My experience was exactly the same. Premiere -> Vegas. I wonder what the reviewers background was.

On the DVX User forum under the Vegas title there are some threads about this same thing there, basically if your an old time Premier or Avid user you will either like Vegas or you wont or you will have to reajust to Vegas.

"The reviewer says Vegas is awkward to use. "

Give me a break! This is more than likely due to the fact that the reviewer is just that - a REVIEWER who WRITES for a living! Is he/she in the trenches every day with the software cranking out projects, dealing with clients and racing against deadlines? I don't think so!

Also, PC World, IMHO, is a wannabe magazine. Always has been. PC Magazine is THE authority (usually). AND, I would like to know exactly HOW MUCH Adobe is spending on ADVERTISING in that publication. Sure, they're not going to run Premiere ads, but they propably are running Acrobat and Photoshop Elements ads. When a company is dumping major dollars into any publication, the last thing that publication wants to do is piss off that advertiser with a not-so-favorable review of their products.

Magazines exist for ONE reason and ONE reason ONLY: to make money by selling advertising. Sure, they all throw in some editorial content, and some are definitely better than others. But don't fool yourself. The bottom line is ADVERTISING $$$.

Furthermore, how many video producers/editors read PC World for advice about which software to use??? Get real, PC World!!! Wake up and smell the coffee!!! Vegas rules!!!

(ok, I'll get off my soapbox for now!)

Magazines exist for ONE reason and ONE reason ONLY: to make money by selling advertising. Sure, they all throw in some editorial content, and some are definitely better than others. But don't fool yourself. The bottom line is ADVERTISING $$$.

Actually, I think you may be overreacting just a tad. Since you don't mention any points of the review itself, have you even read it? (You can read it online here.) The reviewer has positive and negative things to say about both programs. In fact, out of five stars, he gave Premiere only half a star more.

If he was brown-nosing to Adobe, then he wasn't doing it particularly well. ;-)

Rob

Sometimes reviews revolve around how much time the author has available to learn a new product and how much hand-holding he gets from the vendor. Adobe puts out a pretty snappy reviewers guide which probably helps their case. Also, most reviewers from computer mags aren't film and video people; they may have cut together clips from their kids' birthday party, but not a lot more.

OTOH, this really isn't a bad review of VV5. The author expressed a slight personal preference, but not until the last 'graf, so it's still a reasonably positive take on both products.

bd

I agree that the review is fairly even handed. However, I also believe that Sony may not have done as good a job managing the review and should have still been able to win the review.

This seems to be a habit with them. I saw the review of Screen Blaster in PC Magazine and it had three MAJOR errors (the reviewer was saying the product didn't have features that were even obvious from the screen shots (the ability to adjust the volume for the entire track, etc.). Screenblast features were mentioned, but they didn't seem to be the same importance for the reviewere (Sony should help set the criteria for the review--and they should always lopside it in their favor (with evidence of value)).

In this Vegas/Premier review, Adobe won for "usability" - that's false and Vegas should have made usability a criteria (with emperical evidence) as part of the review. They should also help "sponsor" independant freelance reviewer's (meaning to help them get the reviews (i.e., Spotted Eagle as a reviewer candidate, etc.). Vegas should never loose based on usability (having used Adobe, then Vegas, then Adobe and then back to Vegas--never to touch Adobe again. Adobe took a week the first time through to get anything done--Vegas took a day). Also, Vegas did NOT get enough credit for is superiour audio capability. Also, Vegas may wish to consider a more competitive bundle (even if it is for a limited time--coinciding with the review release date--and then making sure the reviewer knows about it).

This may have been a case of a poor review management process from Sony (they've only been about 70% on where they should be). I know Sony was trying to hire a Director of Product Management and this person would typically work with the other product managers and the PR manager to produce a kick-tail reviewer's guide, including an effective "Robert Redford" chart (you're better than Robert Redford because you have dark hair instead of light (etc. - it is totally irrelavant to his wife...but you get the checkmark ).

Having won PC Magazine's editor's choice for ten consecutive years (with one company--against a much larger competitor), and having helped manage reviews from dozens of the top products in the world (including helping with the launch of over 400 products), I believe that some of these reviews should have been won--gosh darn it.

With one of my teams, wWe had such a good report with the reviewers that the editor in chief called and tippped us off that we were about to loose the review (that we had previously won every time) because of a missing feature/possible bug. We JUMPED all over it, fixed it immediately (plus did a new build to add more substance to the area) and won--again.

