Yah I didn't even think about that...most big companies dont use dv..

Uh.....strike that.

There was an article I read in a Sony Magazine promoting Vegas 5 that some studio doing a new movie is taking the route of doing all the editing using only Vegas 5.

Off top of me head I don't recall which one it is - but....there are companies that do use Vegas as their only editors.

What you have to think about is the ever changing face of video production. DV is definately here to stay and Vegas is in a great position (lead, in my honest opinion) to be at the front of the pack.

What I find extremely interesting about NLE and PC work is - that it is so versatile. It can handle baby's first footsteps through music video's...hell, even do all the audio pro mixing that you need. The only thing that can really stop a person is hardware and imagination.

It also helps if a person has at their disposal other applications to help in production (like Adobe Photshop, Illustrator, Boris, etc)....but it all boils down to how it is all brought together. And from a PC point of view...Vegas is the key.

(...no, they don't pay me for this stuff either.)

:-)

Vegas it is best and most efficient software.In addition do not require expensive hardware to do equal job.'Big companies" has spended thousand of dollards on equipment what was top of the line few years back and still using it even thogh that are absolite.Money factor.While one person can sucessfully "operate" Vegas, other software require a "man power" to do similar task.Thos "big companes"have huge budget to spend and they are wasting a lot of money.Is amature(like myselfe) or professional small scale Vegas will do everything what other software with better effieciency and otput.
(I do not get paid to write this-just telling as it is)
have a fun

The dynamics of changing equipment, software, etc. is much different for the individual than for a larger organization. Most think all TV stations have the latest equipment. This is usually not the case. TV stations and larger producers probably buy the best the can at that moment, but their commitment to software and hardware is usually much, much longer than the individual. As long as it works, they are very slow to make changes due to issues such as cost of replacing multiple systems, training curves, engineering issues, tax depreciation, etc. Individuals, on the other hand, are curious and can more easlily afford to change their entire process (one software purchase).

Most movies are filmed using technology that is many years old. Only the Spielbergs can afford the investment of developing the new technologies, necessary for their projects, that trickle down to the individual. Take chroma key for instance. Until recently, it was very difficult to get quality results with Vegas level (price) software. Now with a little care, we can perform par with just about anybody.

The bottom line is that we are the guinea pigs for a great deal of new ideas. Just as in Vegas 5, we are part of the process of sorting out problems, testing new products, and developing and suggesting better ways of doing things. All the posts on this forum that point to problems tell me we're doing our job. Sony, as did Sonic Foundry, appears to be honestly committed to developing the best NLE available, at the individual Vegas 5 level and beyond.

Personally, I feel that Vegas will soon explode onto the video scene, similar to Acid on the music scene. It is quickly becoming the standard by which other software is measured. A friend of mine in Memphis was bragging about all the new toys he had purchased. From chroma key to track motion, my responce was always "Vegas will do that"

Exactly...Television stations, like government agencies, do not change direction nearly as quickly as individuals can. Many things must be considered with merely changing out a camera or so.
Training
Compatibility within and without the organization
Speed/$per minute cost
Support gear
Longevity/amortized costs
Archive/logging

Discreet Edit is also found in a lot of rooms, because there are newsroom modified versions built just for that purpose. Same with Pinnacle and what has become Edition.
Further, news rooms are RARELY interested in the creative flows that Vegas would offer, because most of that is bought canned or built in separate graphics departments, or part of an editing hardware solution as a preset with minor modifications.
Vegas isn't suited for newsroom production, not at this point.
But for the PRODUCTION companies out there, Vegas is used a LOT. Content providers all over the world have and are discovering Vegas every day. Sony will only up that awareness.

I can see how folks would use vegas, but when you toss in a track for a letterbox matte, then lets say a circular gradient to give a little film like look, then color corrections.... Vegas simply cant provide a fluid realtime editing experience due to it being software only without any intelligent prerendered clip management. Everything has to be rendered, and its so easly forgoten, that it takes of so much extra time just to rerender, or constantly ram preiview just to see the edit as you work.

I've been to places like Beatlejuice (they edit the actors studio, monday night football's intro, and various other shows for espn, abc, etc...)

If they had to sit around and wait for vegas (and they dont use vegas) they would be pulling their hair out.

Vegas is a powerfull program, and i think its fantastic for what it is.... heads above others... EXCEPT when it comes to being able to edit, prerender... then edit those clips without it destroying the prerendered data. (yes you coudl render each clip to an avi.. but not really the same thing) Because its destructive and isnt connected to the history of fx, etc you've applied to it.

Vegas is powerful, but if you're doing anything thats fancier than simple cuts.... it becomes really slow to work with in comparison to real editing solutions that are put to the test on films.

