Which Magix product is best replacement for Adobe Premiere?

Jasmin wrote on 8/31/2017, 5:30 AM

Hi--

I am a newbie to video editing. I spent time this summer with someone who had Adobe Premiere CS6 and I got really into it. I started to make educational videos that looked really professional. Got home to discover that I can't buy CS6 and would have to spend $50 a month for cloud service. No thanks.

So I am looking to buy and am wondering which product to go for. I'd rather go cheaper, of course, but don't know what will fit the bill. The product comparison page was confusing (to me) Basically I want to do what I did in Premiere:

import video I take on my phone and photos I take on my DSLR
easily make cuts from the beginning, end, and middle of my video and then use standard transitions like fade to black or dissolves. To be able to do the same with audio (cut and have transitions like fades)
have different layers of video, so I can add titles and stuff. Animate those titles so they appear to move or fade into/out of the screen.
Be able to speed video up to 2400 x the original. I bought another video editor but they weren't able to handle this so they refunded me, which I appreciated, but I don't want to bother learning another editor if it can't handle this.
Be able to slow video to such a degree (I forget what) that basically the video acts like a photo and hangs there for however long I need.
Be able to do subtitles, preferably it can support multiple subtitles (I speak several languages and want my videos accessible to as many as possible.)
It would be nice if it could color correct the video.
Some special effects like reversing the video would occasionally be nice, as would animated objects and cleaning up photos. I used to have photoshop CS4 but just got a new computer and learned that Adobe won't let me download the legitimate original I had bought, so I need replacements for Photoshop, which I used with my videos, and eventually replacements for InDesign and Illustrator and pdf readers as well.

Thank you in advance for any one who can help guide me as to what Magix product best suites my needs.

Comments

set wrote on 8/31/2017, 5:55 AM

Hello Jasmin, welcome to Vegas Creative forum.

Since you are asking here, I guess most of the answer you will get over here will be Vegas Pro or Vegas Movie Studio.

You may want to try download the trial of both softwares from:

http://www.vegascreativesoftware.com

And see if it meet your needs...

For tutorials how to use, you can find from this post:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/vegas-pro-tutorials--103245/

Vegas Pro and Vegas Movie Studio was originally made by Sonic Foundry, and then bought by Sony Creative Software, and last year (2016) finally bought by Magix Computer GmbH.

altarvic wrote on 8/31/2017, 6:45 AM

Be able to speed video up to 2400 x the original.

Vegas Pro 15 limit is 40X (w/o additional rendering or manual project nesting or 3d-party scripts)

3POINT wrote on 8/31/2017, 7:31 AM

Be able to speed video up to 2400 x the original.

Which sense does it make to show 40 minutes of video in one second?

Kinvermark wrote on 8/31/2017, 9:49 AM

I would also like to know the "usage case" that requires 2400x. Surely at that speed you may as well just cut video out. Maybe you meant 2400 percent? 24x makes some sense and is totally doable.

Jasmin wrote on 8/31/2017, 1:33 PM

Be able to speed video up to 2400 x the original.

Hi--thank you for all of your replies. I will have to go back to my Premiere files and see. I thought it was 2400x but I could very well be wrong. Basically I took a 7.5 minute video and condensed it to maybe 5-7 seconds. The reason why (if it matters/for the curious) is that I was doing a trailer for an art class. So basically I took one entire lesson (7.5 mins) and made it short so I could fit a short clip of a lot of techniques into the trailer. It turned out perfect--was not too fast or a blur. I think it worked well because the actual process is so slow and/or the movements so repetitive that while much was missed, the effect was that you just showed the general process. But I'll double check and see if those really were the numbers. Thank you for your responses.

Marco. wrote on 8/31/2017, 1:46 PM

"Basically I took a 7.5 minute video and condensed it to maybe 5-7 seconds."

This is about 75x.

Nest a 40x speeded Vegas Pro project, speed up a second time and you'll get up to 1600x.
Or use a workflow tool like Vegasaur inside Vegas Pro and you'd get a 10.000x speed-up in one go.

Jasmin wrote on 8/31/2017, 1:53 PM

Ok, I went back and it DID say 2400%. Sorry about that. (actual time: from 6 mins 51 seconds and change to a bit longer than 10 seconds) So by your response, I take it that Vegas would be able to do 2400%/24x. So that was crucial, thank you.

BTW, I posted to this forum because this is the one I found after checking out other Magix products. They have a lot of products and I'm not clear about the differences between them; I've found the information and websites to be confusing (and normally I am not easily confused by websites, although cop to being easily confused by math.) Anyway, I do appreciate your responses. Would love to know if any of you tried Premiere and/or how you like the Vegas products if you would like to share.

wjauch wrote on 8/31/2017, 5:49 PM

Re replacement for Photoshop check out Affinity Photo. Also FYI Magix has another video editor which I didn't see mentioned above http://www.magix.com/us/video-pro-x/

Kinvermark wrote on 8/31/2017, 5:51 PM

I used to edit with Premiere Pro cs6. I had always liked Vegas and used Movie Studio Platinum at home. Once premiere went subscription, I packed it in and moved to Vegas Pro.