In previous reviews Vegas got knocked for rendering time. This usually happens when one of the competitor's review guides makes it an issue (as they should if their time is better). Vegas should have known they would loose in this area (since they were using an older render engine) and changed the review criteria. They could have done a "keystroke" count, or a "total time to produce" benchmark (validated from a third party lab, a tradeshow contest, etc.) and changed the emphasis from render time to "total" time (we seem to have caught on to this advantage within this forum). I've changed the playing field multiple times within reviewer's guides (Microsoft doesn't always have the best product--just a better reviewer's guide and a more agreessive and connected PR team).

In fact, one time I had a product that was 3 times more expensive than the competition. To counter an upcoming review, we changed the playing field criteria and suggested that we a reviewer should not concentrate on the "cost" but instead on the ROI (our's was over $2.5k higher for the life of the product). It was primarily because of this shift, that -we won the review...and also garnered over 90% market share!

I hope Sony can assemble the correct team to win this war (i.e., In it's hayday, Corel Draw have over 150 editor's choices against Adobe--they can be beat!) so the product can get the recognition it deserves.

P.S. It is nice, by the way, that Vegas is even getting reviewed (especially in a two-product only review)--but that probably has more to do with the clout of "Sony" which is what we had all hoped.

They've said VEGAS was awkward since it was VEGAS Audio & VEGAS Video. Those of you that learned editing on other NLEs' have to admit that the VEGAS default UI is setup very different than all the others. Namely the Source & Moniter windows being combined into 1. (I'm sure there are many other differences) Sony addressed this by allowing you to set up VEGAS the way you want it and save it as a UI preset. Undoubtedly this was done because of all the talk about the awkwardness of the UI.

I am very loyal to VEGAS. Whenever I can use it for something... I do. It's been that way for me since Vegas Video & Audio 2. BUT <-- and that's a big BUT... Adobe has product integration down to a science. Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterEffects, EncoreDVD, & Audition work together seemlessly. I can import/export from any of their softwares into another and back. Each program knows what I did in the other and auto updates on save. I don't have to render & import. I can just 'Edit With' and all these programs read my layers, effects, and all changes!

Adobe products are a staple for many of us in the Media world. Definitely for me.... but Premiere alone cannot compete with VEGAS.

It's kind of like a gang. You could kick the crap out of one of them alone but all of them together... now that's a different story.

Most people that moved from Premiere to Vegas, did so before Premiere Pro.

The differences between Vegas and Premiere (Not premiere Pro) were HUGE.

Before Premiere Pro, Premiere had absolutely terrible performance, barely realtime, barely useable in comparison to vegas which was quickly evolving into a very realtime solution in software.

Premiere Pro on the other hand, is a new beast. Its much better than Premiere Pro (And they probably should have dropped the Premiere name, and went with something new... because everytime someone says Premiere, they think of the old one.

Premiere Pro is a very good editor. It has some really good cutting tools, its easy to cut and work with in someways that are better than vegas even. I've talked about this before, for example being able to cut while seeing before and after frames of the bracketing clips etc.

Also Premiere Pro has better data management, it will remember prerendered clips while vegas is extremely poor in this area.

Premiere Pro also has a whole library of After Effects plugins that work within it. (great advantage)

Premiere Pro also has nested timelines, and nicer bins.

My problem with premiere pro is that for all of the great performance improvements, and new ui.... Its harder to use than Vegas still. Premiere Pro has great cutting tools that are very easy to use now, and i wish vegas would steal a few things from premieres cutting tools... But Vegas is still king at color correction, audio, ease of layering, velocity curves, even transitions!.

Premiere comes with a lot of lame "effects" that look very 1980s. Vegas has a much better ui for editing effects, cropping, audio, etc. Vegas out performs Premiere in color correction and filters.

I like Premiere Pro and i like Avid quite a bit. Vegas is very different than those two. Its a new workflow for users of those two apps. Vegas can get cluttered, it can get confusing, but its still extremely easy to work with.

I would pick Premiere Pro over Vegas for a few reasons, but i would pick Vegas over Premiere Pro for many more reasons.

Its not that Premiere Pro is a bad application. It really is a great editor, the performance is fast, the cutting tools are fast, the workflow is adobe and perhaps that is the problem. Have you even seen their color correction filter? Its so heavy with features that it doesnt work at all in realtime (without going to low res mode) Navigating their color correction filter is like scrolling through the consitution. Its very cluttered, jammed into the ui...

