My editor says Vegas not for broadcast
 

recently i was hired to shoot a documentary using Panny 102B PAL for a production company which will eventually be telecasted on a National-TV network . After the shoot, i had to dump the tapes into a harddrive and submit that to the company which is then edited by them under my supervision. They gave me an editor who works on avid while i edit my stuff on vegas-6( this is my first production for a TV network, all my work is limited to corporate videos and weddings). when i suggested him to have a look at sonyvegas, first, he never knew sonyvegas existed. second, he instantly turned it down saying " NLE's like PPro & vegas etc are good for semi pro editing stuff like weddings and corporate dvd's, but are not professional. u cant use them for editing stuff that has to be broadcasted. They all look good at the editing desk, but once broadcasted u will know the real difference. thats the reason why avid is used the world over". i used vegas capture to dump the tapes (.avi), now he wants them to be re captured using avid (.omf)...when i tried to convince him that any NLE can be used because the video is all 1's and 0's on the tape and harddisk he was not convinced. Now iam confused. was he true?

thanks
krishna.

There are differences in the way some NLE's render video that can lead to quality issues, but to say Vegas and Premiere are no good for broadcast is rubbish.

I'm sure that someone smarter than myself can speak to the technical side of your situation,

But let me suggest that the 're-caping' the tapes might be something you need to discuss with your client. I doubt it's something you planned on, and obviously means extra work.

I believe that OMF is an Avid-specific format that's actually a quicktime file which is why he'd have to recapture everything to do any editing on his system.
There is a PC version of this codec at http://www.avid.com/onlineSupport/su...contentID=9993 but I've never tried rendering out with it and having an Avid user try it so there's no guarantees that it would work for you.
As far as Vegas not being acceptable for broadcast, I can personally say that's a load of B.S. as I've done it numerous times.

Yeah, total BS. You were right in the "1's and 0's" comment. Television has a specific standard, and Vegas follows those standards. Saying Vegas isn't good for broadcast is like saying Photoshop is an amateur program for photos.

There's an ABC affiliate in Dallas using Sony Vegas for broadcast... full story here:

http://vegas.digitalmedianet.com/art...e.jsp?id=28885

Was going to mention that fact Chris, but you beat me to it!

-gb-

Sorry for stealin' your thunder, Greg!

No problem! I remember my first meeting in person with you and DSE for dinner when he was here doing that training in 2004. Paul's Porterhouse...ummmm steak.

-gb-

Krishna,
your manager/editor/whomever says Vegas can't be used for broadcast is ignorant and apparently doesn't want to learn.
AVID, FCP, or whatever his favorite is, cannot take footage from say...A DSR 250 or XDCAMHD camera and make a higher quality output image than Vegas (or Premiere Pro, or anything else that uses digital ingest).
ABC Nightline, MTV, ESPN, FOX, Playboy Television, FOX Sports, CNN, BELO Group, and several other monstrously large broadcasting organizations use Vegas in some capacity or another in their editing bays. I know, because I've trained them.

I suspect, he just doesn't want to do the conversion to OMF files, and wants you to hand them to him in that format. His excuse is silly.

That being said, you can either recapture, or put it on him to do the conversion.
(Yes, I edit on Avid)

"...vegas not good for broadcast..."

While I agree with all the posts above, and have been using Vegas exclusively for many years on my in-house projects, I'd suggest that what your editor wants to do is not such a bad idea, and even makes a lot of sense. Vegas is fine for broadcast, but...

You hire an editor - give him or her what they need to do a good job the best way they know how, or find a different editor. Workflow is everything.

In the US (in India?), if you want to fit your work into the larger world of editing facilities, broadcasters, and freelancers, you'll find that most are using Avid and Final Cut Pro. These products are not "better", they're not "better for broadcast", but they have market share and they represent working standards for projects that move between facilities.

Think like a producer, think about why you are at an outside facility for this project, think about the life of the project, and make a choice that is mostly right. Any choice you make will compromise something, so make it the best compromise you can.

There can be extremely subtle differences in how the systems handle footage... for example, the NLEs differ a little bit in how they handle chroma filtering and interpolation. Encoding and decoding is done by the VTRs and the codecs used by each system. It doesn't make that much of a difference though, except when keying. If you are keying, then you want chroma interpolation (or better) applied... although it that case, quality is highly dependent on your keyer (which you can do outside your NLE).

You can see different codecs at
http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
i.e. the Avid UC 4:2:2 codec produces different results than Apple's.

The NLEs also differ in their buginess (FCP is sometimes bad in this department when it comes to filters, 10-bit, and superblacks) and in how their scopes work.

All in all though, the quality differences are fairly insignificant.... talent/content and workflow are things I would worry about more.

Vegas is fine for the quality it delivers. Problem is that AVid id the standard. If compatibility and workflow some editor is used to are important, then you need to choose Avid.

It's a bit like Mac and PC. The one isn't better as the other, just different. But almost everybody uses PC. E.g. if I need to switch to Mac, I would have trouble adapting to the different workflow (trust me - I've tried a few seconds), and my work and results wouldn't benefit from that obviously....

I would say Vegas 7 is an even better choice for broadcast then 5 or 6. Realtime Mpeg2 editing without using an itermediate is great for time sensitve content. (At least it appears that way). I think they actually took they wind out of P2 with this release. IMHO

Also check out Vegas' media management features, which is one of the arguments you get from Avid people to continue using it.