Well,
Avid is pretty much the industry standard, they make systems that range from the freebie Express DV upto $1M systems and in theory you can move a project from your laptop to their top of the line systems. They also have a lot of purpose built hardware in the mix like Nitris and Adrenaline. As far as I know for a television station probably XPRI is the only thing that comes even close to what you can do with the right Avid system.

Premiere supports hardware, what more can one say, how well it supports Declink cards etc or just how well it all hangs together I really don't know but then again this is very much a smoke and mirrors business. If you say something can do something then it must, right? Add to that the Adobe name behind PP and of course it's going to have a fair bit of weight. Add in After Effects and you should be getting the picture.

All that aside though Vegas is gathering speed. When I first bought into Vegas most people in the biz would go 'You use what?', know it's 'How do you find it?' or even the odd 'We just bought a copy'.

Personally I don't really care much, I know a few people who are or have been salaried editors, can't say I've ever met one who likes the job. It's nothing like what you're doing now with a salary. I could be wrong here, others may have another spin on it but from what I hear editors in TV are mostly just an interface between what the director wants and a machine.

Bob.

>> As for Premiere Pro, the only thing I know of is the "auto levels" and "auto colors" features

BTW - we got a nice little donation-ware tool for Vegas called "auto levels" adapted from Mike Crash ...

Marco

>>>Is there stuff that you can do with Premiere and Avid that you CANNOT do in Vegas...<<<

Short answer is yes.

If you do a search in these forums you will find many posts, many cleary biased to Vegas - but this *is* a Vegas forum after all. :)

Just a few things that pop to mind - with Premiere and Premiere Pro 1.5 (Not Premiere Pro 1) you have more full/robust EDL support. (do a search for EDL support) Starting with Premiere Pro you have nested timelines (Do a search for nested timlines). Premiere allows for "full" output via firewire - I mean "full" that you get audio and do not have to do a PTT as you do with Vegas. (For me this is a plus - I can very easly output a scene, or the entire timline with audio by hitting play where as with Vegas, even if all effects are pre-rendered, you have to do a PTT and wait for the audio to render) Avid's media composer allows for film matchback (Do a search for matchback). Avid comes in many variations. Both allow for hardware to 'enhance' what you can do. Currently Vegas does not have any sort of true hardware support. These facts may or may not matter, depends on your needs

I do not use Avid - never liked it, for whatever reason. I started seriously using Premiere with Version 6. I seriously have had Vegas crash far more than Premiere 6.5 ever did. Recenly started using Premiere Pro 1.5 and it is leaps and bounds above Premiere 6.5. Premiere also has much better media managment for larger projects. (Well, for any project but it becomes painful with a large project in Vegas.)

I know there are other items as well but for those about to pounce remember the question was Is there stuff that you can do with Premiere and Avid that you CANNOT do in Vegas... and *not* "what can Vegas do that Premiere and Avid can not". For me personally I think that editorailly Premiere is a bit better than Vegas. However as an overall finishing package Vegas is better because it offers a lot more post production tools.

Quote: I seriously have had Vegas crash far more than Premiere 6.5 ever did.

Hmm, that's pretty interesting. One of the reasons I switched to Vegas 3 years ago was that Premiere was crashing on me daily, and Vegas was stable. In the following 3 years, Vegas (or the edit system), has only crashed on me about 5 times. I'm a daily user too. My boss still uses the latest Premiere Pro, and gets a crash at least twice a month. Which is better than what it used to do to her back the 5 & 6 days. Then, it was crashing daily for her as well.

Just thought I'd share my experience with it, FWIW.

Jesse

Filmy, if you're having serious crashes with Vegas, it sounds like there are some serious software conficts going on there. In all the years I've been using Vegas (since ver. 3), I've never had it crash once.

Jay

3-years in...daily user...never, ever crashed.

Skywatcher

Add me to the list of folks that has NEVER had a Vegas crash.

John

I've had it prang a few times but I'm 99% certain it's dodgy hardware.
To be honest the wonder with Windoz is that on 95% of the PCs I've seen it run on, is that it runs at all.
Odd isn't how when an app crashes we all blame the app or Windows, never think to question the hardware we bought as cheaply as possible.
Bob.

The only time Vegas has ever crashed on me is when I fed it a bad file. (Divx, etc...) Other than that, its more reliable than my own legs.

i took an avid editing here at my college.. i hated it! we had more problems with it than successes... it was a headache! i was tempted to drop it.. but hung in there... never want to use it again. (we had the adrenaline systems and alll) used premiere back in the day.. didnt ever really care for it.. (love photoshop, dont like premiere) i use vegas 5 and love it! i tell everyone about it.. more and more people are hearing of the program.
and same with pmasters.. only had it crash when imported bad files...

pj

I too never had Vegas crash on me especiallly during the times i'd abuse it.

