Download the demo and try for yourself. I am a convert from Premiere. The Sony DV codec is far superior in terms of final output quality. Personally, I wouldn't go back. Vegas does have its cons. But that is based on what I would like in features. Try for yourself. The demo is after all, free to try.

Vegas doesn't have a horse in its logo. I think that's the only thing you'll miss if you switch from Premiere.

Anything you wish to do with video in Premiere...you can do in Vegas quicker, easier, and better.

Anything you wish to do with audio you can do in Vegas...and you can't do any of them in Premiere.


The better question would be "How does Vegas compare to Final Cut Pro and Avid?"

Once you go Vegas, you never go back. (or was that something else someone told me to try.......)

I have Logic Audio which I still use for midi/software sampling etc, but once that's done I put those tracks into Vegas to do the Audio tracks - it's extremely good.

And for video, which is my main business, there simply ain't nothing as fluent, well featured and designed as Vegas. I came from Premiere almost 3 years ago, and unlike Orpheus, never looked back.

As beerandchips said, download the demo and find out .....

The audio portion of Vegas alone is well worth considering...not to mention the powerful video editing capabilities. I've been in the audio recording business for several years and until I bought Vegas 4, I was kinda from the old school...as far as recording and mixing was concerned. I have two Mackie 32x8 consoles, an HD24 ADAT and several outboard units (reverbs, compressors, etc.) along with 4 Steinburg Niche ACM modules I used for automation via midi. Lately I have been transferring my audio tracks from my HD24 via the Alesis firewire port (very cool unit) to my video editing machine. And although I'm not used to mixing in a DAW, I'm already beginning to see just how powerful Vegas is for audio mixing. With the almost unlimited list of audio plug-ins available out there, not to mention the ones already included with Vegas, you can get pretty outstanding results with your audio.
Ted

Vegas doesn't work with Gigastudio in the sense that you'll be able to trigger the samples, Vegas doesn't do that. But it does have MTC in/out.
On the musical side, Vegas does quite a bit more than Nuendo, and is more intuitive, IMO. I run Cubase and Nuendo when I have to for a client, but prefer Sonar for my midi, Vegas for everything else. Vegas has FAR better audio tools than Nuendo, Logic 5, (logic 6 is Apple only) Sonar, or Audition. Audition can't even reroute audio the way Vegas does, nor does it have the HUI support.
Vegas vs Premiere on the vid side...
Premiere Proa decent tool despite what a lot say. However, it's still buggy, and to get great audio, you have to export to Audition. Audition does have some MIDI implementation that Vegas doesn't have. But you're exporting from one app to another, and then re-importing back to Premiere. I think that's silly. You become the pig, and not the chicken. (Which is more committed to breakfast, the chicken or the pig?) I'd rather be the chicken and keep options open without having to render, rerender, and render again. Premiere can't import Audition/Cool Edit Pro timelines.
Surround in Premiere is a BIT**. Sound period, is sucky in Premiere.
Video Editing? Vegas is a LOT more intuitive, IMO, Vegas is faster to use, slightly slower to render, slightly higher in output quality depending on whose codec you use. Vegas can be a master or slave in a production environment. I assume you are scoring for picture? With the new ACID tools in Vegas 5, it rocks. With the Tempo mapping, it rocks. With the Mackie Control, it rocks.
Vegas is rocksteady stable. No worries about crashing. Premiere can't say that.
On to MSP...
We just finished writing a book on MSP for Ulead.
MSP has 2 really great things going for it.
1. It can edit native MPEG on Iframes.
2. It can directly paint, import 3D models as 3DS models, and has hardware support for some tools. It can also import AC3 to the timeline. This is why it's a popular choice among pirates.
Audio tools are worse than crap.
Video tools are rigid and lacking.
Streaming tools are next to non-existent.
No surround.
No 24 bit audio
No 16 bit 48K native audio.
No higher resolutions unless it's HDV.
No t/c chase, master, or otherwise.
No ACID tools of any kind.

If you want video and audio together, you only have ONE good choice.
Vegas.
If you don't mind importing/exporting/reimporting/rendering/rerendering/rendering the rerender, then you'll probably be happy w/Premiere. MSP? Not a chance. Not if you have ears, and if you know Giga, that suggests you do.
PS. Check out Vsampler if you like Giga. Vsampler is more stable, and opens Giga files. I LOVE Giga 3. Solid, and as flexible with audio samples and formats as Vegas is with video and audio. With Rubber Chicken, I converted my entire Akai libe, Giga Libe, Roland Libe, and Reaktor libe in minutes. (You don't need to convert, I did just cuz I like things in one format when possible.

Anything you wish to do with video in Premiere...you can do in Vegas quicker, easier, and better.

Thats not quite true. Vegas can do it all, but Premiere has some advantages. Its much better at handling pre-rendered clips intelligently, and has one or two nicer cutting workflows.

Premiere has incredible plugin support, including after effects plugins etc. Vegas has almost none. I find this a very big issue.

Vegas is superior in just about every other way.

Vegas has these plug-ins

Wax2.0 - free from Satish
WinMorph - free from debugmode
Smcubes and SML Luminance = free Scott's Website
HeroGlyph - Professional Titler and Effects from Prodad
Adorage Magics - from Prodad
Excalibur - Gary Kleiner and Edward Troxel
Tsumani - Edward Troxel
Neon - Edward Troxel
Zenote
Magic Bullet
Boris Red
boris Grafatti
etc

The list is growing

Despite the list of plug-ins provided by Lawrence, that list still pales by comparison to what Adobe has for Premiere and AE.