Premiere Pro has a lot of good things going for it, they just need to work on it. The same can be said for Vegas. Vegas is not perfect but its more powerfull than Premiere Pro. More features, better ui, makes hard things easy.

>>Adobe products are a staple for many of us in the Media world. Definitely for me.... but Premiere alone cannot compete with VEGAS.<<

Very well said. I have said in the past that if you are a newbie to editing and you start with a program, any program, that will be your basis. I came from D/Vison and than Premiere...actually I came from a flatbed and gang syncing audio - but that isn't my real point. Vegas is easy to use - so in Pinnacles Studio and Uleads Video Studiio - hell MS Movie maker is easy as well. But the problem that I find with Vegas is that is trys to do *everything*. Now that is not a "problem" in the real sense of "God, this software has problems!" but in the sense that people who, for example, use After Effects for title desgin are not going to dump that program just because Vegas lovers say "Vegas can do exactly what AE can do but easier and faster!" People who are using Pro-tools and Nuendo are not going to dump their entire studios and switch over to Vegas just because "Vegas can do all that higher costing DAWs do, but faster and cheaper!" Vegas is more than just an NLE and that is part of the "problem" because when people compare Premiere, which for all intents and purposes is *just* and NLE, to Vegas people get their fur in a fuzzy knot. If I want to edit - I want to be able to edit. I don't really care about doing titles nicely or being able to do effects or even do a full surround mix when I am editing.

I have said it before and will say it again - as far as editing goes it all comes down to basic editing needs. Can the program edit? Than you expand on that thought. I use Premiere 6.5. I also use Vegas. I have Photoshop and After Effects as well. I have played with BorisRed Gl and I find it hard to use - compared to After Effects. And going back to the thread at hand - I found Vegas clunky in some areas coming from Premiere. But I love both, for different reasons.

Here's the review, the reviewer liked both products..within 1/2 star rating of each other..

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,116673,00.asp

I think that Filmy hit it on the nose. I consider Vegas to be a multi-media tool--not a dedicated video editor.

Magazine reviewers are generally a dumb bunch with little or no actual experience using the product they're reviewing. Its been like that for over twenty years. You would think by now people would wake up.

Whysome insist on getting upset because some dope in a magazine says they like product A over product B I never could understand. Use what works best for YOU.

A related funny story from years back. I long ago forgot the product name but they advertised a lot in all the big computer magazines including PC Magazine when it used to be 600 pages long and came out twice a month. Boy, have times changed, but that's another story.

Anyhow there was this little company nobody heard of. Windows 95 (maybe it was the 3.1, I forget)) had just came out and the deal was if you only installed this little gizmo it would improve system performance, boost memory allocation, do everything but make coffee. It had a three or four cute little dials that "proved" it improved your system. They priced it cheap, maybe $29-39 bucks, something like that. Think is was called turbo something

All the computer magazines gave it rave reviews. Oh it was wonderful. Wow, how could we get along without out it and all that. It was a run away hit.

Plot thickens.

Some serious computer users wrote in and said its was a bunch of bull. Didn't do anything. A month or so later PC Magazine with egg all over its face comes out and says oops.. remember all those "tests" we said we did in PC labs that proved this little applications was the greating thing since sliced bread?

Well duh sorry, we were fooled, now that we bothered to disassemble the code and REALLY test it the applicaion doesn't do a damn thing except display those cute little dials. Its just pure bull...

So much for computer magazine reviews.

Yea, this company used to take out full pages ads in PC Magazine and all the others. At least PC Magazine did admit they got taken too and really for once ripped the application to shreads with a real review afters by someone that actually knew what he was doing. Funny, that little company went belly up almost overnight. It was the 80's version of those exercise belts of a year or so ago that gave you a little "shock" and the pounds just melted off while you washed TV.

LOL!

"Adobe and Sony each offer combination bundles with apps that provide more DVD authoring functionality. Adobe's $999 Video Collection Standard includes Premiere Pro, the audio editing program Audition, the DVD authoring application Encore DVD, and the video effects program After Effects. Sony's $999 Vegas+DVD Production Suite includes Vegas 5 plus the DVD authoring program Video Architect 2; however, it lacks additional audio and effects applications."

The writer is a moron: Vegas no need another partner for audio :)

Also note the program "Video Architect."