Even against AVID express pro or Premiere Pro... Vegas cant compete in the area of performance when viewing your edit. Those two programs maintain a history linked to the prerendered clips. Change that history and you have to prerender.... But once prerendered... you can cut, edit, splice, and move the clip without having to rerender the dam thing.

THAT is time saving, and both those apps do it far better, and in the a fast paced world such as tv... if someone needs to get something out quick.. those apps would be far better at it from a performance point of view (IF you were adding colorcorrections, and filters). Otherwise vegas is fine without adding too many filters or multiple video tracks.

Again, since everyone is protective of their favorite software... i'll state how great Vegas is. Vegas is incredible for what it is... but it can come to a crawl quickly because it lacks good prerendered handling of clips.

I do like vegas quite a bit. Recently i recommended it to someone, and a friend of mine who is also a film fx animator chimed in and agreed that Avid's DV offerings are pain in the ass to work with compared to Vegas. But we both agreed that Avid handled prerendered data much better. I guess we have to weigh the pros and cons.... Vegas wins in most respects.

Plugins are another issue with vegas and i hope that changes soon. That will hurt Vegas greatly in the longrun.

(yes i've said it before... and i wont keep hammering on this subject more than it needs.... but i hope it makes it into vegas6))

Jackie_Chan_Fan, I gotta disagree. You are correct about rendering and working for super speed necessary for TV spots. But comparing to Premiere or Express Pro, saying they are faster at previewing edits? That's simply false at every level. Same with FCP once you remove the hardward and compare apples to apples. (no pun intended)
Happy to compare any specific apples to apples time comparison with you. It seems you're forgetting the assembly, preview, and finished product time from start to finish. Color correcting in Vegas is far faster for instance, than it is in Premiere or FCP. Avid is about the same, but it does have a couple better C/C tools. But there is no render required to preview internal or external with Vegas.
Given that we've got every major NLE package on either our training, Beta, or daily use systems, I'd be happy to do an apples to apples comparison.
While I absolutely agree that Vegas isn't a great choice for newsroom and live event insertion, that's not what it was designed for. Pull Premiere, Edition, FCP, or AVID into the mix minus hardware, for nearly any editing task, Vegas kicks their butts hands down. I've done far too many shootouts with all of those products, never once losing to the best of their demo guys. Because they can't do what Vegas does.
Because it doesn't handle pre-rendered clips the way you'd like it to, you discount it's value against those other tools? That's kinda like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
And yeah, Vegas is obviously my favorite tool. But I also have written books on Premiere, Encore, FCP, and other NLE systems and feel I've got a very strong grasp on all of them excepting Edition.
And NO ONE is using Premiere or Avid Express in the "fast-paced world of TV." Except maybe some mom and pop cable station in Podunk. And in that scenario, there are a lot of folks using Vegas in the same place.

Also, let's not forget:

As of 5/23/04
FCP HD $999
Premiere Pro 1.5 $699
Vegas 5 $560
(at the publisher's webstores)

There are obviously strengths and weaknesses to all applications, but I believe that Vegas provides the greatest amount of power overall, dolllar for dollar.

Consider that when you are asking for new functionality to an application beyond the company's development schedule and especially when you ask for features found in packages that are higher in price, the company has to consider the cost of implementation versus their asking retail price versus the increase in demand for their product because of those features. There are many other variables, of course, but these are things most consumers can understand and hopefully appreciate.

I, for one, do not want to see additional features added that do me little to no good, at the cost of seeing the price of Vegas increase several hundred dollars. There are points made in previous replies to the initial post of this thread that do a fantastic job of describing what organizations use what tools and why. This does not refer to stability issues and the fine tuning of features already included. And again, new features WILL be added over the lifetime of the product without an increase in price if it is to remain competitive in the marketplace.

What may seem like a simple addition to a software title can require much more effort to integrate successfully based on the design philosophy of the project. If not, the "big boys" would have already adopted many of the things that Vegas came off the drawing board with years ago. I first became familiar with Vegas right after VV3 was launched. What blew me away was the fact that I didn't need special hardware to get realtime previews, that I could output an external preview through firewire, and the load of effects and transitions that came with it out of the box. Most importantly, it did all these things that I DID (and DO) find useful at a pricepoint that nothing else on the market could compete with.

And the circle is complete.

Tbone

[Spot Said]:

"It seems you're forgetting the assembly, preview, and finished product time from start to finish. Color correcting in Vegas is far faster for instance, than it is in Premiere or FCP. Avid is about the same, but it does have a couple better C/C tools. But there is no render required to preview internal or external with Vegas."

[I Say]:

Never did i forget it. I love Vegas's color correction tools. I just didnt mention it. I actually began to, but edited it out because i didnt want the post to be overkill.

