I'm a full-time online & offline editor, working for a major broadcaster and have been cutting primarily with Avid for nearly a decade now. Version 6 is still being beta-tested on the users in traditional Avid fashion so we'll wait till it matures before we upgrade! Naturally I love version 4 and 5 Media Composers, especially Symphony/Nitris monsters hanging off TBs of fibre-connected storage. But not too many smaller or even medium facilities have the financial resources available for a big metal set-up. And yes I gotta agree with a previous poster, hardware and driver qualification is becoming a major issue. The 32-bit memory limitations are a HD crash-fest too. If you can't afford a support package I'd think hard before I invested! I'm also concerned about Avid's recent acquisitions and current courting of the Prosumer market. Passing off a re-branded Pinnacle product as an Avid NLE is marketing gone mad

I used FCP a few years back to finish a series that had been started in an external facility and got up to speed with it fairly quickly. It's counter-intuitive for an Avid editor at first, but when you finally stop cursing the the Apple-ness, the awful mouse and the unfamiliar keystrokes I could have become a convert. However the difficulties with delivering to downstream Post colleagues (the dubbing mixers and the online editors/colourists) and the sketchy media management elements are (IMHO) too dicey to be dependable in a deadline ridden professional environment.

Premiere I goofed with back in the days when we still used composite capture boxes, DV brought a turnkey edit system to it's knees and printing to tape involved VHS! Arffffff! I've played with it recently and editor friends rate it highly. However I too disagree with the Adobe pricing/upgrade model.

Finally to Vegas Pro 11. I needed a home facility to cut and deliver a professionally produced, full HD, cardbased MXF acquired short film. Having worked at home with various non-pro and cut-down NLE's I've always been happiest with (don't scoff) Serif's excellent MoviePlus. Great for SD DV and various flavours of MOV and AVIs. A Swiss army knife of an app if ever there was one. But a creaky, under-powered and clunky workflow nightmare for this flavour of media. Casting around for a reasonably priced solution I downloaded the Vegas trial and was able to start cutting immediately. No 24-core CPU set-up or workstation class GPU required! On my modest X4 with a mid-range Nvidia GPU the app was responsive and stable.

Having climbed the initially steep learning curve I can honestly say I am a convert. Agree with other posters about stability and the almost total non-functionality of the 3rd party elements, but NO NLE is bullet-proof. Even the highest end Avid will bomb out with depressing regularity when a HD timeline gets busy, especially if working with LongGOP media!

Yes, Vegas crashes, but on recovery I've yet to lose too much work. Just remember to CTRL-S regularly, backup projects and you'll live.

My biggest issue is the inability to work with sub-sequences within a master timeline without having to spawn another instance of Vegas. Yes, I admire the way you can edit other projects into a timeline and how they are updated live on the master timeline but the generating of mix-down proxies is a little clunky and time-consuming. It's great for single projects but I suspect that trying to edit a multi-programme series within single project would get nasty. Co-operative workgrouping is out too I would guess, but then again if you need that you'll need a machine room full of media indexers and a crew to keep it from falling over

I do find the fact that the media goes offline whenever you activate another programme quite frustrating. You click on the txt doc to scroll the script notes and then gotta wait while Vegas brings the media back online again. But that's a niggle.

Long post I know, but in conclusion as a dyed-in-the-wool Avid editor Vegas Pro 11 is ticking all the right boxes for me. It's cheap, flexible, fluid and fast, doesn't require a massive investment in hardware and I can cut, caption, dub and grade to professional delivery requirements. Can't really comment on how well it will interchanges with other apps yet, but it seems to offer enough industry standard output options for me to be optimistic.

I do find the fact that the media goes offline whenever you activate another programme quite frustrating. You click on the txt doc to scroll the script notes and then gotta wait while Vegas brings the media back online again. But that's a niggle.

HVY70, just go into preferences, general tab, uncheck: close media files when not the active application
That should solve your problem.

