How Vegas saved me (and the day) from Premiere

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

I started out with Vegas years ago because it was such an intuitive NLE that I never had to read a training manual or take a video course. Then, to go "pro", I got Premiere CS3 (now CS4) and pored over a bible to learn all of its intricacies. I liked that it had such extensive features, and although it is counter-intuitive in many instances, it packs a lot of bang. So what if it (still) doesn't split clips when capturing HD video? The folks at Adobe probably don't see the point in implementing a feature for tape that's on its way out (although at the hefty price tag they could well afford to). And so what that you have to pay extra for the Dolby 5.1 license (again, not included in the considerable price tag)... Okay. Let's not get me started. I accept the shortcomings, as long as the advantages make up for them.

So, about three weeks ago I get a rush gig from a producer to edit a two-camera musical revue with singers and dancers. I reassure him by telling him that I use Premiere Pro, putting an emphasis on the "Pro" part. Premiere loaded the footage and metadata seamlessly, I looked up the procedure for doing a two-camera edit (very simple), and started editing.

Then I stopped. For one thing, the monitor window in two-camera edit mode was at a crawl, even at the lowest quality setting. It skipped at about 1 frame per second or less and made it impossible to work. Now, my computer is two years old, but it packs enough horsepower to do HD edits in single-camera mode. So I figured there might be a fix and started Googling for it, but before I could find one Premiere started crashing repeatedly. When it didn't crash, the ImportProcessServer process hanged at 100% CPU and had to be killed. Restart Premiere, crash, restart, crash, reboot, restart, crash, reboot again... in one case, Premiere crashing corrupted some video files (thank GOD I made backups!). All Google revealed was other people who had similar problems with CS4, but no fix in sight.

After 24 hours of this (literally!) I still hadn't begun editing, and I still hadn't found a solution to the ImportProcessServer problem, let alone the two-camera monitor lag. The producer had already called twice to ask how the job was going. In desperation, I fired up Vegas. I was editing five minutes later, and the first cut was done two days after that.

The producer was extremely pleased with the results. I still tell people that I edit with Premiere Pro (emphasis on the "Pro"), but I am seriously displeased with software that has so many bugs, costs 2-3 times what Vegas does and requires me to do massive hardware upgrades to do essentially the same job. Not only that, but I also run Vegas on my 3-year old dual-core laptop for quick edits in the field. Forget that with CS4.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it.


J.

[Steven Davis]

Years ago when I was at the crossroads of picking an NLE, I tried both. I cursed and cursed at Adobe Premiere for days, reading this and that, asking myself if I really needed to be photgrapher. I gave up, and picked up Vegas, and never ever looked back.

In my humble ignorant opinion, Adobe like Apple are a little arrogant in their software design. They want want make it so full of features you have to take seminars to figure it all out, (or buy one of their 'tips and tricks' manuals.)

I love Vegas, and even though I think it suffered in development when Sony bought it, I sill use it and abuse it.

[Tim Kolb]

Originally Posted by Steven Davis

In my humble ignorant opinion, Adobe like Apple are a little arrogant in their software design. They want want make it so full of features you have to take seminars to figure it all out, (or buy one of their 'tips and tricks' manuals.)
.

...or perhaps it's because the list of requested features seems to be endless and once you add all those features, the software gets complex...

On the two-camera edit the original poster was doing... If you were crashing at 100% CPU, you were likely out of system resources...

I don't do multi-camera work myself, and i do know that the multi-camera feature in CS4 seemed to run a bit clumsily for the little that I used it, but the biggest difference between Premiere Pro and Vegas continues to be that Vegas scales its resource demands on the system it's installed on really really well. It always has. Of course, Vegas users have different expectations than Adobe users maybe...

(As far as how expensive Adobe's software is...keep in mind that I was purchasing After Effects on a handful of floppy disks before it had a timeline for 700.00 USD -more- than we now pay for After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, PPro, Encore, Flash, etc, etc. together in Production Premium. It certainly costs more to develop these packages now than it ever did before...)

Premiere Pro is indeed a big, heavy application and it is extremely demanding on system resources. In my opinion, CS4 was simply under-powered on any 32 bit system. Maybe CS5 shouldn't have been the first version to require a 64 bit OS?

I am not denying that Vegas does lots of things well...but be careful about assuming motivations on Adobe's part. If they don't make what you want to use (too complex, the feature you need doesn't work the way you need it to), there's nothing wrong with that.

However, any manufacturer intentionally creating a product that's too complex to use for its intended purpose is a silly assertion, don't you think? ...whether you're referring to Apple or Adobe or any other company. You don't need to justify your choice of products based on anything other than using what you like...we're all doing creative work, we need tools that work the way we want to...

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Originally Posted by Tim Kolb

On the two-camera edit the original poster was doing... If you were crashing at 100% CPU, you were likely out of system resources...

The CPU went up to 100% when I simply dropped a clip into the timeline. That's it. I just sat there with my hands folded into my lap and stared at the hourglass for several minutes until I gave up. Plenty of Google hits, no solution. That looks suspiciously like shoddy programming.

Originally Posted by Tim Kolb

However, any manufacturer intentionally creating a product that's too complex to use for its intended purpose is a silly assertion, don't you think?

I don't think it's what the poster was saying. But all the bells and whistles are of no use if they won't run.

