VV4 vs. The World

treborvdrummer wrote on 8/9/2003, 9:34 AM
Hey folks just thought I would get some feedback.

I use VV4 for doing children's sports camp videos and recently one of the parents who happens to work in the industry came by my table and asked what I used for NLE. He assumed it was Adobe Premier, however when I told him it was Vegas Video, he looked very surprised and replied in and incredulous manner "oh...o..k... that interesting" and for some reason I immedialty felt like I had lost all credability with this guy.

He then began to talk up Avid's DV Express as though he was trying to save me from residing in the realm of low end NLE software.

Can some of you "pros" out there shed some light on this scenario for me?

BTW - One of my colleages whom I have worked on projects with uses Newtek's Toaster (latest rev) as well as Blade and Speed Razor and I do miss not having access to Boris FX and other packages like that. But what are the other differences between VV4 and these other packages like Blade and DV Express?

Comments

MyST wrote on 8/9/2003, 10:11 AM
I thought Boris had come out with a package for Vegas.
As far as Vegas being the under-dog, well that's just the way it is for now. Maybe Sony will change that with some marketing. It's already starting.
Remember the term "Sleeper" used in car lingo?
Think of Vegas as a stock looking Camaro RS that blows away the Viper from stoplight to stoplight because it's got a blueprinted, supercharged, nitrous-injected V8 under the hood.

M
Jsnkc wrote on 8/9/2003, 10:42 AM
Well, I can say I have used Premiere, Video Toaster, and Avid Express DV. But the only system I still have up and running is Vegas 4. Vegas 4 is simply more user friendly, and allows you to do your work at a much faster pace than the other programs. The other programs do have good points about them, but the bad parts far outweigh the good parts. Basically something to can do in one click in vegas, takes you 3-5 clicks in other programs. Those clicks can really add up in time and money wasted. Also, the other systems (except for premiere) you need to have an extremely powerful computer in order to run them (more$$ wasted) If you wanted to you could run Vegas on a 600Mhz machine with 128MB of ram that you can pick up at a garage sale for $20. It will render kinda slow, but will still work very effectively.
mitteg wrote on 8/9/2003, 1:45 PM
And what do you think about Avid Xpress DV ? I know it hasn't got so many fuctions as Vegas, but it must be a good way to learn the "Avid interface" and be able to edit with the big ones: Avid Media Composer or Avid Symphony.

What do you think ?

BillyBoy wrote on 8/9/2003, 2:01 PM
Sady, there are many people in the world that view Premier and Avid as "professional" grade editing tools and everything else as inferior more so for any other reason is because they're too dumb and/or arrogant to know any better. Ditto for DVD Authoring applications as you'll see ample evidence of over in that forum.

Much of that kind of bias comes from many people using such and such product and everything else is compared to it. Of course anyone bothering to try new software and keeping an open mind sees Vegas not only as an equal but superior in many tasks.

Some people that use Photoshop for years have felt pretty much the same about upstarts like Paint Shop Pro. Of course if you ever use it you discover it and GIMP the free look a like have most of the features of Photoshop and work pretty much the same way.

I simply refuse to work for anyone that upfront judges my work not on the quality there of but rather on what tools I use. How dumb is that?
VOGuy wrote on 8/9/2003, 2:57 PM
I originally bought Vegas a few years ago, because I saw it as a uniquely inexpensive way to compile segments of projects I narrated to create demos for prospective clients. At the time, I was surprised at the ease of use, amazing amount of functionality, and the rendering speed. I work frequently with many video professionals, who do everything from weddings to network commercials, so I have a bit of second-hand knowledge of various editing systems. (I have to listen to grumbling about their systems, and sit through system reboots during recording sessions.)

Some of my clients have several different systems, Avid, Premier, Vegas, Final Cut etc. They all say they all have their strengths and weaknesses. It seems everyone is getting less concerned with specific software & hardware, and more concerned with final product. Unless the project needs to be moved to a different production facility, the main concern today is input/output format, and production quality.

If a particular system saves YOU time and/or money, that's your busines. It's the product you produce that counts.


Travis
Travis Voice Services ( www.Announcing.biz )
JonnyMac wrote on 8/9/2003, 3:08 PM
Good point. I believe our "customers" care only about the end product, and really have no concern for the tools used to create it.
ReneH wrote on 8/9/2003, 8:50 PM
There are so many great features that VV4 has which allows me to be freely creative. To me, it is a program no different than Paint Sho Pro, another prog I hold dear to me; both allow me to be expressive with endless tweaking possiblities. If Sony were to screw this up at least I have the most perfect NLE to work with at the present time.
Solocinema wrote on 8/9/2003, 9:13 PM
I did one of those 48-hour film festivals a couple of months ago and the only people who had problems due to crashes etc. were FCP users. The two VV teams had no problems.

Ditto to the comments on Paint Shop Pro. It's been my favorite unsung app for 10 years now, along with Sound Forge.

I hope Sony helps give VV some visibility.

bd
PeterWright wrote on 8/9/2003, 9:15 PM
treborvdrummer

It's a question of perceptions getting ahead of reality.

It's a common syndrome, similar to the world's press pretending that David Beckham and his missus are worth putting several times in every issue, even though both are extremely uninteresting people.

The reality, unknown to your friend, is that Vegas can stand up to any editing software that exists, bar none. It does most things easier than the others, it does some things that others don't do at all, and the few worthwhile features it may currently lack you can expect to be added soon.

I know this doesn't make it any easier to respond to condescending comments by others, but in that situation I try and quietly mention that it's a wonderful program, and if they want to see it, I'll show them some features.
pb wrote on 8/10/2003, 12:16 AM
It is not fair to compare Vegas/Premiere to AVID Media Composer. That is like comparing a Canon GL2 miniDV camcorder to Digital Betacam or Betacam SX. Almost anyone can afford a GL2 and many shooters and get decent results from a GL2 but who has 60,000 CAD to shell out for a BetaSX WS unit?

AVID Media Composer and Symphony are horribly expensive. I know this because the very large oil company I work for owns a Media Composer (upgraded every year since '96) and the next version down, which began life as AVID NT Express but has been upgraded a few times and I have no idea what it is classified as now. Anyway, our Composer cost almost as much as a house in Edmonton, Alberta.

The advantages AVID Media Composer has over Vegas are:

1) Speed (mostly real time for everything) thanks to the hardware

2) Multitude of third party plugins.

3) Composite, Component and SDI I/O

4) etc.

Having said that, AVID's stock audio editor is almost as bad as Premiere's and the interface is not easyt to learn. We bought into the Vegas family with Vegas Pro/Sound Forge to get better audio quality.

I often get unsolicited emails and phone calls from "AVID Qualified" editors. So what. All that tells me is the individual knows how to use the interface, doesn't guarantee creativity or knowledge of editing basics. I started out as a tape editor on Sony Type 2s (VO 2850 et al.) in the late 70s btw.

We have two guys who love the AVID and use the systems daily. However, there is little discernible difference between a DVD built from AVID output and one made with Vegas.

Vegas is wonderful program. Affordable, easy to use, stable and, best of all, has a fantastic mulit track audio editor that works beautifully with Sound Forge. I tried AVID DV Express and I guess if I had never used anything but AVID units, it would be the program for me. However, it is grossly overpriced and unless you are going to spring for the MOJO, Vegas blows it away.

Peter