V8 vs After Effects: Can Vegas do most of this?

ken c wrote on 9/25/2007, 4:59 PM
Hi -

This may sound like an odd question, but as a longtime fulltime Vegas editor, I'm looking to expand my skills, and thought I'd look into learning Adobe After effects, for special effects and other enhanced skills.

Here I am, having bought most of the AE books and "gone deep" into it... but for the most part, I see very little that I would ever need to do in AE, that I can't already do in Vegas, using the many tools in Vegas, like pan/crop, the keyframing for adding effects, and effects plugins etc..

So my question is, I guess for those who are experienced in Both apps, what can AE do a better job of, than V8, that I should focus on? Because for the life of me, I have yet to see anything that AE can do that I can't already do in Vegas...

(and I've watched hours of video tutorials, from good sites like totaltraining and lynda.com etc, and read a dozen books/done tutorials...)...

What am I missing? Seems Vegas can do all the stuff AE can do, with very few exceptions... (eg AE seems like you manipulate stuff on the comp window, with a lot of little tweaks, where with Vegas we work w/imported objects on the big timeline, so a different frame of where we focus our energy on, is about it)..

Any tips/insights, from experienced AE users? It seems like I can already do 90%+ of what AE offers already, in Vegas... AE seems like it offers broader control over tiny detail type of things, so that may come in handy...but for most of core bread and butter video production work, with effects, seems like Vegas does just fine by itself.

I've gotta be missing something... *what* ? scratching head here...

thx,

Ken

p.s. for 3d stuff, I see the need for apps like ProAnimator, Cinema4D, Maya, 3ds max.. but for effects and timeline based video animations/effects, seems like Vegas is mostly fine by itself...

Comments

TomE wrote on 9/25/2007, 5:11 PM
Ken,

check out Andrew Kramers site. www.videocopilot.net

He has an example using set extensions (matte work essentially) and one of the things he uses is the motion tracker in AE. That is a good example of something that is not available in Vegas. Vegas is a editor that has some good compositing capabiltiy. AE is not an editor. It is a compositor. It is not an either/or I think it is a great combination to have Vegas and AE both. And if you can get something done right in Vegas go for it. But I think once you really spend some time with AE and incorporate expressions etc.. you then see its muscle.

-TomE
ken c wrote on 9/25/2007, 5:18 PM
Thanks, Tom - yes I even got his DVD, it's excellent... again though with a lot of this stuff, I use Ultra for keys, and have other small apps (ProAnimator, VisionLab Studio, Particle Illusion, etc) that'll create rendered avi-alpha channel sfx... and tons of plugins for Vegas, I have most of them, eg Boris, New Blue, others...

From the way most of the AE tutorials are laid out, they're using it kind of like an NLE for effects... whereas I'd feel more comfortable just importing the footage into Vegas' timeline directly to work with it, from what I'm seeing... (eg how they move text, or add blurs etc, all pretty basic stuff in Vegas already)..

Thanks for the idea re expressions, I'll look that up... any other ideas, Tom, or anyone, re what AE does better than Vegas? I want to learn AE, but so far I'm thinking in the back of my head, "but I can do that already in Vegas" 90%+ of the time for everything the tutorials/books are talking about...

And if anything, AE seems more clumsy, because all the layers are composited inside the comp window, and you have to fiddle with it directly in that preview screen and with dials, where with Vegas each element is on a nice tall timeline that makes it easier to keep track of...).. but AE's so popular there must be a reason...?

(eg see my sfx at www.tradingtelevision.com or www.forexonfire.com .. all done from within Vegas..)

thx,

Ken
farss wrote on 9/25/2007, 5:59 PM
There's some horrible artifacts going on in your video, just look at your hands.

I wouldn't say AE is more clumsy, I find the way it works for the task at hand more intuitive and the background rendering also makes things easier. Still not my favourite tool, Fusion works better with my head but I just don't have the work to justify that kind of expense.

As you've noticed AE has a lot more of the finer tweaks, these matter for cinema and broadcast which is AEs main focus. Also don't forget the range of not inexpensive 3rd party plugins that work in AE.

But if you're able to do what you need to do in Vegas which is a very good NLE why look further afield? I mean you're trying to sell a product using streaming video, not with TVCs or cinema ads. Sure you could tart things up, even the camera moves in your virtual sets don't look like they track but the hardware, software and the time and skills to get it any better I seriously doubt is going to translate into a single sale. In the end if you wanted to push it to the next level you might do better to use a production company with the kit, space and staff to do it for you but expect a hefty bill. Even employing pros once just to see how it's done wouldn't be a dumb move but to what end?

To look at it another way, if you were trying to sell sports cars where image is a huge part of it, the you spend serious dollars on the image. Same goes for most consummer products. I don't see what you're selling as falling into that category.

Bob.
richard-courtney wrote on 9/25/2007, 8:31 PM
The ability to track in Vegas is almost a must have.

I have been playing with some software (see posts from me with search phrase
virtual sets) in the past that does ok with sky replacement or set extensions.

If you don't zoom then they look great. Zooming or dollying causes some complex
math that is very hard to get right.

------------- Boring explanation below --------------------------------------
In a virtual world an image is "projected" onto a glass plane or plate. The virtual
camera remains locked in place and the glass plane is moved about
(up/down/left/right) based on the tracking data.

ken c wrote on 9/26/2007, 5:24 AM
Great points Bob, appreciate it... makes sense ... right re most of what I sell, having infomercial-type graphics is more than enough; it's not necessary to have broadcast quality graphics... there's a point of diminishing return with all this ... I'll keep that in mind, because it is a time mgmt/where to put energy type of issue..

and since my current videos are light years ahead of anything my competitors are doing right now, as is... there's likely other places I should focus on (like learning my basic shot setup skills etc) vs the flash in ae type effects.. thx for the comments!

In asking around elsewhere, too, it seems the short answer is, AE allows more fine-tuning, detailed control over specific 3d effects, for manipulating objects/text/primitives, than Vegas can, and that's the strength of it, if you need to do a lot of detailed type 3d effect work, is the main benefit of AE. And right re tracking is a must-have, the pan/crop tool is a big plus and critical in Vegas.

-ken