The rumor on Vegas 7 is September if that influences you.


Both Premiere and Vegas are pretty powerful programs these days. You can do great work in either. What are you looking to do that you can't currently do? That might be a more helpful way to look at it.

Premiere's Integration w/ After Effects & Encore DVD is HOT!
Now that Adobe owns Macromedia... you can bet that the Family of Adobe Integrated Apps will grow so Premiere users will probably benefit from that.

I just wish VEGAS/ Sony Media Software products Integrated as well.
Since Sony Media Software products can't Open/Edit Projects from the other Apps the way Adobe products do... it would be nice to at least see some After Effects Integration. -After Effects IS a 'Staple' in the Video world.

Some programs & companies are just 'Staples' in the Video World. Adobe is definitely one of them.

But to compare Premiere & Vegas (without thinking of the other Apps)... Premiere isn't in the same league.

My preferences in order:
1. Vegas
2. FCP
3. Premiere
4. Avid

Wow, Avid #4? While I too prefer Vegas over everything, I dont see how Avid could fall below the others especially Premiere. I think Adobe has screwed up big time. PP2 is a major resource hog. Thats the price you pay for their "integration". However, the only thing I do like about PP2 is 10bit editing.

I would hold off and see what Vegas 7 brings and then decide.

What are you looking to do that you can't currently do? That might be a more helpful way to look at it.
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As others have said: 10bit CF DIs.

Bob.

..thanks for everyones input..

I'll most likely wait for Vegas 7..

Premiere Pro 1.0 can't do HDV, but MS Platinum can & I'm happy, but I hate having a crippled version of Vegas if you know what I mean..

..which is why I was looking at Pro 2 'cause it handles HDV, but apparently not all that well, if you read the Adobe forums....

Wow, Avid #4? While I too prefer Vegas over everything, I dont see how Avid could fall below the others especially Premiere.
It depends what Avid you're talking about... Nitris, Symphony, Media Composer, Xpress Pro, Xpress, or Liquid.

From the brief time I used Avid Media Composer, it seemed to be on par with FCP. Nitris and Symphony are probably nicer, and cost multiples more than Final Cut.

Avid Media Composer (Meridian) & Avid Adrenaline(PC)
Avid Xpress Pro(MAC)

Avid has a weird way of "Duplicating' all of your media into OMFI files. This tends to fill up a HardDrive pretty quick. Then when you're trying to clean up/do some housekeeping and delete files after projects... things can get ugly.

Simple things in Vegas are Not So Simple in Avid. Waaay to many steps to do similar tasks.
Avid is a 'Cutter'. I tend to like NLE's that just let you 'Edit' without having to ReLearn or Go Back to how things were Linearly Edited. Seems like the ProSumer Apps (Vegas, FCP, Premiere) are headed in the right direction.

Vegas tends to do EVERYTHING I need. Including some stuff I would normally go to AfterEffects for. I definitely can't forget Audio. There is NO NLE that can do what Vegas does when it comes to Audio. NONE!

I entered the editing world through Vegas rather than the 'known' names. So my perspective is slanted in favor of its intuitive design and integration with audio. Like the story:

A rich man stands with his young son, surveying his vast estate.
Father: "You know, son, I didn't start out with all this."
Son: "I know, Dad. I did."

Bob, are digital intermediates really a concern of someone using MS Platinum?

10 bit DI's for HDV doesn't make much sense to me. As I understand it, the source HDV is 8 bit isn't it? So what would be the benefit? It would take more horsepower and yield no better product.

For HDV not a whole lot of use.
However cameras now becoming available record more than 8 bit depth, by my understanding the improvement in image dynamic range is greater than just the difference between 10 bits and 8 bits.
Is the improvement going to leap out of the screen at you?

Given that most display devices today (LCDs) are pushing it to display more than 6 bit depth, no way. So one might well question why spend large sums of money to record more than 8 bits and the answer is having more scope to adjust the recorded image in post.

