10/1999 - I paid $250 for IntroDV (A horrible piece of software by a company
called Digital Origin ... almost unusable).
12/1999 - $200 for Pinnacle Studio 1.0. (I really enjoyed using this software
.... easy to use and, unlike others experiences, I found it to be reliable)
06/2001 - $95 upgrade to Pinnacle Studio 7
02/2002 - $250 purchase of Vegas 3 ... I had a project that required pans and
zooms on stills so I needed an NLE that could handle them. (Sonic Foundry was having a promotion on Vegas 3 so I took the plunge)
08/2002 - $80 upgrade to Pinnacle Studio 8 (At this point I was still using
Pinnacle Studio for small simple projects but I think I only used Version 8
once before abandoning the Pinnacle platform completely)
11/2002 - $200 purchase of Sound Forge 6 + Noise Reduction at Fry's
Electronics (I needed the Noise Reduction plug-in and it was cheaper to buy
this bundled package than buying Noise Reduction seperately)
11/2002 - $100 purchase of Dazzle DVD Complete (I wanted to burn and
distrubute my videos on DVD)
02/2003 - $300 upgrade to Vegas 4 + DVD (I never did use DVDA1 as I found
Dazzle DVD Complete easy to use and reliable)
04/2004 - $200 upgrade to Vegas 5 + DVDA2 (At this point I began using DVDA2 as my DVD authoring program)
04/2005 - $200 upgrade to Vegas 6 + DVDA3
09/2006 - $150 upgrade to Vegas 7 + DVDA4

3/4" deck to deck (my church had some OLD equipment), but this was a some years ago.

Then a casablanca avio (wow did that ever suck), I really have a hard time coming up with anything good to say about that hunk of junk.

Then a Video Toaster 2 System from NewTek that had Speed Razor, but I used the built in editor because it was more convenient when working with other various parts of the VT2 software.

Then I got tired of working away from home at 1 and 2 in the morning on a regular basis. I asked a good friend of mine in nashville named Eric that I did work for various TV stations etc... and was certified in all types of systems. He said that he really liked Vegas, so I started looking around and asked some questions, found this forum. Got some material from Spot about the output quality etc... and made the switch. Now I look at other video editing softwares and just laugh at how not nice to use they are.

That would be Vegas 5.

Then nesting made me buy Vegas 6.

Workflow made me buy Vegas 7.

and I'll buy Vegas 8 just because I HAVE to have V8 :P

Dave

Pinnacle Studio 7 <about a year>
Pinnacle Studio 8 (vain hope for stabilty improvements) <about 3 months>
Vegas Screenblast 3 (due to stability & a seriously awesome FORUM!) <about 6 months>
Vegas 5 & DVDA2 (had some spare cash) <2.5 years>
Vegas 7 & DVDA 4 (moving up to HDV) <present>

Brian

Twas 1999 and my first son was born; bought a Sony Hi-8 camcorder.
* Pinnacle Studio something-or-other. Crashed all the time but I loved the auto music bed generator.
* Found Video Factory 1 in Best Buy with a rebate that basically made it free.
LOVED IT! - absolutely NEVER crashed.
Upgraded to
Vegas 4 + DVDA 1
Vegas 5 + DVDA 2
Vegas 7 + DVDA 4 and Cinescore
Along the way bought Acid Music, and Sound Forge.

(Also, just to see what the fuss was about, at one point tried a pirated copy of Premiere, just so I could test full functionality. Hated it....)

Started in 2000 with Vegas2, then 3, then 4, 5, 6, 7 :)

Premiere 4
Speed Razor
Speed Razor 2000
Premiere 6.5
Avid DV Express
Vegas 5
Vegas 6
Final Cut Pro 5

Still use Vegas but haven't upgraded to 7 as of yet.

Tired Premiere for a time.
Discovered Vegas 3.
Bought it.
Upgraded to V4.
Upgraded to V5.

Stuck there. I don't edit often nowadays and still have a PD-100 cam (so not HD)... still hesitating about upgrading to V7.

MGI Videowave (Ugh!)
Sonic Foundry Video Factory V2
Vegas 5
Vegas 6
Vegas 7

Mark

Ulead Media Studio 4 (worked ok but not professional enough)

Premiere 6 + Canopus Raptor RT (good results but overly complicated work flow and zillions of bugs. Never finalized the 45 min. project i bought it for...)

Vegas 4.0 (i just completed the above project in 2 days after weeks of Adobe frustration...)
Vegas 5.0 (works every days for everything since 3 years...)