That said, Vegas wins just about every other comparison, except for rendering speed, and hopefully the new network rendering will be improved to the point where it can be set up and used easily, which will eliminate the rendering speed issue, and put ALL of the advantages on the Vegas side.

Bottom line: Get Vegas.

dude, acid is embedeed also with vegas 5 so you have some added control over any acid loops you wish to add in. Very nice....I know your a composer who hates using pre-written music but using heavy percussion can be real quick.

I'm a novice user of Vegas but coupled with dvd arc its AWSOME.

I use carara studio 1.0 to render 3d animations and then import the avi into vegas and import audio (midi'd in cubase vst5) and it works awsome...1 prob is carara studio does not blur correct on shadows but there are some fixes for this in vegas.

all in all Vegas is absolutley awsome.

Auggybendoggy

One thing worth mentioning though, John, is that many of Premiere's plugs are there to either 'fix' what Premiere itself can't do, or improve on what it does poorly. So most of those featured plugins are part of Vegas already.
Photoshop/Premiere relationship is about the only thing I REALLY, deeply wish we had in Vegas that Premiere offers.

I liked the Demo of Vegas 5.0 (I'm new so I really didn't get to try all the bells and whistles in 30 days) , I'm still learning my Premiere 6.5. I can upgrade to Premiere Pro 1.5 for $99 vs. Buying Vegas 5.0 for $600! Too bad Sony doesn't offer a competitive upgrade :-(

Can anyone tell me why I should invest hundreds of dollars more for Vegas instead of Premiere Pro 1.5? I haven't mastered Premiere or Vegas and I have a couple of film projects I would like to complete in the next 12 months. They entail many photos, old movies and old audio recordings, so I would like the ability to pan the still shots. The learning curves play a role too, as I don't have a lot of time to learn, it will be learn as I work.

Thanks

...if time is money, you'd probably cover all the extra bucks for switching to Vegas in the next 8 months.
And be able to actually USE it properly instead of learning for a year how to figure things out...
And I know Vegas can be bought on the net for a cheaper price... maybe try a search...

"old audio recordings": as for audio, Vegas will *blast* Premiere. You won't have to buy Auditon and figure out (again) for a thousand years how to use it then how to use it in conjuction with Premiere.

As for effects, I'm personnaly happy with what Vegas provides.

I think sony does offer a personal upgrade. You can also get good deals from sites like videoguys.com & bhphotovideo.com.

But, how much did you pay for premiere? Add that + $100 for the upgrade. That's how much you've spend on that program. And, you could buy the upgrade & sell that bundle on e-bay. Then use the cash to buy Vegas (that's what i'd do)

Here is the Vegas 5 Competitive Upgrade Page from Sony:

Sony Competitive Upgrade

And I guess you all forgot to say that Vegas interacts with Sound Forge as its own audio editor. Premiere has Audition, but Sound Forge is by far much more intuitive and easier to work with. I'd like to say that I do agree with Spot's remark on Premiere and Photoshop, as you can export sequences from the first one to the second one so as to manipulate the images. I've never tried that, though, and my final statement is: go to get Vegas ;)

Thanks NSHane for the link to the competitive upgrade! I've received more feedback from the Vegas forums that I have on the Premiere forums and it looks like Vegas is the way to go! I'm sure I'll be hitting the Vegas forums for help when I start using it! Thanks for all the input!

"And I guess you all forgot to say that Vegas interacts with Sound Forge as its own audio editor."

Actually, Vegas allows you to designate any of your favoriite audio apps as an editor - I prefer Wavelab to Sound Forge, so I set Wavelab as my prefered audio editor in Vegas. I can right-click on any audio clip and elect to open it (or a copy of it) in Wavelab. When I exit Wavelab, Vegas replaces the original with a second take - I can always go back to the orignal clip if I want.

Vegas is a great application.
Caruso

Pfoef… I am really glad to read all these good posts about Vegas!!
( knowing now that I have the best there is! ;-)) )

I also can't imagine an other NLVE that I can work faster with.
At adobe they say on the 'Promo videos' that if you open a adobe software you know excatly where every thing is and what they do.. Wel compared to Vegas I find that not relevend.
I have tested out the Demo of Adobe Premiere Pro, and AE. I find the interface really puzzling. Even the simple task of spliting an event ( Key ‘s’with Vegas) would have to be done with the mouse. Well .later I found out that you can program the buttons and stuf but still. AE and P.Pro doesent seem to invite me.

But with Vegas I don’t have to think about the interface… the production just flows.

The Only thing that I saw in Premiere Pro what interested me was the colour correction system which had 3 seperat envelops for R-G-B Colours.
Does Vegas have something compared to that?
Or is that only possible with the ‘Secondary colour corrector’?

There's a seperate Color Corrector which has 3 color wheels, not for just RGB, but variable for shadows, midtones and highlights. Its my favorite FX filter.

Can anyone tell?

www.bb-video.net

Just click on Color Correction

How many converts from Vegas to Premier is the question people should be asking! I doubt you'll get any significant numbers on that. Beyond that, I like editing video with no assistance from Tylenol.

Would the color curves be what you're wanting, that's seperate RGB control.