I too get the "you use what" all the time, but sometimes i do like the thought of not much people know of Vegas because the projects i do for some reason gets a "Vegas look" to it.Ü

I also know that in television and even sometimes in film, the editor is just between the director and the machine. Maybe i should just stick with my original plan of creating a starup production company. Well i don't know...

Thanks for all the thoughts! Cheers!

-Ana-

ih some parts of the country you can make more working at mcdonalds full time than being a full time TV editor. Am I glad I didnt go the TV station editor route. A few years ago, before I got steady and nice IT job, I was looking into becoming an editor at a local Milwaukee station...they still edited via DECK TO DECK! They had avid boothes sitting in the station and still, id say 80% of the work was still being edited on decks... and the editors were not making much more than $10 an hour, and got very little creative control. No thank you... I'll pay off the college bills with a fulltime job and concentrate on my media company part time for the time being...where I have nice creative control (and Vegas) on my side ;)

B

Peeks,

a word of advice, if you have time to be a student to a local production company (not a tv station); go for it. You will learn ALOT; even if they use an AVID, or something different than Vegas. Its amazing how much you can learn about the business when you have someone to shadow.

B

Agreed.
By having a great product like Vegas, doesnt make you a great Editor. You can be a great editor on anything. Basically all an editor does is "cut and splice film". Learning how to "edit" is so much more important then the tool you use. Granted some tools are better then others. Learn all you can about editing and then the tools will be the means to an end.

>>>Filmy, if you're having serious crashes with Vegas, it sounds like there are some serious software conficts going on there. In all the years I've been using Vegas (since ver. 3), I've never had it crash once.<<<

Not really - I have discussed this issue many times here and over at DMN. Matter of fact Vegas has crashed on me 3 times this week doing dialog cutting on a feature. I relized one of the times was due to the memory issue, thanks to the HDV thread about it. The other times might also be memory related but I am not sure - more like quirks with Vegas as much as *any* software has quirks. So you find way to work around them. (And you can all go to the HDV memory thread for more info and my comments about that - but in a nutshell not everyone has the same system, not everyone is sunning the exact same verison of Vegas with the exact same plug-in and the exact same project. Vegas has minimum requirements so it is very likely a person can have a crash on one end of the requirements chain that someone doesn't running a high end system, or vice versa...if you follow me)

I ran Vegas on another (slower, less memory) system for years, along with Premiere 6 and than 6.5. For the most part it runs as well on this system as it did on the other one...it runs faster and renders faster but it is the *same* program subject to the same crashes caused by certian things. Part of what I say about crashes is done in irony because Premiere crashed maybe 3 times over the course of a feature where as Vegas has crashed maybe 10 times over the course of this one. I used Premiere 6.5 to cut a montly TV show for about 2 years on the other system and it NEVER crashed one time during any edit, capture, render or output. With Vegas some crash related issues have been resolved with updates and fixes, they were not hardware issues on my end in other words. Other crashes that people reported I never ever have had - even ones that were resolved in updates. But that didn't mean they didn't happen, just not happen to me is all. If Vegas Video was perfect it would still be at version 1 now wouldn't it? Other issues were a dual thing - one crash seemed to be caused by having the MainConcept DVC Pro codec installed, this is back when they first came out with it and it wasn't showing up in Vegas as a render option. (Somewhere in this forum there is a thread on this) Not sure what the issue was but both parties looked into it, lasted verison shows up and also doens't cause a Vgas crash.

I have not yet cut a feature with Premiere Pro 1.5 but by all acoounts it is more stable than Premiere 6 / 6.5 was/is. Also, and this is *very* important - I sound like a broken record with this - but the vast majority of people who say Premiere is so unstable always seem to mention they have hardware issues - ie: pinnacle. I never used any "bundled" hardware so I have a feeling that is major reason why I never had Premiere crash as much as others have.

To be fair look around the forums and I am not the only one who has found issues with Vegas in reguards to crashes - and not every single crash is due to hardware. As I am with Premiere I am sure there are those who have never had Vegas crash. And I only bring it up at times when people push the "fact' that Vegas never crashes. Somehow I have taken on the role of Premiere is not all that bad and Vegas does crash. Again - if vegas was perfect Sofo/Sony tech support could be out of work and we would still be on verison 1...well, ok..maybe Sony Vegas 2 as oppesed to Sonic Foundry Vegas Video 1.

VERY well said skibumm101!

Hmmm, I don't know about Premiere Pro, but Premiere before they added pro to the name was a nightmare.

It was impossible to do any work with those. That is my opinion and an opinion of every single pro director/editor that I know. They use mostly Avids and every singl;e one who had tried premiere said it was IMPOSSIBLE to do any work with it. ( if you had an unlimited amount of time and could spend hours screwing around with it , I guess you could finish a project in premiere, but that application was to NLE what Yugo with three wheels would be to cars )

People tend to forget that the whole PC based editing is still new overall. Avid is considered a "standard" because it was there - and had it roots firmly established in the industry, for a long time. Every Avid system I have ever got around I just don't like, for various reasons. And yes I have tried AvidXpress as well and it just seemed so alien to me, but I did like some of what it offered...but the problem was, in my eyes, too many "options". But that is also one of the reasons how Avid got such a strong foothold.