Rob

Nice one RoS...that's handy. I still got a lot to learn about what goes on under the hood!

Vegas is plain EASY to pick up and use. It doesnt have the support of camera manufacturers due to Sony but it does get there (DSLR).
- It is FAST. You do not need to import files, and pre render on the timeline. Ture Drag n Drop for transistions / vfx
- For the price it can do RED, DSLR, and almost anything you throw at it.
- Audio tools rocks
- It has some compositing capability unlike the rest which requires multiple software (and more learning curve) when many times you just need some simple compositing moves
- The CC is not fantastic but i do manage to get something useable. They just lack compatibility (like XML support) for interfacing with other software like Adobe, BM Davinci, etc
- It now supports more plugins (a step up from V11) which was one of the reasons why i went for CS5.5 but now that is fixed

I have FCP and CS5.5 but i still love (n use) Vegas the most.

Vegas = Freedom

You fire up Vegas, slide your media from your folder to the timeline, no need to import. You store your media where you want it, no event folder like FCPX.
I also trim on the timeline and therefore never use the trimmer. You basically make up your own workflow.

And you have scripting, a great time saver, audio and video enveloppes, you can fire 2, 3, 4....Vegas session side by side and copy paste from one onto another with fx on events, fast to edit with, great audio mixer, can edit right off an SD card on a laptop and render from the SD card, this is great when you are working remotely and all this with minimal mouse clicking.

No background render, will find your media if it was misplaced or a folder was renamed or the drive was changed. Since version 2.0, you can basically throw any valid video formats without transcoding or any extra third party hardware.
You can even throw 30+ hours of HD footage on an expanded 200+ hours timeline without any special hardware, which I do frequently.

I earn a living with Vegas, so when you add it all up over 10 years, Vegas was a great time and money saver.

Now V11 isn't perfect, I am always cautious when a new version comes up, therefore I do minimal edits with V11 until it gets more stable and I wish any newcomers getting V11 would also get V10 to fall back on while the bugs gets ironed out in V11.

I did try Premiere when it first came out many years ago, lately Premiere CS5 and also FCPX and I would never been able to accomplish all I did with Vegas, it is so intuitive and fast, a great compositor and basically do evething inside Vegas.

Rob

GOOD:

I love the trimmer. It's a great tool for marking and pulling sections of a long interview with regions and names. It's very visual, fast and efficient.

Auto crossfades by sliding clips is brilliant and I can't understand why Adobe does not copy this feature.

Zooming in and out of the timeline with the mouse wheel and side to side or up and down with the ctrl/shift modifiers is so fluid and fast. Again Adobe why don't you copy this so Premiere and I can get along better?

Scripting programs like Excalibur are fantastic time savers.

Audio control is great.

Track grouping is nice.

NOT GOOD:

Support is pretty bad and development is worrisome. We get 3D but long standing bugs and shortcomings are not fixed.

Does not play well in the sandbox with other NLEs. Also does strange things to the video black levels when rendering making it difficult to go back and forth between After Effects etc.

Titlers (all nine of them?) are terrible compared to Premiere. I use Photoshop.

Media Management is terrible. Projects with multiple clips flash icons like crazy and redraw continually. Media Manager solution was never completely finished and implemented into Vegas before being abandoned.

Plugin architecture is bad. A common response from developers is: "we would love to make our plug-in available or more functional with Vegas but Sony needs to fix the problems". This is true even after the new upgrade to Open FX.

Slow motion is not very good compared to other NLEs.

Color correction tools are very amature compared to Premiere and unfortunately programs like Colorista do not work in Vegas.

Project archive feature (create trimmed copies) does not work properly and usually crashes for unknown reasons. A good example of: "If not enough people use it, it will never get fixed".

Last three releases drafted users as beta testers without their consent.