Vegas's Color Correction is incredible. Its FASTER than Premiere Pro... and by FASTER... ... for anyone that has even tried premiere pro.... You know what "FASTER" means :) Premiere Pro simply CAN NOT do color correction in realtime. Vegas can pretty much do color correction in near realtime and it really is impressive.

AVID express pro has a nicer color correction workflow in that you get 3 windows, before frame, current frame, and start frame of next edit. And it is nice to work with...

But i like Vegas's approach to color correction because peformance wise its just fast! You can stack them too... Avid really cant do that, and you can pick and choose just how processor intense you want your color correction to be, because you have the option of color correction, then adding color curves, etc...

Secondary Color correction... What can you say. Avid doesnt even offer anything like it in Avid Express Pro. Neither does Premiere Pro.

Vegas wins hands down in that area, because its fast and powerful. I have very little to complain about vegas in this reguard. I DO WANT THAT 3 WINDOW workflow that avid has though. But keep the color correction tools chainable as they are now, rather them lump them into a single fx filter. I also want an easy UI to mask sections of clips and process the colors within those masks. Similar to the new mask feature (which i'm sure you could do it with that but it would require lots of layered tracks unfortunately)

I just wish that AFTER you apply all of the color correction, and then prerender.... You can work with that clip without vegas dumping the connection between the prerendered clip and the original. This is where Avid and Premiere shine.

And you're right no one is using avid express pro in the broadcast world really. I'm sure some are in the field on laptops etc.. but they arent about to give up their faster, hardware, and much mroe expensive studio setups for little old avid express pro or dv. Express pro is a nice peice of software though... as is Premiere. Feature wise.. Vegas wins.. no contest.

Where vegas fails... is a little hard to describe without making it sound like Vegas is crap. Its in prerendered clip management. If it had such a feature (as do avid and premiere) You would have better performance and a better editing experience in Vegas than you currently do. Though that is not to say Vegas is a dog. Vegas is lighting fast in many respects, and is more feature rich and overall an incredible easy program to work with... And you cant forget its audio tools which NONE of the others can even come close to.

But again... Vegas NEEDS a smarter prerendered clip management system because it would take the headache out of using vegas. Its the one thing that truly lacks in vegas and i feel it is a big issue because it effects many things such as time, and the personal energy level you have when editing. Constantly prenrendering or ram previewing becomes a distraction and a time killer that hurts productivity on a stamina level.

Once we set fx's and transforms etc on a clip.. You should beable to prerender it and do whatever you want with it, without having to prerender it again unless you change a setting in the clips fx chain.

Once Vegas does that... It will be a much better editing experience in Vegas. NOT that VEGAS isnt a great editor... It would just take some of the drudge work out of it.

Frankly i find it hard to work without this feature. I'm curious how others work around this. Do you constantly prenrender? (shift M) .. or just ram preview sections, never ever getting to watch the entire feature in realtime?

Or do you render to new tracks constantly? How does that workflow work out?

Whats the work around?

Its easy to not mention the great things about Vegas here. We all know how good the program is... But we also know what it needs.

MichaelS wrote:
> Only the Spielbergs can afford the investment of developing the new
> technologies, necessary for their projects, that trickle down to
> the individual.

Actually, his films are edited on film, not NLE. Michael Kahn does use NLE on his non-Spielberg films, but Steven himself prefers editing on film.

It's George Lucas who develops new stuff that trickles down. Lucasfilm was the creator of the EditDroid, which later became LightWorks (or something like that) and that technology has trickled down somewhat.

Fred

Oh i agree Tbone66. I know this all to well. I worked on 3dstudio Max r3, r3.1, r4, r5 and character studio for discreet.

I know all to well the cost of implementing features, time constraints, production cycles etc. Its a juggle. And every "next verison" will improve upon the newly implemented features of the last rev. Its a constant refinement.

But at some point you have to implement features that you're affraid of digging into it :) It has to happen because the market demands it. Of course Vegas and 3Dstudio Max are worlds apart in terms of price and seats.... and you're right that the budgetary concerns help dictate what features get hammered on.

Developers are always affraid of small new features list. Often digging into the basic subsystem of an app to implement a new feature that results in little to brag about visually... isnt appealing to the suits who dictate marketing and they're the ones who get to nudge the direction of an app usually. FCP has super magic spooky stuff.... now Make Vegas have it. "But we need prerendered clip management first" "doesnt matter.. FCP is going to have super magic spooky stuff and ours wont next version!" Its a head to head feature thing that each release goes through. You can gloss over the older stuff you forgot or didnt implmenet for only so long before it bites you.

(And i'm not speaking for Discreet here. I do not work there any more)

Just thought i'd pipe up: I used Premiere 5.5 & 6 before (for several years). That pre-render thing was great, BUT... I waited forever for Premiere to render small ammounts of time (30-60s). Just to see that what it did sucked.