[Tim Kolb]

Originally Posted by Jacques E. Bouchard

I don't think it's what the poster was saying. But all the bells and whistles are no use if they won't run.

well...maybe Steven means something different by "Adobe like Apple are a little arrogant in their software design. They want want make it so full of features you have to take seminars to figure it all out..." than what i think he means, but it seems like he's saying that these software companies are making their products purposely complex to somehow cause additional revenue...

Obviously that wouldn't be a good long term strategy...if that was the strategy.

On the bells, whistles...I agree completely, but what I'm saying is that I've spent a fair amount of my time over the last decade with Adobe software...and I've had my issues with it like any software product...

However, it does seem like Adobe users do seem to run under-configured in the hardware department rather frequently. Maybe the original poster is running an i7 with 16 GB of RAM and a serious drive array on a Fibre Channel controller, etc.,...but if he's hitting 100% CPU utilization, it's probably a question worth asking. Even CS3 had significant runnability advantages on a 64 bit system...

Of course one could say that Adobe quotes their system requirements far too low (those words have come out of my mouth more times than i can count), but check out FCP's minimum system requirements as quoted by Apple...they're even lower...yet for some reason, no common sense professional FCP editor would ever dream of trying to make FCP limp on the minimum system and get any work done...

As I said...Vegas is an incredible program...I have it on my machine as well and turn to it when I run into something that isn't convenient or possible in Adobe. The metaphor is a little different and I haven't used it enough to be really comfortable with it, but i can see that Vegas has some very impressive features...and as i said, it is the only NLE that I can run on some of my small laptops if I just want some capability on tap for an event or something like that.

I'm not saying that Adobe has a perfect product...just that they aren't intentionally creating a problem for users.

[Tim Kolb]

Originally Posted by Jacques E. Bouchard

The CPU went up to 100% when I simply dropped a clip into the timeline. That's it. I just sat there with my hands folded into my lap and stared at the hourglass for several minutes until I gave up..

What kind of clip? What sequence settings? What's your media storage harddrive configuration like?

What CPU are you running? How much RAM? What's the OS?

...I'm curious.

Thanks

[Floris van Eck]

Adobe Premiere Pro is just nog on par with Adobe's other offerings. Photoshop and After Effects never crash for me, while Premiere Pro (up to CS4) crashed all the time. Encore is also more crash sensitive. I have used Vegas before I switched to Premiere Pro CS2 and I really liked the stability and speed. However, I didn' t like the interface at that time as I am a fan of the Avid/Final Cut/Premiere two way up interface. But Premiere Pro CS2 was so buggy that I sold the whole suite and my windows computer and bought a Mac Pro with Final Cut Studio. I never had any problems since. The only program I don't like in Apple's suite is Soundtrack Pro, but I don't use it that much. I am testing CS5 now. HDV scene detect is available now. Took them a while but they finally managed to include it. I don't have a windows computer anymore, so I can't check out the latest Vegas build, but from what I see, they made it a bit more like Avid/FCP/PPro in terms of how the screen lay-out is build up. Stability and reliability means everything for me.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Originally Posted by Tim Kolb

What kind of clip? What sequence settings? What's your media storage harddrive configuration like? What CPU are you running? How much RAM? What's the OS?

Thanks but I wasn't writing to ask for troubleshooting help, just to say that Vegas saved me from disaster and performed flawlessly where Premiere CS4 couldn't.

All the client cared about was that the edit looked great and was delivered on time.

[Tim Kolb]

Originally Posted by Jacques E. Bouchard

Thanks but I wasn't writing to ask for troubleshooting help, just to say that Vegas saved me from disaster and performed flawlessly where Premiere CS4 couldn't.

Yes, I get that... i was simply curious what the material was and by knowing something about the material and your configuration, I would get a better idea of how much Vegas could stretch where PPro was apparently under-gunned.

I know Vegas can do things on a given hardware configuration that PPro would choke on, I just haven't done a lot of testing to know where some of these thresholds are... (and I know that multicamera in CS4 had issues based on the experiences of multiple people in addition to yourself).

So...not necessarily a troubleshooting question...more a curiosity question.

As I said, I have no designs on dissing Vegas. It's a solid piece of software. What it can do with a modestly configured computer system is very impressive. I have it myself. I have no doubt that what you are saying is true...I'm just interested in more details.

(I do think that assuming that competing companies are crooked or insane because they have a alternative approach is below the typical useful discussion you tend to see 'round these parts...which I ended up jumping on in my first post in the thread.)

So...no troubleshooting, just curiosity.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Tim, I couldn't give you my computer's configuration off-hand. It's been two years, and it's due for an upgrade this year if I can swing it. I have 2 GB of memory, SATA drives (7200 RPM), a dual-core processor, an nVidia video card, etc. It lets me edit HD content in Vegas and in CS3, but I may have upgraded to CS4 prematurely.

I still wish I could use Premiere, but I don't have patience with crashing issues.


J.

[John Wiley]

Jacques, I've had similar experiences to you in regards to Vegas/Premiere.

Just spent most of today trying to edit a Web Promo in Premiere CS3. I thought to myself "It's only a 30 second peice - it can't take too long and will be perfect for improving my editing in Premiere," Half a day later and I was going crazy, googling like mad for answers and cursing my ineptitude. I eventually gave up, then within two hours had the whole edit locked, coloured and rendered using Vegas.