Tried Avid since and hated the work flow from the very beginning...

Reflecting on my progression through NLEs, limited as it has been, and pondering what others here have been saying, makes me think back to my very first camera. Like rocks and chisels, or pencils and erasers, recording instruments and editing possibilities, I guess, go hand in hand.

As a young teenager in the early 70s, I started with a used 8mm film camera: no editing other than in-camera, just raw projection. Graduated to Super 8 with a splicer in the early 80s. My new projector had sound recording and mixing capabilities. That was exciting! Received a Video8 camcorder as a wedding present in the late 80s and mostly dubbed to a VCR, but the constraints and quality were such that my interest waned.

When my church started thinking in the late 90s/early 00s about making a promotional video, I bought a Digital8 camcorder, along with Video Wave (non-linear editing: free at last!), then found Sound Forge and then Vegas Video. Been with Vegas Video 3 (on Windows 98 SE) ever since, solid program that it is, or at least until tomorrow, when Vegas 7 and Cinescore (prompted by a new Core 2 Duo laptop with WIN XP) are scheduled to arrive at my impatient door.

It still astonishes me that, with even the most unremarkable free NLE, the constraints of twenty-five and even fifteen years ago are completely transcended. And with software like Vegas, the most unremarkable non-professional can now easily do what professionals back then would have found hard or impossible to do. Stories are still what it is all about, but now the process of doing it can match the speed and flexibility of imagination.

Tim Robertson

For starters, I've owned my own computer business for over 25 years now (pre-IBMPC). We are primarily business to business, but do a lot of walk in trade as well. I guess being a gadget oriented guy got my start in computers, with the TRS-80. Sold one video editing system - dual tape decks, 286 processor (I think), and don't recall the software - had to be in early 90's, for over $10k.

Was a Pinnacle Dealer for awhile, then ran across the Sonic Foundry Forum, and all the enthusiasm there. Picked up V3 for almost nothing, according to folks on the forum, buy Video Factory, then upgrade to VideoVegas cheap!! That ended my Pinnacle association.

Up until Vegas, there was always a battle with software / hardware, and spent many hours (and many support calls) getting Pinnacle, etc to work properly, or even just barely....

Loaded up Vegas - it started working right away. Got an OHCI Compliant 1394 card, plugged that in, and then came the real test - video capture. Hooked up the camera, and it worked flawlessly the FIRST time. Vegas seems very intuitive, for the most part.

Thanks to all the folks on forums like these for answers to many questions, and insight into trying new ideas.

Just upgraded to V7 and DA4 - could not pass up that bargain! (Not a pro - just a very satisfied amatuer!)

Al S.

..."It still astonishes me that, with even the most unremarkable free NLE, the constraints of twenty-five and even fifteen years ago are completely transcended."...

Things like generational loss. When you're shooting Hi8 and editing on SVHS, there's not much room to drop a generation

Also, I haven't made a VHS copy in at least a year (yeah DVD's). The real-time duplication drawbacks of VHS were a pain in the butt. Took forever to make a bunch of copies.

oh dear, showing my age:

dynatech's e=mc2

and then every pro nle till about 6 years ago when i 'retired'.

and now v6, though i'm about to get v7 after trying the demo.

just thinking what i could have done with it 20 years ago......

leslie

This thread makes me feel really old - really! . . . and I'm not really old, am I?

Like many posting here, I am no professional, but have a keen interest in video editing. My NLE experience was kindled by needs that grew out of my linear experience. I am, first and foremost, a performer who married a performer and bore performing children, etc. To capture the wonders of developing childhood, my performing mate and I rented a Sony BetaCam to capture my daughter's first dance recital performance (dance recitals are really work!!!!!!). The thing had no TTL or equivalent focusing aid - you judged the distance and took your chances. It was a crude, but alluring introduction to the video world. Mrs. and I vowed that by the same time "next" year, we would own our own cam. That cam was a Sony CCD-V8AFu. I thought I was in heaven. Auto focus, auto or manual white balance control. Far more predictable than my 8mm film based movie cam.

That cam was my main video acquisition tool for three or four years. On a trip to Florida, I must have purchased some inferior tapes. Coupled with the high humidity, I recorded some less than optimal footage due to recurrent head clogging, and resolved to get a better cam as soon as I got home (note that the cam really wasn't the problem, but it was a good excuse to go shopping).

The better cam turned out to be a CCD-V220 from Sony. Now, in addition to much better video, I had stereo PCM (digital!) audio. The cam introduced me to fades and such, although, thankfully, I was usually too busy capturing the event to mess around with fades, titles, and such. I now had true digital audio and shutter speeds that I could control.

