Vegas 5 or Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, Which is better?

[mlong30]

Are there any plugins or add on packages Vegas 5? I'm really interested in more transitions.

I have to admit from what I'm seeing so far, its very smoooth....

Thanks!

Matt

[BJ_M]

http://www.blue7media.com/vegas/ should get you started

[seinman]

Well I hate to be the only one to diss Vegas, but here goes.

What follows is a post I made on another forum back in May. I've used it a few more times since, and it seems as though it never gets easier. For me, at least.





Is it just me, or does Vegas Video completely SUCK?

Okay, so. I've been using Premiere since version 5.1 (circa 1999) and have never had a problem. But all I hear now is "holy shit Jack, Vegas is so much better. Why are you still using Premiere?" So I figure, what the hell, i'll give it a try. Get the demo, install it, all is well. Start editing. Lay down a few minutes of clips, and go in to add some effects.

This is where the shit hits the fan.

I'm working on a skateboarding video. It's a clip of a skater approaching a staircase, jumping down it, landing, and riding away clean. I want the video to start slowing down just prior to the jump, then freeze in mid-air. So you have a few seconds of the guy just hanging there in the air, at which point an effect would be applied and his name would pop up on the screen. After that, slowly ramp up the speed to full speed again just after he lands.

Sounds simple enough.

BUT IT ISN'T!

You can't accurately keyframe speed. Sure, you can set keyframes... but they don't stay with the frames they're set on. So as you adjust the speed, the points at which the keys are made are changed.

So I wrestle with it for 15 minutes, getting it just right. Then I go to slice the clip in half (at the point where I want the freeze to happen) so I can hold a frame for a few seconds.

MORE SILLY PROBLEMS!

I slice the clip, and the in and out points of the second half change. Instantly. So I can't get the second clip to start at the exact point that the first clip ended.

20 minutes of ******* with that one until it's just right.

So now my clips and speed are all set up, an hour later. Ready to add the title. I make a new title, put it on a video track above the video.

AND THE ****** DOESN'T SHOW UP.

No matter what I do.

All the things i've been trying to do here were easy in Premiere 6.5 and Pro. Would have taken me 5 minutes or less, with little to no headaches.

Is there some secret switch i'm missing, that goes from "crappy" to "awesome" that can somehow fix this piece of shit software? Are the people who are so happily suggesting this program too dumb to see that it blows? Or am I just too dumb to figure it out myself?

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[canadateck]

Without giving you a Tutorial on how to accomplish this Affect These are "Two" different pieces of Software, You tried Vegas for 20 mins and Premiere Since 1999 , What did you think they where the same?

[Deekkeed]

Seinman

Well I think that either program will do just about anything the other will. Its just done differently in each. Also what is easy in premier may be harder in vegas; but it goes the other way also.

Oh and a comment on your skate board video.

<< Then I go to slice the clip in half (at the point where I want the freeze to happen) so I can hold a frame for a few seconds.>>

You don’t need to slice it to hold it. If you adjust the velocity envelop to 0% the frame will hold as long as you want.

But I guess the best way to sum this up is. “download the demos and see which one you like best”


deek

[edDV]

"put transistions everywhere"? please don't

[lgh529]

I'm working on a skateboarding video. It's a clip of a skater approaching a staircase, jumping down it, landing, and riding away clean. I want the video to start slowing down just prior to the jump, then freeze in mid-air. So you have a few seconds of the guy just hanging there in the air, at which point an effect would be applied and his name would pop up on the screen. After that, slowly ramp up the speed to full speed again just after he lands.

You're making a judgement of this software after using it for 20 minutes? Doing this effect in Vegas is so simple, it would take 2 minutes or less. (BJ_M could probably do it in his sleep). You don't need to keyframe speed, you use velocity envelopes. I do this all the time with my son's soccer videos. He goes to kick the ball, the speed slows down while kicking the ball, the ball goes out 4 feet and the action freezes with the ball in midair, then whatever after that. Velocity envelopes are so flexible, you can slow down on any rate, at any curve, make it turn around and go backwards at any speed, or any combination, without ever setting a keyframe.

I have never used Premier (well, once I did about five years ago, back with version 4 something, but can't really remember it), so I can't say how hard or easy this effect is to do, but don't say that its "piece of shit software" just because you haven't learned that part of it. I learned this effect by reading the manual for 10 minutes.

Bottom line is that Vegas is easy to learn, but powerful enough to grow with you as far as you want it to go.

[canadateck]

And Veggies are delicious

[racer-x]

This is just one of those stupid questions, like wich is beter + or-, Blond or brunete, Chevy or GMC.........Give me a break allready!

Either one will do the trick. As for me, I like Premiere because I've been using it since version 6.0. I tried Vegas once, but couldn't make heads or tails out of it. I know it's a good editor, but I don't really want to learn it since I can do anything I want with Premiere.