Several years ago I cut a series of spots for KRON in San Francisco and the producers were a bit un-nerved that I wasn't cutting on an Avid, I was cutting on D/Vision. But you know what there main issue was? Not the final product, they wanted to know where the bins were...like Avid. They kept thinking to themselve it was not going to be any good...because there were no bins!!! This is what editors are really up against, mass marketing hype if you will. People who don't edit who ask around and see that a mojority of the "pros" use something. (Wow if I shoot with Panavisions, Steady Cams, Chapman Crains and post on a Avid Media Composer and have Lucas Sound do audio post my film is going to be the best film ever!!!) Matter of fact at the time we went with D/Vision because it had more of a reputation on the feature film front...it was used to edit Rocky 2. Avid had more commercial use. Also at the time the cheapest Avid system was something like $45,000 and didn't offer things like film matchback.

So now compare Premiere and Vegas on that level - well, neither offer film matchback. So yeah - An Avid 'flavor' is what you need. But really it isn't all about that. The whole offline/online issue is becoming so blurred anymore that it is becoming a null issue. As more people shoot HD or DV and can do output to film without the need for a negative cut the matchback issue is becoming blurred as well. Hey many pros also use D/Vision - although it hasn't been D/Vision for a long time now, It is part of the whole Discreet suite.

To me the Adobe name brought somewhat cheap Premiere but than Avid came out with el cheapo software and it had the name so people used it for the "name" more than anything else. (talking feature film use here) Than Premiere 6 and than 6.5 came out people sort of started looking at that more seriously - I know I did. And it made Avid rethink it self. In all of this enter Sonic Foundry. (yeah, and many others as well - when 1394/firewire hit it *all* changed and made it so much easier for almost every single person here to edit - without it Vegas as we know it probably would not exist. Audio yes, video - I am not so sure) But you still have not seen the "pro" software/hardware come down to this prosumer point yet - I have not seen any sort of DiscreetXpress or TrinityXpress for example.

What skibumm101 was was on the money. It really doesn't matter *what* you use to edit , using an Avid won't allow you to be a better editor than someone who uses Premiere or Vegas or Edition or even tape to tape. Your marketablity would go up more than likely if you know how you use an Avid system but that doesn't mean you are any good. I worked with a "Level 3 Avid Certified" person who had no clue how to edit...but man oh man did they take every single chance to brag about their Avid training. No offense to Bartenders or PA's but this person's main gig prior to the production (mainly editing) job had been as a bartender in Manhattan and their on set experience had been being a PA for the art department on 2 films. They became "level 3 Avid trained" and suddenly they were selling themselves as a Pro Editor...and got hired as such beause of the Avid name.

I'll throw my 2 cents in here:

I *HATE* the stereotyping that goes on with different systems. I could certify myself up the wazoo and buy a Custom built AVID (assuming I had a virtually limitless supply of money that is) and I probably wouldn't be able to "beat" what some of you guys do with Vegas and something like Particle Illusion or something of the sort. (CRASH) - That was a breaking record: It's a TOOL, a TOOL that you use to create. I used a VT2 system and I've tinkered with a globe caster (both live production tools but are kind of all in one bundles, edit, etc...) I can do so much more with Vegas than I could do with VT2 or Globe caster (at the time) when I'm editing things together, and I know VT users that say, well, you can't really produce content that looks anywhere near as good. That's bogus, *I* can, and I can do stuff *better* than they can in some cases.

Well, my money has run out, I guess that's all 2 cents can get ya.

In a nutshell, it's all about the project and where it wil end up. As time goes on I do see the gap becoming smaller.

I am a huge Vegas fan and have been since 3.0 . I have used final cut and Avid.

AVID IS FAST AS HELL, clients like that speed. Vegas is a bit slow in COMPARISION..DUH!
But Vegas rocks the house every time. I am compositing as well as the simple cuts and people are blown away. I love it when Avid guyd ask what I cut on....they they do the "dog turning head" thing and go "wow!"

But, I do need to render over night and into the next day on heavy composites.

Each tool has it's ups and downs.

I just want to be able to go to the big screen from Vegas. And a cert program would be nice too. We need a cert program to bring Vegas up a notch in the cutting world.

Vance

Sony did announce plans for certification at NAB.
Bob.

{Sony did announce plans for certification at NAB.
Bob.}

Any info on when this will roll-out or where I can learn more. This is the first I have heard of this and just got back from some Advanced Vegas Training. I will keep my eyes open, as I think this would be beneficial as a learning tool, but it would also act as a credibility builder for pro Vegas users. Although... I may be nuts but I kinda like that Vegas oftentimes seems like my little secret.