition to video just keeps getting more technical all the time. I hadn't thought about the things you raised in your post. Didn't even know they existed...

My initial first projects are going to be short form docs - probably on the order of 20 minutes on specific topics to build a demo reel...

Where does one find out some of the more technical aspects of post production without going to school??? I'm a self taught photojournalist and did fairly well when I was seriously prusuing the profession. Now I have the video bug and can't get enough of the idea of shooting serious doc work...

We just recently converted the shop from Media100 to 3 Premiere/Axio seats.

Largely, my exposure to premiere is in reviewing footage. My non-axio computer has premiere on it and I could (if I wanted to) use it to cull stills for web pages.

The one thing I've noticed about Premiere is that it makes you choose a project type from the start. Will it be HD, SD, 8-bit, 10-Bit? I think the practical effect of this is that Premiere then starts building previews and conforming things to the project type you specified.

Vegas doesn't really do this but I think it'd be worthwhile to pick a good output format and use it when you render things out to a new track or for prerenders (assuming the prerender would still be there at render time).

Another thing that gave my employers fits as they were finishing up the "Ballets Russes" film was that it was very hard to move the project from Media100 to any other edit system, including the 844 (a media100 product). So, if you're starting down the road of a long project then you should look at some of the other tools you'll have to use. Will you send the audio to someone else for finishing? Can they get your project into Protools, or whatever they plan to use?

Rob

Well, most of the people I know in the business, and this includes people here too, eat, sleep, and breathe the details of their craft.

The most admirable are very studious and like to test out ideas. I've sat with DPs working out lighting ideas at the end of a job when we could have wrapped and gone home.

Of the few things I know, I've learned through experience. Worked at rental houses, worked as a grip and electrician in production, and now work for a small company with three edit suites and some serious doc projects behind them. I also read what I can and pay attention to this forum (which raises lots of questions to answer).

The best thing I can think of is to make sure you work with other people. If you've got docs to do and can find the funding, hire other people to work with you. This is a collaborative art form and you'll learn more if you can tap into other people's knowledge.

Rob Mack

Vegas is an excellent value. You could hardly go wrong with it as a first NLE because the price is relatively modest and the hardware you'd use will work with anything else on the PC. If you were to opt for a Mac desktop that could run Windows then the hardware you buy could go in any direction (within reason-some hardware based systems will prevent you from using anything else).

Rob Mack

Rob - what was the reasoning behind the move to PPro and Axio??? To be honest - the workflow of PPro is more to my liking than the Vegas workflow - old habits die hard I guess.

I work quite a bit in Audio as well - with AP4 and SF7 along with Adobe's Audition 1.5. AP4 is my day in and day out composition tool for my work on Acid Planet - aka Dj ClifMahn. I'm really of the mindset of the new wave of VJ's that are coming into full force as citizen reporters - swiss army knife thing - I do Video, Audio, editing, lighting. Maybe I'll burn the candle at both ends, but being a control freak, I am somewhat OC about how I want things done and I would rather it be done right byu me than deal with others who aren't as adept at getting it right on the first few tries...