As for those that claim that Premiere is unstable, I say B.S. It's been nothing but the picture of stability for me, but then I know what I'm doing and can I say that they do.

I've read that vegas is very good and I believe it, but I don't want to take the time to learn it. If I was new to editing then I would.

The only one that can answer this stupid question, is you. Wich ever one works for you is the best, what everyone else thinks, in not important.

[thecoalman]

Best bang for your buck....... http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=285495&is=REG

Note that this version only comes with DVD Workshop 1..... Probably another $200 or so for the version with 2 :http://www.ulead.com/products/studioquartet/runme.htm

[seinman]

You're making a judgement of this software after using it for 20 minutes? Doing this effect in Vegas is so simple, it would take 2 minutes or less. (BJ_M could probably do it in his sleep). You don't need to keyframe speed, you use velocity envelopes. I do this all the time with my son's soccer videos. He goes to kick the ball, the speed slows down while kicking the ball, the ball goes out 4 feet and the action freezes with the ball in midair, then whatever after that. Velocity envelopes are so flexible, you can slow down on any rate, at any curve, make it turn around and go backwards at any speed, or any combination, without ever setting a keyframe.

That's exactly what I was doing. I just used the term "keyframe" because it's what every other program uses. The concept remains the same, and I still had tons of trouble trying to get the envelopes to stay where I wanted them. It works just fine if you don't need to be extremely accurate, but as soon as you change one evnelope, since they aren't linked to specific frames but rather how far from the start of the clip on the timeline they appear, it throws off every one after that.

You tried Vegas for 20 mins and Premiere Since 1999 , What did you think they where the same?

That's part of the point I was trying to make. If someone who's been editing since the mid 90s (although only on computers since around 1999), and is majoring in television production in college, can't figure it out quickly, then what chance does the beginner have? Obviously I didn't expect to pick it up instantly, but some of the things that didn't work (like titles not showing up properly) shouldn't need to be "fixed" on a fresh install. Dragging a title to the timeline should just work, no questions asked, like it does in every other editing program i've used. When you put a keyframe (evenlope, whatever, it's the same thing) on a specific frame, it should stay on that frame. These are the basic principles of every editing package on the market, and Vegas throws it all out the window for some reason. Perhaps this is why most in the "pro" industry don't take it seriously. Someone mentioned earlier that most Vegas users are mostly wedding guys, whereas bigger production houses all use FCP or Avid, and in my experience that holds true.

Maybe something was wrong with my install, maybe I wasn't doing something right, maybe i'm an idiot, or maybe the software sucks. The point of my post wasn't to figure out which. It was to give Vegas my personal thumbs down, which it still has as I haven't seen it get any better/easier/not a pain in the ass since then.

[canadateck]

Well take Paint shop pro and Adobe Photoshop for example, I have been using Paint shop pro for a few years , my wife has Adobe photoshop , i tried using it afew times and it all looked Chinese to me, with that said my wife cant do anything Different/Better/Faster then i can in Paintshop , but i would never say that is was Crap because of that fact...

[lchiu7]

Let's face it, NLE's are not exactly packages for the neophytes and with the amount of editing they offer, it's not wonder each package does things differently.

I have never tried Vegas but did play around with Premiere Pro for a while until I decided for my basic needs it was way overkill. But in doing so I found one strange thing about that product that Adobe never were able to help me with. I cap off TV in MJPEG format (using Picvideo codec or the hardware codec in the DC10+). I thought I could use Premiere to edit those files, add transitions etc. While that worked okay, when output to MPEG2 for DVD authoring the audio invariably went out of sync which of course was unacceptable. Capturing in huffyuv seemed to solve the problem but of course the video files are huge. I gave up and switched Virtualdub just to edit out bits of the video I don't need and frameserve to Mainconcept

YMMV

Larry

[edDV]

Let's face it, NLE's are not exactly packages for the neophytes ....

....I cap off TV in MJPEG format (using Picvideo codec or the hardware codec in the DC10+). I thought I could use Premiere to edit those files, add transitions etc. While that worked okay, when output to MPEG2 for DVD authoring the audio invariably went out of sync which of course was unacceptable. ....

YMMV

Larry

My old PIII system used (still does) Premiere 4 & 5 with the Pinnacle DC-30plus using Pinnacle's MJPEG codec and everything works fine as far as audio sync. Both companies abandoned the DC30plus when Premiere 6 came out so that system remains frozen in time circa Y2K. I still use it when MJPEG is called for but I must say capping at DV rates (~4MB/sec) is so much easier than tweaking the old RAID for 9MB/sec.