I've found vegas faster just cuz I don't have to wait to see what things look like. :)

Robert Rodiguez (Desperado/Spy kids movies) starting using all DV (by DV I mean Digital Video, not comsumer cam DV) with Spy Kids 2. He edits in his garage with Avid I belive. :)

Not Vegas, but it's a step to Vegas getting there (more people who edit DV instead of Film = less special hardware = more DV editors used, ie Vegas!)

Just thought i'd pipe up: I used Premiere 5.5 & 6 before (for several years). That pre-render thing was great, BUT... I waited forever for Premiere to render small ammounts of time (30-60s). Just to see that what it did sucked.

I got ripped off on e-bay on an auction for Premiere (not e-bays' vault)...then I managed to scrounge up the money for version 5.5. All it took was my initial discovery that I had to render just to see my edit to determine that it sucked.

I put off NLEs for a while until I remembered I had d/l the demo to vegas 4. Loaded it up and never looked back.

I should have know it was going to rock since I had been on board with Sonic Fondary since early days of Sound Forge. So all of my AV software is SF (now Sony). Sound Forge, Acid, Vegas, Architect....no turning back as far as I'm concerned.

fwtep,

I stand corrected. I was using the the term "Spielbergs" as an offhand reference to film and video makers whose companies create new or improved technologies for producing content. Sometimes my "scope" becomes a bit too broad for my own good.

Cheers

Premiere Pro is a lot nicer than premiere 6. Its been improved/changed drastically enough that it shouldnt even be related to the previous versions.

I agree. Premiere 5.5 took AGES to render.

Premiere Pro doesnt seem to have that problem anymore. Its pretty fast, and what i really found nice is that it works with after effects plugins.

"I got ripped off on e-bay on an auction for Premiere (not e-bays' vault)...then I managed to scrounge up the money for version 5.5. All it took was my initial discovery that I had to render just to see my edit to determine that it sucked."

Thats all been done away with in Premiere Pro. I agree.. Version 3 of Vegas wasnt enough to win me over, but 4 was because Premiere was a dog and simply couldnt run realtime on even the best of pc's back when 5.5 was out.

Premiere Pro is a different beast though. It will play back edits in realtime just fine. (once rendered of course) Color correction in Pemiere Pro is so slow, the only way you can preview it really is to render :)

Only problem is that it took them YEARS to get the RT preview working. It's the famous "takes us hundreds of $$ to gain a client & $10 to loose them." situation. :) Adobe turned me oof of Premiere & now I won't use it. :)

Does VEGAS acquire and output video at a 1:1 ratio?

I thought everything that touches VEGAS gets compressed to DV standards. If this compression theory is true... Big companies will never use VEGAS as their main editors. Why would you use Cameras that capture an awesome image (BetaSP - DVCPro) then use VEGAS knowing that you are not getting the same quality you fed it? I say this because the production company we work with, shoots in these formats. They edit and output using AVID. The tests that we did was a direct capture using VEGAS & AVID then outputting with both. We didn't touch the phootage on the timeline. Just captured and exported. Their was a definite difference. AVID output looked exactly like what we captured. (Sharp and Crisp with the same 'color palette' VEGAS output was a bit 'fuzzier' as if it had a bit of blur added or something. The colors were also altered a tad bit. Sony support told me that what I was looking at was the DV Compression. He suggested that I add a piece of hardware that would actually show us Post DV Compression while shooting on the monitor. This way we could adjust the 'look' to be closer to the desired look during shooting. This doesn't help us because we are altering the source phootage. So as soon as we bring it into AVID the colors are in dire need of much color correction.

I have an associate that goes back and forth to LA/Hollywood with his laptop and does Daily's using VEGAS but he too said he doesn't see VEGAS as ready for the BigTime because of this same thing. <-- And Please, don't anyone respond saying, "You need to check your settings." I've already been through this with support so this is pretty much coming Straight from the Horses Mouth. VEGAS is NOT ready for the Big Leagues. It is for the Prosumer/DV market.

Don't get me wrong though. VEGAS pays my rent, car note, insurance, etc. on a day to day basis. I Love VEGAS; but notice I'm in that Prosumer/DV market that I mentioned before.

AZEdit -- Do you guys ever capture Video? If so, what program do you use?

I ask this because of your previous post. Maybe we should be looking at capturing using a different application, then continue the edits in VEGAS. There truly is no other NLE I would rather use. It's just that I would like to be able to do the 1:1 thing. The AVID rep told us that the MOJO is used for this. It yields no other benefits except the 1:1 capture capabilities. If VEGAS would incorporate something like this... it would definitely become the NLE of choice for most editors and companies.