advantage of Premiere CS4 over Vegas?
 

I asked a similar question in another forum, but I think I should have asked it here instead. For HD editing, what advantages and disadvantages does CS4 have over the latest Vegas? I'm just interested in editing TV ads (so titles are important).

Great question. I'm using Vegas, but can't get it to behave with Canon 24F and it doesn't render to .mp4 / H.264 very well. I'm flirting with learning Premiere since I already have CS4. Aside from these two issues, for editing alone I don't see what advantages it has over Vegas. Vegas is very fast to edit and color correct.

If I start wanting to tie into PhotoShop and After Effects, then it may make a lot of sense. I'll be watching this thread to see what responses you get.

I have both systems.
Vegas and sound editing integration is excellent.
Adobe CS4 is the one I would go for and dynamic link with AfterFx for titles.

Thanks Gary. Do you find PPro as fast as Vegas once you get used to it? As far as audio, SoundBooth appears to be even more powerful than Vegas's audio. At first glance it appears for editing alone, Vegas gets you 95% of the quality for 50% of the effort. If your productions require AE or PS, PPro as part of a suite starts to walk away from Vegas, even if using Vegas with PS and AE. The question seems to be, is one willing to invest in the sophistication of PPro, AE, and PS to leverage that advantage, or are you just editing and color correcting? My limited experience with AE (and PS for that matter) is they are absolutely incredible programs that require an incredible dedication of time and talent to master. However deep you want to go, there's another 20,000 leagues below you! Which leads me to the following conclusion thus far:

If your work demands PS and AE, why not use PPro to link them together? If you're not using PS or AE in your productions, Vegas is an incredibly effective, efficient, stable piece of software that can produce beautiful, professional results. It's really more of a PhotoShop and AfterEffects issue, isn't it?

I constantly go back in forth in my mind on this very question.

My current Adobe configuration is CS3. I have CS4 sitting on the shelf awaiting Cineform's full compatibility.

I currently have Vegas 8. I use it as a multitracker for my music production, and love the idea of its lean and stable approach.... but I was turned off by its cartoonish video effects and transition interface and lack of PSD layer compatibility.

Having said that... unless you do a lot of AE work in your Premiere timeline, I have felt that Bridge, while a great feature, was not a huge factor in my day-to-day workflow. Of course, that depends on your particular tasks. The Encore link is pretty handy for some as well.

I am so fed up with the resource gobbling, bug-infested, 3rd party-hostile environment that is Premiere.... that it would take very little for me to bop over to Vegas. I'd say, if I could import Photoshop layers, that would be enough to tip the scale.

Imagine my embarrassment if someone follows this post with a newsflash that Vegas CAN import individual PSD layers......

Marty,

I don't know how to import PS layers, but you can import .psd files into Vegas. As far as transitions, I rarely use anything but fades, cross fades, and jump cuts, so transitions aren't an issue for me. I also do minimal titling which is good because Vegas's Pro Titler is really tough to use IMO. AE is outstanding for this.

Roger.
Vegas pro 9 64 bit is knocking spots of premiere at the moment regarding speed.

My Premiere system has speeded up a lot more now since I bought the Matrox mxo mini which allows me to view Cineform files in full rez without any system drain.

[QUOTE=Gary Brun;1167646]Roger.
Vegas pro 9 64 bit is knocking spots of premiere at the moment regarding speed.

Gary,

Wow, you created a lot of questions for me with your brief message. Does this mean you feel Vegas is faster than Premiere to edit? To render? Both?

Also, I've looked at the Matrox and I must admit I don't understand how you use it. Is it something you can use with Vegas? With CS4? How do you use it?

What exactly is meant by this? I'm not familiar with Cineform. I was going to buy the Neowhatever to convert HDV to high quality avi. Is that what you are talking about? If so, I would like to know what issues you are referring to!

Just head over to the Cineform forum and you'll see lots of posts complaining about the Real Time Engine, RT engine or RT playback not working with CS4 yet. Not Cineform's fault. Basically it's an accelerator to make playback faster and smoother and add effects which don't need rendering.