The DC10+ is a different animal, but after my experience with the DC30+, I wouldn't expect generic MJPEG codecs to work well with Pinnacle hardware.

As for capping from TV (cable box), I'm happy to use the Canopus ADVC-100 and realtime encode the DV stream to MPeg2. If its something special, I'll dump it to a DV-AVI file.


PS: For what its worth for any DC-30plus owners, the card has reappeared on the Premiere Pro 1.5 list as a supported card (after a forced vacation for versions 6, 6.5 and 7). The DC-10plus is not on the list.
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/cards.html

[lchiu7]

I cap on the DC10+ using iuvcr so it's native MJPEG format. After installing the PicVideo codec on the same machine (or another machine) I am able to edit those files using Virtualdub and frameserve to Mainconcept or Tmpgenc with no problems.

For some reason the Pinnacle MJPEG codec cannot be used outside Studio so if you don't install another MJPEG codec you can't (well I couldn't) view the captured files in anything other than Studio (which at version 7 is not that great a program)

Larry

[BJ_M]

That's part of the point I was trying to make. If someone who's been editing since the mid 90s (although only on computers since around 1999), and is majoring in television production in college, can't figure it out quickly, then what chance does the beginner have? Obviously I didn't expect to pick it up instantly, but some of the things that didn't work (like titles not showing up properly) shouldn't need to be "fixed" on a fresh install. Dragging a title to the timeline should just work, no questions asked, like it does in every other editing program i've used. When you put a keyframe (evenlope, whatever, it's the same thing) on a specific frame, it should stay on that frame. These are the basic principles of every editing package on the market, and Vegas throws it all out the window for some reason. Perhaps this is why most in the "pro" industry don't take it seriously. Someone mentioned earlier that most Vegas users are mostly wedding guys, whereas bigger production houses all use FCP or Avid, and in my experience that holds true.

Maybe something was wrong with my install, maybe I wasn't doing something right, maybe i'm an idiot, or maybe the software sucks. The point of my post wasn't to figure out which. It was to give Vegas my personal thumbs down, which it still has as I haven't seen it get any better/easier/not a pain in the ass since then.

you have no clue on the way vegas works - but that is your opinion and everyone is entitled to one ..

vegas IS used by MANY major studios now, production houses and broadcast stations - the list of users is amazing ..

It is taken VERY seriously - and really shook up a lot of other companies ..

"Drag a title to the timeline and should just work" - obviously you have never used Avid systems - because they sure dont there, or in DPS systems or even Premiere ..

Keyframes DO stay on a specific frame - not sure what you even mean there ...

Yes AVID is a defacto standard - as is ProTools and even FCP now .. i generally find a lot of vegas systems in places with Hardware based AVID systems and they use both ...



Reallly though - and no doubt about it -- the BEST NLE is the one you are most comfortable with or learned how to use... Just like in Premiere, NO one is going to sit down and learn the program in 20 minutes (not even close) , but the opinion held by many in the industry is that you can learn vegas faster .....

BTW -- here is a survey taken by people in the industry ....
Vegas is 3rd place just behind FCP and the top three are way ahead of the next players by a wide margin ..

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/survey/survey.jsp?mode=showresult&msg=taken

[edDV]

Yes with Sony now behind Vegas, it will take off. Most to fear are Apple FCP and Adobe for non-publishing environments. Pinnacle and ULead will be forced even more downmarket.

digitalvideoediting.com is targeted to the heart of the DV, HDV market that I was describing earlier. Note in the survey that 40% are independent producers, 23% are corporate media production types (Premiere territory). Vegas should do very well with the independent producers as the segment rapidly shifts to HDV.

Further:
FCP will continue to be strong in the broadcast and post house segment not because the product is better (debatable), but because that segment heavily relies on interchangeable freelance editors who are currently trained in FCP and are likely to remain loyal to FCP. Sony will have more difficulty in gaining share in this segment until a competitive editor user base develops.

Just my 2 cents.

[trock]

Are there any plugins or add on packages Vegas 5? I'm really interested in more transitions.

The debugmode pluginpack allows you to use VDub filters directly in Vegas. If you use Vegas' ability to send its timeline via DV to an external video monitor or TV you can see your filter changes occuring in realtime and see how it will look on your final DVD rather than trying to guess via a PC monitor.

[lacywest]

I use and love Vegas

I like Vegas 4

[lchiu7]

I just got hold of a trial of Vegas to see if it would handle AVI files encoded in MJPEG format.

It does and it seems unlike Premiere it keeps the audio in sync as you edit the files. As for the UI, well it's different from Premiere but it's personal whether or not it's better

No MPEG2 encoding in the trial but I have been able to frameserve to tmpgenc and Mainconcept to get over that limitation for my trial.

If the audio stays in sync after conversion to MPEG2 I might look at buying this

Larry