Good:
Pink out of sync sound tracks
Ripple edit
Blue snaps
Ease of use
Compatibility with Forge , Acid, Corel Photopaint, Cineform and Cinescore.
Takes
Sound level control
Mouse wheel control
Shuttle control
Old render settings
Bad:
No more render to preview (V11)
Render menu overly complicated
Too many 3D on/offs in menus
Workflow becoming overly deluted with a gillion more selections in FX's and Media Generators. Should be a way to shut off all the stuff you never use which is different for everybody.
JJK

The only reason I use Vegas, starting with v.10, is that it will allow dual-stream 3D avi files to be edited without first separating them into left and right files.

However, once the cut is refined as much as possible, I export (Render as) everything and do all my final work in Premiere Pro CS5.5, After Effects and Audition before exporting through Adobe Media Encoder.

Although Vegas has some 3D tools that can be used while in the program, like the 3D stereoscopic plug-in, those adjustments are not baked in during export. Further, if a clip is reversed, all 3D attributes are nullified and you only get mono.

As far as audio, you can open a file directly in Sound Forge and then when you "Save as" it will reappear on the Vegas timeline. Unfortunately, Sound Forge is only capable of handling a single stereo audio track.

In Premiere, you can open audio in Audition and a clip in After Effects just by right clicking. After you're finished, the mods appear in the Premiere timeline. There is no need to "export and import."

As far as crashing, Vegas has been pretty stable, but I don't push it beyond the editing stage and even then it crashes regularly when trying to adjust the clips with the "auto-correct" function.

HTH,

< ")%%%><(

One thing not mentioned ...

... for those wanting to start smaller (and cheaper), the GUI for Vegas Movie Studio is the same as for Pro whereas Elements is totally different to Premiere Pro (for example).

Also I agree the DAW heritage means that the interface is easy to pick up for those with a background in audio editing/production.

As for FCPX - it's a toy!!

v8, v9 and v10 (both x32 and x64) here. Third party OFX and VST plugins.


Pros:

- Format agnostic paradigm. Vegas was THE precursor.
- Great audio features for a NLE.
- Can run on average hardware, even entry level for SD edit and delivery.
- Simplicity due to its audio workflow inheritance.
- No need for a proprietary intermediate codec.
- Extensible thanks to a useful scripting API.
- OFX host.
- VST host with x32/x64 compat stub.
- Licensing model.


Cons:

- Despite the "Pro" label, this is not a Pro NLE: no collaborative tools like OMF/AAF import export, TC genlock, etc...
- Partial BWF support.
- Lacks a true asset management tool. The promising Media manager is left as dead for years.
- GUI too bright and getting old: no way to pan/crop using the preview window as an example.
- Bugs and shortcomings identified for years and never fixed.
- OFX host instability.
- VST host instability.
- ASIO problems with devices shared among applications.
- Keyframes issues introduced with OFX host.
- Stock audio DX plugins sound harsh.
- Video levels mess where non savvy users get trapped into.
- Can crash even with simpliest projects (OFX / x64).
- General stability problems with x64 versions.
- SCS inability to drive a credible beta test program. Customers are paying beta testers for releases that never get fixed.
- Software lifecycle and release management is driven by marketing, not reliability or user satisfaction.
- Pathetic customer support.

+1 for adding EDIUS to your benchmark

A former Vegas advocate who switched from it after having lost: time, money, credibility and customers.

I've switched to Avid though not totally yet. I've had to get jobs out the door that were started on Vegas so I have one foot in each sandbox.

Also, for the quick personal project I've continued to use Vegas. My long term solution is Media Composer 6 BUT I could have gone on being a Vegas user; I'm not cutting feature films! I sorta out-grew Vegas... I'm just the type of person that needs the next best thing out there - that and I got sick of the crashes, etc.

My typical project does include many clips from a wedding day so I really love the way MC handles media. And you get the benefit of BCC 8 and Boris Red 5 as well. Killer tools. Lastly it's blazing fast once you get the handle of it and the keyboard shortcuts down.

JJM

Associated with Vegas is DVD Architect. I find it quick to make straight forward DVDs and you can tinker, with a bit more work, if you want something different.

