Why Vegas?
 

Let me say that I'm an FCP guy since v2 (I can already feel the loathe building toward me).

Anyway, I've been out of the scene for that last couple years and I no longer have a Mac. I'm ready to get going again and my knee-jerk reaction is to buy a Mac and FCP Studio. But, since I here so many good things about Vegas, I was hoping all of you Vegas junkies might try to make a believer out of me before I blow $3000 on an editing system. My question is simple, why Vegas? Why not FCP? For that matter, why not Adobe Premiere?

Oh, and please, no Apple haters. I'm simply looking for an objective comparison of the two editing systems. All opinions welcome, but people who have used both might really help me decide pros/cons.

Thanks!

If you are working in an FCP market it may make the most sense to get back into FCP. Likewise, if you like the FCP workflow.

For me, I found the FCP workflow difficult by comparison to Vegas. I frequently do multitrack audio, Vegas excels at this. Much of my work outputs to WMV for distribution, it is very helpful to be in the PC world when encoding to wmv whether you use Vegas or not.

I do a lot of work in the PC market - software demos, presentation dev., etc., so being PC based is an advantage. The fact that I can cut together all kinds of different sources on one timeline is very handy in presentations work. Vegas has been referred to as the "swiss army knife" of NLEs, this happens to be pretty important in my work.

Finally, I find the Vegas workflow to be very fast and understandable. After taking 3 days of FCP training (3 more coming later this month) I continue to find myself scratching my head wondering why the gui is the way it is, why some commonly used functions are multiple clicks or keystrokes away from the top layer, etc.

In addition to my production and development work, I also teach in a community college. Our mission is preparation for employment, our NLE is FCP, as it should be (or, arguably, AVID).

PS. You'll find some other interesting threads on this subject if you search back in the forum.

Have no fear, we don't tolerate platform wars here at DV Info Net.

Vegas' main advantages are:
- Cheap / will run on just about anything. Price/performance is pretty good when you factor in the cost of the computer (for a single CPU system, PCs tend to be cheaper).

- Very stable. FCP has a lot more bugs than Vegas; they're very annoying when you encounter them. Some bugs like the media manager are long-standing.

- Swiss army knife. Vegas started out as an audio multitrack program so it has very strong audio tools. It also has pretty good color correction tools.

- Works well with multiple formats in the timeline.

FCP pros:

- If you need to work with other FCP users, then having a FCP system is a big plus.

- Good for cuts and dissolves editing. I find the search capability and keyboard layout to be fairly efficient. It has a slight edge over Vegas here (although it's not a huge difference). Once you learn the shortcuts, you can get pretty efficient with FCP.

Premiere:
- The creative suite bundle is a good deal if you want After Effects, and Photoshop.
- Some integration with After Effects.

-Cons: Buggy!! Layout not as good as in FCP. I never really understood Premiere, but it seems like it takes more button pushing than the other apps.

Any OS and software and hardware combination might possibly have issues. You should choose what you're comfortable with, what you can afford and what will do what you need.

I have a low end avid DV setup and FCP as well. One NLE is much older than the other and, therefore, I primarily use the newer system. I haven't used Vegas, although seeing it mentioned so often on these forums makes me want to give it a shot.

I'd say that you should try Vegas out. If you no longer have a mac so perhaps you have a PC. Before dropping $3k on an entire new system, why don't you test-drive Vegas on your current system? The cost is nowhere near $3k to do that. And besides, there's a demo, so load it up and if it works for you then you'll have all kinds of cash to spend on other things :)

For me it's ease of use.

I have both Premiere Pro 2.0 and Vegas 6d. I'm a one-man show most of the time. Vegas gets me to where I need to go pretty quick. I keep unravelling more and more layers to it. One day I may find it limiting... but certainly not yet. Also using it with DVDA is relatively painless.

If I was just a full time editor, I would probably use PPro for the snob value (I would use FCP, but I''ve always been a pc guy). Incidentally, I've heard that Vegas actually runs better on a Mac.

The other reason I went Vegas was because of the support on this board. DSE, David Jimmerson, John Rofrano, Glenn Chan...

I have been using Vegas since version 3 and I felt it has been its effecient workflow that has kept me with it.

