Premier Pro CS3 or Vegas 7, which to buy?

Edward wrote on 4/10/2007, 4:52 PM
Just looking at all the features that Adobe can do collectively, I'm seriously thinking of converting to Adobe Premier. It looks very intriguing to have everything intergrated with each other. I'm a diehard Vegas nutjob, but after getting into After Effects, I really want more from Vegas. The Adobe Master collection is looking really, REALLY cool.

Any insights on this? Is it really cost effective to have a NLE such as Vegas and not have the intergration with such useful software such as Photoshop/Illustrator/Encore/Soundbooth/After Effects (aside from single layer psd/png pix or avi render files)?

I'm the video editor / motion graphics type, so you can get a clue of why this decision is important to me.

Any comments / insights / slaps-on-the-head-to-straighten-up would be appreciated. I need to hear from the Vegas pros.

Thanks.
Ed.

Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 4/10/2007, 6:04 PM
As a fan of Vegas 7 and AE 7, heres my honest advice. Take it or leave it.

You have three options. Go with V7, go with Adobe, or go with both. Look at what Adobe is offering in their bundle. If they have somethng you need, then its a no brainer. If you go with both, you are not limited in any way shape or form.

If you sont have DVRack or Ultra2, then youll have to go with an Adobe bundle.

Last I looked, Vegas doesnt do any web or print design so the Master collection would benefit you there as well.

The biggest advantage Adobe now has over Vegas is integration and in a major way.

Take this scenario:

You are working on a project in Vegas and want to use After Effects for some cool composited titling. You have to render out of Vegas, import into AE, composite, render out of AE, import back to Vegas or DVDA to author a DVD. Oh wait, you realized you made a mistake and have to go back to AE again to fix something; Render back out again, etc....

With Adobe:

Start your project, dynamic link to AE, make your changes, go back to Premiere, changes are instant and saved automatically. Realize you have a problem, dynamic link again and fix it. Then you can either send the video off in Clip Notes for approval or post a copy complete with menus in SWF on the net. Then author your DVD.

The only thing you will lose in the transition will be the ease of editing in Vegas. But dont you really gain that much more especially if you dont own the other products included with the Master Collection?
rmack350 wrote on 4/10/2007, 9:42 PM
First of all, you've probably got V6, and V8 is probably approaching. No, it doesn't make sense to buy V7 right now. Go ahead and put your $2500.00 into the adobe Master collection, or the Production Premium suite if that's a better match. Later on, you may decide that you want Vegas8 at an upgrade price and that won't be such a big nut to crack, comparatively.

Photoshop and Flash are definitely worth having, and After Effects is good to have if you're going to use it. All three are great to become skilled at, in fact I have friends who are fairly skilled with Flash who have to keep the suitors away with pointy sticks. Illustrator can come in handy if you care to learn it but consider there's a LOT to try to become competent with in that master suite.

Premiere Pro? The current version appears to get worse as you get good enough to push it, but CS3 promises to fix a bunch of the really nasty memory bugs. Consider running that one under 64-bit Windows and be prepared to sink a lot of RAM into it. We have 32-bit systems with 4GB installed and a bit of hardware. That hardware steals a lot of memory addresses, leaving us with 2.4 GB of addressable RAM. Definitely think about win64. Adobe will probably make sure Premiere can run on it.

There are lots of very worthwhile Adobe products, even if you have to take Premiere too, and maybe Premiere will improve.

Rob Mack
deusx wrote on 4/11/2007, 8:34 AM
I don't see why this is a question at all.

If you have enough money to buy the whole Adobe suite, surely you can afford to spend $150-$200 to upgrade your Vegas to version 7 or 8.

So have both.
rmack350 wrote on 4/11/2007, 9:37 AM
Exactly.

Rob
TLF wrote on 4/11/2007, 12:23 PM
Isn't that the sort of reasoning dodgy repairmen use... ?

"You can afford a BMW so you can afford the repairs."

I can afford either the Academic version of an Adobe Suite, or a Vegas upgrade when either is released in the coming months. I certainly can't afford both as Sony doesn't offer an Academic version in the UK (at least, my supplier doesn't offer one).

Worley
filmy wrote on 4/11/2007, 12:42 PM
Base your choice on your needs.

For me I simply can not do what I want to do audio wise without the aid of Sound Forge and Vegas. Straight editing i can do with PPro or Vegas. For decent titles i can not do that in Vegas so PPro has a much better titler built in however I would still use AFter Effects with some nice plug-ins. Or you can use photoshop and than bring that into Vegas however you sill have to leave the relam of Sony and use somehting from Adobe.

You mentioned motion graphics and because of that I would say After Effects is a must have. (Sorry, I still don't think Vegas can do everyhting that AE can do - and a lot of that has to do with the available plug-ins for both, or lack therof for one)
Edward wrote on 4/11/2007, 2:07 PM
I love Vegas, but I gotta go where I can save time. Family time seems to outweigh software preference. The question isn't about the money (because I can always hit up mommy... hehe), it's about productivity. If I can do my job in 3 hours as opposed to 12, that suits my need fine.

Thanks for the insight gentlemen, this has really been informative.

Ed.
farss wrote on 4/11/2007, 3:16 PM
PPro should solve all the problems you were having with BetaSP.

Bob.