To look at it another way. Current HDV cameras such as the Z1 can record a perfectly acceptable image. Take great care with lighting and camera setup and the result will be pretty damn good, especially considering what the camera and the kit needed to handle the image in post have cost you. During the recording process you and the camera have made a lot of decisions about how to limit (by lighting) the dynamic range of the scene in front of the camera and then how to compress that limited dynamic range into the available recording medium. Once recorded though there's precious little scope to undo any of those decisions.

By applying less compression to the image when it was being recorded one has more scope for making decisions in post about how to ultimately compress the image into the available bit depth.

Bob.

There's also the issue that processing effects in 10 bits causes a lot less artifacts than processing them in 8 bits. So even if the destination is less than 10 it helps to work with as many bits as possible.

One thing that isn't immediately obvious is that the difference between 8 bits and 10 bits isn't a mere 25%, it's 400%. 8 bits = 0--255; 10 bits = 0--1023. 2 extra bits may not seem like much at first, but it results in 4 times the dynamic range.

Vegas is my number one editing program, the new premiere bundle is pretty cool , but I still dont have terrible problems going from Vegas to after effects,, funny thing is the one program that i find extremely interesting , and no one ever mentions (but my co workers) is Edius,, I still prefer Vegas but if I went cold turkey it would be to edius , not avid ,premier or anything else,, .

One thing that isn't immediately obvious is that the difference between 8 bits and 10 bits isn't a mere 25%, it's 400%. 8 bits = 0--255; 10 bits = 0--1023. 2 extra bits may not seem like much at first, but it results in 4 times the dynamic range.
Dynamic range would really depend on the camera. In some implementations, you could just be recording the same dynamic range but with higher precision. Or on the flip side, the cinegamma setting on the Varicam allows higher dynamic range but with the same bit depth / precision.

If you do record higher/extended dynamic range, a higher bit depth + lower compression are both useful.

the cinegamma setting on the Varicam allows higher dynamic range but with the same bit depth / precision.

Good point.

This also goes for any Sony broadcast camera with a Pre-Knee circuit that does analog dynamic range compression/gamma adjustment of the video signal before the A/D converter.

I thought I had seen some prosumer camera with this feature too?

Yes,
many prosummer cameras offer these features as well, the sensors are capable of a higher dynamic range than can be recorded linearly onto tape so the dynamic range can be compressed to fit. Needless to say this process is anything but lossless so trying to undo the damage is impossible. If it was possible film might have died out a long time ago.

Bob.

I don't have any experience with 10 bit DIs for video, but this question makes me think about Photoshop.

Suppose you take a camera RAW image (which depending on the camera is usually something greater than 8 bits in resolution) and load it into Photoshop into the 16 bit image world. Do an "autolevel" operation and look at the histogram. It's still quite smooth across the 8-bit curve (i.e. the 0-255 range for RGB).

Then do the same thing entirely in the 8-bit domain. After doing the autolevels operation, your histogram can show all kinds of dips where their is no chroma value on parts of the curve at all.

After saving both of those two image variations to an 8-bit file, the first will look better than the second.

While my explanation and terms may not be all up to snuff, I kind of compare it to the analogy of doing a zoom on an HDV frame vs. doing a zoom on an SD frame when the target is SD. The latter requires more interpolation in which the software must "fill in the blanks" instead of working with data it's already got.

But, in all these cases, the validaty of the results depends on having more data in the first place (i.e. the higher bit resolution from the camera RAW still or the bigger frame in the HDV frame). I wonder if there could be any benefit to using 10-bit DIs from a non 10-bit video source, so I guess I for one don't particularly care about this feature.

Your analogy is very good.

Even if the original source is 8 bit, there is still a benefit to processing in 10 bits. Adding effects, or even simple fades, generates more data. Having 10 bits to work with this added information can result in smoother gradations with less errors/artifacts even if the source and output are 8 bits. Consider that SoundForge processes everything in 32 bits even when dealing with 16 bit files. There is less distortion this way.