I was convinced that my CCD-V220 was the cam of cams, so, I never kept pace with the advance in cams that followed - totally missed the intro of the CCD-V5000 which was the Hi8 version of my beloved CCD-V220.

That CCD-V220 was purchased in late 1987. My son was 9, my daughter 5.

The "new-cam-bug" didn't bite again until my daughter was a junior in high school. She won a scholarship to Interolochen that year. In lieu of schlepping my CCD-V220 and my Minolta Maxxum 9000, I bought a Sony CCD-TR917 Hi8 video cam. I figured I could just capture individual frames to make snap shots, and that the video would be as good or better than anything I could accomplish with the much larger CCD-V220.

I was right about the video, wrong about the snaps.

Later that year, my daughter came to me for assistance with her High School project (some concocted assignment, completion of which was mandatory for graduation). Being a performer like me, she wanted to do some sort of video history of Broadway productions. The project, as she envisioned it, would involve footage from old Broadway productions blended with "interview" footage shot with assistance from friends/family filling as interview subjects shot around the house.

I figured it was time to go shopping to see what new products on the market might assist in this project.

The answer: Pinnacle Video Director 200 - a "new" product that would allow me to edit my video footage "professionally". I bought the package and we went to work. Unfortunately, my CCDV-220 was really not up to the task. I had to send away for some adapter cord to even interface that dinosaur with the "new" device. Then, we discovered that analog tape counters were far from the frame level accuracy that computers conditioned us to expect.

We completed the project with much angst, although the effort impressed the bedevil out of the teachers at the time - real titles, real fades, etc. . . . and the sight of a computer controlling the final assembly between a source cam, a computer, a digital effects box, and the source VCR was some real whiz bang to watch!

. . . I was hooked into finding solutions to the problems we had encountered in completing the project. The main problem was editing frame accuracy. A careful perusal of Pinnacle's user forum solved that problem. There was a nifty calculation routine offered and a list of tables with pre-calculated machine frame delay values that allowed Video Director 200 to be frame accurate - woopeee!!!

The next problem was generation loss. Video Director 200 was basically a software program that allowed you to make a low-res database of scenes from your source tape(s), then, edit the database to create a computer-based edit decision list, then, the software would control both source and destination decks to assemble a second generation finished product.

An interface box also allowed you to add fades and titles.

Pinnacle followed VD200 with Studio 400, essentially the same program with a higher res capture interface (the higher resolution was useful in capturing stills), a new look to the software, and, ironically, an inherently less accurate method by which to locate edit points on an analog tape.

The inaccuracies of this program drove me insane - and also drove me to begin searching for something better.

In an effort to improve my S400 editing efforts, I went out on a whim and purchased a Digital8 recorder, only because it included time code that should have helped in the accuracy of my interaction with the S400 software.

It helped, but did not totally eliminate the inaccuracy that was inherent in the program (a fact later admitted by Pinnacle . . . how could it be that the previous product, VD200 was frame accurate, but S400 could not be . . . go figure).

Totally frustrated, again, on a whim, I purchased Vegas Video 2, having read reviews about how it allowed for unlimited video/audio tracks, etc.

It took me a while to master this totally new interface, and the vidcap module presented somewhat of a challenge. But, I have never looked back.

Getting into the Vegas system was a great move, and I have upgraded over the years. I doubt I will ever get into another system.

I still have my video director interface boxes - unfortunately, they were not supported by WinXP. I still occasionally fire up one of my older computers and hook everything up to watch the whiz-bang show. It was quite an ingenious system still capable today of assembling analog tapes - just not acceptable anymore in today's digital realm.

Thanks for reading all of this.

Del

I can go all the way back to doing slide shows (not video) using Show Partner FX in the mid 80's and puting that output onto video using the composite video out jack from my CGA card, then adding a seperate audio track using my old analog mixing board.

But for real video stuff I'd have to say I started with:

1) Pinacle Studio (came with my Dazzle 150) and almost threw out everything (PC, camera and software) after a few days

2) Moved on to Roxio Easy DVD Creator and was almost as frustrated (but at least this one could actually make something I could watch on my DVD player)

3) Jumped into Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio (pre-cursor to Vegas Movie Studio) and loved that but was starting to feel limited and wanting to stretch a bit so

4) Vegas+DVD - Started with version 6.0/3.0 when ithey first came out and have tried to keep current with versions (own 7.0 but have not installed it yet - shame on me!)