Probably a stupid question but...

MHampton wrote on 9/17/2004, 5:52 AM

Up to now, the videos I make have a very small audience (family, friends, and Church). The more I'm leaning about copyrights and such, I now realize that i can't use music from my cds, at least on the publicly shown videos at church. Which has me looking for other options, such as Acid. I downloaded the trial Acid home studio and was playing with it a bit, but there really isn't many clips to play with there. My first thought was, "Gee, this looks an awful lot like the Vegas interface" (well, duh!) Which got me thinking.

Is Acid really necessary? What does it do that I can't already do in Vegas? Is it necessary to have both?

And my next big project is my nephew's wedding, which I'm sure they will want their favorite song included. Where do you draw the line? In this case, no money changes hands, and again, it will be for family use only, so if I understand it correctly, it would be okay.

Who would have thought you'd need to hire a lawyer just to cover your hobby. Geez...

But anyway, the question is about the need for Acid, or is there something better for the price range (less than $100).

Thanks,

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/17/2004, 6:05 AM

First, there is nothing better than acid at doing what it specifically does.
Second, Vegas has the ability to sniff Acid metadata and also to change up/down pitch/tempo.
Acid's draw function is easier, Vegas only allows you to shorten/lengthen by grid.
Overall, Vegas is a great place to start.
My recommendation? Download the free version of ACID from this website. Spend time playing with it.
You can get a lot of free loops from the ACIDplanet.com site in addition to some single freebies from this site.
It's pretty cool that you're considering copyright issues when you work on videos for public display. I was pretty surprised yesterday to see a video on this website advocating theft of any intellectual property. Kinda made me sick to realize (once again) the lack of value some people put into other's works and property.

apit34356 wrote on 9/17/2004, 6:33 AM

What website? A video?

MHampton wrote on 9/17/2004, 8:13 AM

Thanks Spot. I've downloaded the free trial of the music studio. It doesn't come with a lot of loops, but I'll see what I can do with it. It's interface just really threw me when I first loaded it. It will take some getting used to I think. :)

Thanks Again,

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/17/2004, 9:19 AM

While Vegas 5 does give you the ability to use ACIDized loops, it lacks a few capabilities that ACID has which will streamline your workflow. I think you’ll find that ACID has more tools for music composition since that is what it is specifically designed for.

Just some examples:

ACID will automatically transpose all loops into the key of the song. Vegas will not. You have to manually adjust the pitch of each loop to match the song key.

ACID will let you drop markers to change the key to create chord progressions. In Vegas you must pitch shift each loop individually to create a chord progression and you have to do this on every track that you want affected.

ACID will let you drop markers to change the tempo of a song. For tempo changes in Vegas you must change the project tempo back and forth but it only changes the tempo for the ACID loops dropped after the tempo change. Not bad as a quick fix but not the way I would want to work all the time since you have no way of knowing at what tempo you dropped a file and where.

ACID has tools to easily chop a loop into smaller musical parts while Vegas leaves you to manually figure this out using the trimmer. ACID will also chop to a new track creating new a loop. In Vegas you would have to render the loop segment and bring it back in but it won’t have ACIDized properties because Vegas doesn’t add them.

ACID can Beatmap a song so that it plays in time with all the other loops while Vegas cannot.

ACID will let you preview loops by playing them over and over so you can hear how they will sound with the rest of the composition. Vegas will only play the loop once. This makes picking loops for a song very tedious.

I could go on...

So yes you can do a lot of this in Vegas but it’s a lot easier in ACID plus ACID has more tools for you to use. In short, if you’re going to do a lot of loop based music composition, get ACID. You won’t be sorry.

~jr

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/17/2004, 10:25 AM

Remember, acidplanet has TONS of free loops.
We'll have some freebies on the VASST site soon as well.