Due to the skip button bug with Blu-rays (skip forward or back on the remote control does not work once you access another menu page or submenu using Panasonic but not Sony players), I have been looking at Encore which comes with Premiere Pro. It does not have the skip bug, but seems much more work to make a straight forward Blu-ray disc, and is not very intuitive to me. The Encore interface seems very sluggish too - over 2 minutes to load a 2 hour AVCHD file, and panels look like jelly when moved around, despite a quad core i7 CPU and 12GB RAM

>newblue plugins, though very appealing, seem to be a major cause of vegas crashes. obviously NOT scs's problem, but it does reflect on them....
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I second Laurence's opinion. I used to be a BIG NewBlueFX fan, I have most of their plugins, and they seemed to work pretty well back in version 10 of Vegas. But the situation went from bad to worse to unusable for me. None of my NewBlueFX plugins will work on my main PC anymore. NewBlue customer service has been very helpful and willing to help track down the problem, but so far everything that they have suggested hasn't worked. I uninstalled all of their plugins and just re-installed ONE plugin to see if I could get it to work. Nope, not even close. It will open, but as soon as you press one button or control....CRASH!

I've pretty much written off those plugins and have invested in BorisFX's BCC and Red. They work great in Vegas. I'm sorry about the NewBlue plugins, I think they are all great, but I've already invested way too much time and money in them and am no closer to resolving the crashing issues.

Hi and thanks for all your comments. I will certainly have them in mind as we approach the big test. Hope also to get in contact with Sony for test support, but that seems hard....
Cheers,
Martin

One thing that makes V11 crash like crazy for me is the new text generator. I can barely touch that thing without it locking up.

I think Vegas is the Ideal tool for promos, TV commercials and documentaries as well as sports intro and a variety of event shooting editing.”

This is where it excel over the rest. I think when they started adding so many bells and whistles, it began getting bogged down. Without having the proper hardware support.

By the way MartinL, the kind of "scripts" (referred to earlier) that Vegas supports are command scripts (software) not actors' scripts.

I have used many systems in my time, including an Abekas D1 Suite I built, Avid suites, Avid Illusion, Adobe....and I have to say Vegas 3 was my first version and I was extremely happy with it and the learning curve was minimal. This small edit system did almost everything my D1, $900K suite I built! I use Vegas in my business as our edit system of choice. We have FCP Studio 3, CS5.5 Premiere Pro and they collect dust.
We do a lot of work for a Fortune 500 company who has in-house Avid Media Composer and I can do more with Vegas than they can do with their High-End system. They still have issues outputting MPG2 from the timeline...they have to another software bundled with their system.
As I have said, I have been a Vegas user since version 3 and have upgraded through V11. I have had relatively few issues with Vegas and have been very happy with it.
I can import anything into Vegas...and I mean pretty much anything! I can easily mix QT, AVI, P2, Photoshop and our animation which is a sequence of Targa files...all on the same timeline without issue. And yes..we have done broadcast programs and commercials right out of Vegas for Springfield Armory, American Cyanamid ...
You can also output pretty much anything. We use Vegas to composit animation sequences and can easily output the files with alpha...a must when working with animation. I can output PAL formatted files as well...important for my clients in other countries.
The Audio editing is a major benefit... the video color correction is intuitive and easy, video layering capabilities is imperative, moves on still images easily done....
I am not saying it is perfect for everything...but it comes closer than its competition!
Mike

@HyperMedia... Vegas doesn't get bogged down because one does not have the proper hardware support! It gets bogged down because new features have been added without ensuring stability in more basic features! And GPU support is a can of worms because 3rd party software (Mainconcept) and hardware makers (nVidia , AMD) create buggy codec plugins and drivers! Lastly, 3rd party plugins for Vegas must have low testing standards because they crash Vegas the most.

I have a solid, high end system and Vegas 11 has been very unstable.

That being said, Vegas is still a great editor. I just wish it was as stable now as it was 5 years ago.