I don't miss much about Premiere. Vegas is far more agile, and in the end you can achieve the same things. The one thing I do miss, and would really like to see in Vegas is a way to "storyboard" your clips - that is to lay them out in the order you want (ie, manual sort order) before you put them on the timeline. Premiere allows this in its media bins. My workaround is to use Adobe Bridge (you can get this for free without a subscription), which allows organizing clips by manual sort order inside of collections. Be great to see this in Vegas, but with per clip hover scrub and in/out set points.

PS Affinity photo is excellent.

Jasmin wrote on 9/1/2017, 3:45 AM

Thank you wjauch for the Affinity advice; I'll look it up.

Thank you Kinvermark for sharing your experience with Premiere. Glad to hear you had an easy transition back to Vegas.

I searched other threads, and although some were quite old, I found many people suggested Studio for beginners and then upgrade to Vegas as your needs become more sophisticated, so I think that's what I'll do. I did see that there was a "summer special" for $49 (!?) for five Magix programs, including a video editor (movie edit pro) (along with a "fast" video maker, which I can't find now and immediately dismissed for my needs) along with Video Pro, Vegas Pro, and Movie Studio, all with three tiers, i.e. "platinum" and "suite". It's a lot of choice, but if you click on the video to explain one or the other, you can't really see the difference, it's all marketing and pretty pictures, zero real information. I called their sales line and the salesman couldn't explain the difference. All he said was the Vegas was more professional. He couldn't tell me why. That's as far as we got. IDK; maybe it was literally his first day on the job. I don't want to rant on sale staff because they, like everyone, are just people who need a job, but this is just to say that I got so little information from the Magix and the Magix site that I really appreciate everyone who offered comments here, because it helped.

Marco. wrote on 9/1/2017, 4:01 AM

Beware of in Movie Studio all the extended features which helps for doing time laps are missing. The maximum factor you'd get there is 4x. No nesting to more easily exceed, no scripting which tools could help. The only way to speed up above 4x is to render, re-render, re-render. If time lapsing is an important feature for you Movie Studio isn't best choice for you.

Jasmin wrote on 9/1/2017, 8:42 AM

Oh wow, Marco, THANK YOU! I think of my video needs as very, very limited, but time lapse is crucial. Demonstrating a watercolor technique can be both informative and entertaining with time lapse; without time lapse it's neither. Or the opposite! Or it would require so much more editing! So much easier to speed up to 24x than to edit out the parts of waiting for the paint to dry!

john-brown wrote on 9/1/2017, 11:22 AM

Hi,

A word on the other Magix products, there is a comparison page of the features on the Magix.com site, but, unfortunately, no comparison of Movie Edit Pro/Video Pro X with the Vegas programs. You would have to put the two comparison groups side by side, and even that would not give you a complete picture.

Movie Edit Pro Plus/Premium (Premium is Plus with the addition of a couple of third party programs) and Video Pro X can do everything that you have indicated on your list, except for subtitling. No subtitling. Movie Edit Pro basic should not even be considered.

Video Pro X goes way beyond Movie Edit Pro (MEP), but likely with features that most users do not need. Video Pro X (VPX) has much more control over colour-grading than Movie Edit Pro and has video instruments that MEP does not have.

MEP and VPX have speed control that can maintain the audio up to a certain degree, and then turn off the audio if the limit is exceeded.

VPX, like Vegas, allows multiple language possibilities for output to DVD. You can have tracks for different languages and they will show up on the DVD or BD as language selections. The video is compiled only once, but the audio compiled for each language. However, if your output is not to DVD/BR, then any program can handle multiple languages simply by muting all but the desired language and exporting. Of course, this is only useful if you want to have multiple audio languages and not subtitles.

Judging from what I have read, the best for you to do everything that you want would be Vegas Pro.

Jasmin wrote on 9/1/2017, 12:06 PM

Wow, John Brown, lots of good info here. Thank you so much.

Yes, I tried figuring out what all the specific programs offered and their differences, but just couldn't "get" it. Your info about subtitles is super useful.

Can I ask about captions? Are "captions" the same as "subtitles" in these programs? Basically what I want to offer is closed captions in English + subtitles in other languages. But if closed captions was supported in one of the cheaper product options, then what I could do is closed captions in each language and just offer different courses that way. (In addition to art, I plan on creating English as a Second Language courses.)

Thanks so much for your help! I really, really appreciate it!

Movie Edit Pro Plus/Premium (Premium is Plus with the addition of a couple of third party programs) and Video Pro X can do everything that you have indicated on your list, except for subtitling. No subtitling. Movie Edit Pro basic should not even be considered.

Judging from what I have read, the best for you to do everything that you want would be Vegas Pro.