The converter in Neo should work fine and is completed at this point, I believe.

A thorough reading of the posts over there will acquaint you not only with what all the Cineform products do, but more importantly their stellar customer service, which Adobe could learn a thing or two about. While Marty and I and many others are waiting for RT Playback to work, my frustration is (mostly) with Adobe for throwing so many roadblocks in Cineform's way.

very thorough explanation, thanks! Is there reason to believe that the problem will be fixed soon? If so, how soon?

Again, all the info is over in the Cineform forum. Basically the only answer is they're working on it and will let us know when it's ready.

CS4 user question for Vegas users
 

I have a reverse question for Vegas users. I use CS4 and Cineform in HD and work mainly with aerials, and the CS4 shadow/highlight filter is fantastic for controlling haze. I would like to point others in my field to Vegas as an easier editing tool to learn than CS4, but I don't know whether Vegas has an equivalent filter to shadow/highlight (or perhaps another good way to control haze). I know this is the Premiere forum, but are there any Vegas users that can help?

If you use the Sony XDCAM EX cameras, skip on Premiere. It won't display your metadata in the Media Browser.

Charles, I have CS4 but haven't dug into it yet. If you can give me a specific example of reducing haze and/or show me how you use it in CS4 perhaps I or someone else can respond to whether we know of something similar in Vegas. Maybe a clip or frame with haze and a clip or frame after adjustment to help us understand the effect you desire.

Hi Roger, I didn't want to divert the thread but here is an explanation. When you take a shot from an airplane you are mostly getting a picture of the haze and not the scene you really want. Fortunately haze is in a pretty narrow brightness band, sort of the definition of a highlight, so you can use the shadow/highlight filter to reduce the highlight (haze). I've been using this for still aerials ever since Photoshop introduced the filter. It's really almost impossible to get the same good effect with glass filters or with curves or other Photoshop/Premiere filters. (Which is why I asked if there was an equivalent Vegas filter.)

I've attached a frame from a clip of the central California coast where the right side of the frame is as shot and the left is using the shadow/highlight filter in CS4. Hope this shows the overall effect. I'm shooting with a Canon 5D MkII.

Charles,

I played with Vegas a bit and think I have a decent response. Please give me a little grace as the picture you posted was highly processed and downsized and I just copied the posted image and processed it further. I roughly matched the right side using Vegas Pro 8 to the left side you processed using Premiere. I am supplying two photo's with 2 levels of processing:

The rights side of Photo 1 uses Vegas Pro 8 with the "Levels" plug-in (standard) with the following settings:
All channels
Input start 0.258
Input end 0.897
Output start 0.013
Output end 1.000
Gamma 1.000

The right side of Photo 2 uses Vegas Pro 8 + "Level" plug-in described above + Neat Video's noise suppression plug-in ($99). IMO Neat did a nice job cleaning up the artifacts present in your posted image. The Premiere and Vegas renderings as tested have some subtle distinctions in how they handle the water, clouds, mountain detail, and the skyline behind the mountains. Perhaps both could achieve identical results given time?

How do you feel about the comparison?

Thanks Roger. If I had known you would do that much I'd have worked for a higher quality clip! Yes, levels is very useful and it looks like Vegas has a good implementation; for some aerial photos levels is all that's needed. And thanks for the report on the Neat Video plugin, that was going to be my next question on the forum, how well does the plugin work for this kind of codec artifacts - and you answered it nicely.

Charles,

Here's another post I did on Neat a few days ago. I'm very impressed and am amazed how it has helped me recover footage I thought was lost and make good footage look even better. Well worth the $99.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/what-happ...ion-vegas.html

I've even had good results cleaning up point-and-shoot PowerShot movies (Canon A620/S3) footage to make it look better than it ought to look. Great for web posting small files.

I have CS4 in the mail now and was planning on using Neoscene. Is there another software converter I can use in the mean time?

EDIT: I sent an e-mail to Cineform and they answered back saying they know of no bugs concerning playability of Neoscene in CS4.