As was mentioned previously try Vegas out with its demo. You can get up and running for much less money if you go the PC route.

This has all been said, but I want to reinforce the very helpful community of users that are out there for Vegas.

Chad

Another thing I really like about vegas is that it caters to many different editing workflows. You can do the same thing in many different ways - in short, it's very flexible.

Vegas vs others
 

For me it came down to money.
I had older Premiere, but to upgrade to HDV compliant workflow, the cost of PPro was too high (including Cineform).

FCP is excellent, but now I had to drop a lot of money on hardware, which I had the equivalent in Windows platform already.

So Vegas it was. As others have suggested, download it, see if it fits. DSE's book Vegas 6 Editing workshop is indespensible too.

My path is going to be clearly a lot different to your own due to the fact you're a professional who has clear experience in FCP already. About 4 years ago I bought a $500 camcorder and needed an editor.. I'd been using PCs for 10+ years and I knew some of the video technicalities anyway (ie bitrates, resolutions, formats etc) so I wasn't keen on a program like ulead or pinnacle that would try and guide me thru putting together a home video.

Somehow I found Vegas (this was back on v3) and installed it and within an hour I had video footage with some titles and a few other basics on my screen and running. Fantastic thought I, it didn't offer me any help but yet it still worked. Since then I've used Avid, Premiere (in various guises, from 6.5, Pro 1.5 , Pro 2 etc) and dabbled slightly in FCP on my dad's Macbook and nothing has given me both freedom and ease of use like Vegas. In my college course when they were trying to get us to use Flash for practically every product that required motion, I'd use Vegas whether I was using video footage or not.

I've used it nonstop since and now I shoot on my Sony PD150 rather than a kids toy. I'm learning After Effects to go with it, and I'm trying to get more advanced with Avid (more for "learning industry standard" as opposed to wanting to use it myself) but at the end of the day Vegas is always going to be the editor I avidly await a new version of, and want to progress beyond my mediocre skills.

Despite now sporting the Sony brand it truly doesn't get the exposure it deserves, and in a selfish way I really don't mind.. I feel like I'm part of a more selective club who know about how great this tool is and if everyone else wants to be blinded by the Adobe badge, then thats up to them.

I've edited on Avid for the past 14 years, at work and at home, but recently tried out Vegas, and while I am still getting a handle on it (it "thinks different") one thing I really like about it is the ability to change audio settings while the preview is playing. In Avid, when the timeline plays, and you click on anything, the playback stops. That makes audio mixing a real pain for me. I'm still learning Vegas but so far so good.

I came over to Vegas3 from Studio7 back in 2002, and have bumped up to Vegas4/6/7 over the past couple of years. I have no experience with FCP or Premiere.

I can say, however, that one thing I truly enjoy about Vegas is that the software is rock-solid. With all the terabytes of DV and HDV editing over the years, I've had exactly 1 crash. One.

I wish all other software ran as well as Vegas.

with this u can also create a loop region, continuously loop and tweak EVERYTHING... from clip settings, to filters, to composites... CONTINUOUS playback all teh while making these adjustments in realtime.. video OR audio

to ME.. THIS is realtime editing... rendering is another beast altogether though..

Another beuaty is teh fact that youre nto restricted to clip "conformity" or compliance.. your also not restricted to you project settings as these can always be tweaked as u see fit, WHEN you see fit..
there is no need for conversion or anything to get the most out of the application.

IN regard to teh workflow, you CAN configure the app to behave to your favourite old NLE.. be it KB shortcuts, through to your prefered layout designOh one other thing, vegas is the only NLE that i have come across which allows you to go down to the sub frame level of teh clip WITHIN the timeline..
there is no need to use a trimmer if u do not wish to, as precise editign can be done on the timeline itself..

Vegas does a great job of compositing many multiple layers and keyframing them.

vegas just has an incredible immediacy and responsiveness that FCP lacks completely. i find FCP rather clunky and convolute in comparison.

for example, whenever i used FCP and when i watch others us it, the output window is more often than not blank because the footage requires rendering. i find that unacceptable.

i am not into blind navigation. if i am editing video i want to see it. in vegas this NEVER happens. you can always play video back from the timeline no matter how many layers, filters and effects you have applied. it might drop frames but it will show you the video.