Hey all,
I have been editing on Casablanca products for about 4 years now, currently on the Prestige. I have an interest, though, in going with a new program and am considering either Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, or Sony Vegas 5. Anyone use these? Can anyone compare these softwares? Thanks.

I vote for Sony Vegas 5 (+DVD) with Excalibur 3 to make multi-cam editing a breeze!

I second that...Vegas 5 and Excalibur all the way!

I just used sony Vegas 5.0 + DVD architect to edit a wedding & produce the DVD.

Before you read my wedding video editing experience you should be aware that I paid good money for Vegas after careful research. I believe it is currently the best value for the money on the PC platform. This combined with a perfect balance between simplicity, power & flexibility.

My workflow:
- capture all footage (while viewing and taking notes),
- cut all scenes in separate project files, including sound and music and any color correction
- combine the rendered scenes into a final file, apply additional effects if/where needed (glow, sepia, etc.)
- add credits & chapter markers
- render separate video and sound
- create dvd architect project, prepare dvd
- burn with nero burning rom

Here is what came up during the wedding video editing process:

Why I loved using Vegas 5
- Stable and superfast even on an average machine. (make sure to divide your hard disk resource wisely! - system on one drive, footage on another. I also make sure to render on a separate physical drive.)
- Ease & simplicity of editing
- Excellent color correction (one of the interior scenes was shot with incorrect color temperature settings - Vegas helped correct this flawlessly)
- Excellent sound mixing abilities (ambient sound + music bed + voiceover? no problem!)
- Ability to apply effects to timelines or "events" (="cuts") or to the whole clip as captured from the tape.
- Excellent handling of slow motion.
- Excellent integration with DVD architect (markers become chapter names)

What could have made my life easier
- Better rippling - moving an event on the timeline would sometimes interfere with complex sound envelopes.
- Nested timelines - to edit a finished scene I now have to reopen the scene file, make the edit, then re-render it. Small price for keeping organized, though.
- DVD architect - really awkward layout editing tools. (At least for me, coming from Adobe/Corel design experience)
DVD Architect - couldn't find a way to adjust the starting time of sound (slight loss of sync due to rendering the sound from a different marker, a day after rendering the video. had to render the sound again.)

Note that you can download and try a fully functional version of vegas video & dvd architect. It will work for 30 days (I think) and is not crippled in any way (no watermarks or file saving restrictions).

Download it from the sony website (registration required) : http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/download/step2.asp?DID=501


Excalibur is a 3rd party plugin (set of scripts) for Vegas which does an incredible job in automating many editing tasks. It is written by editors and is a hands-on, no-bs approach to making handling everyday tasks more efficient. Depending on what you do, it can save you hours of redundant work on each project.


Best of luck

-- Andre

Liquid Edition here

Plenty of threads comparing NLE's on the board, you can find them with the search function. Lots of acolytes of each brand willing to tell you why they are the best, so read all with a grain of salt.

Bottom line. Outline your specific needs and goals. Since you mentioned FCP and Vegas/Premiere, you must realize that that FCP is a Mac only product, while Vegas/Premiere are PC only. Avid XpressDVPro is the only NLE that is cross platform at the moment, and ships with copies for both platfoms.

Part of your decision will be based on which platform you choose and are comfortable with.

Suggested Decision Tree -

Outline workflow and needs, both present and future.

Choose Platform

Download/Try all Demo's

Budget appropriate upgrades and purchases for hardware.

Choose.


Good luck,

Vegas 3.0 or up.

But Dylan, Excalibur 3 won't run on anything less than Vegas 5.0b!

I'm just saying that I'd rather use Vegas 3.0 over other NLE's like Premiere Pro, FCP, or a Cassie. If you can afford 5.0, go for it. For those on a limited budget, a used copy of V3.0 might be the best bargain in softwareland.

I currently have Premiere 6.5 and mere consumer DVD authoring software... I have the budget to upgrade, and simply can't decide if I should go premiere pro upgrade + encore, or Vegas 5 + DVD, which will both run close to the same money... Go figure... Seems like Encore is a tad over priced.

I have downloaded the Vegas trial, and have only spent a little time in it, definitely a learning curve to it, but I see such glowing references that I feel like it may be worth the effort.

Why are there so few users (comparatively)? Slow to gain momentum, or an undiscovered gem? What does Vegas 5 have that PP doesn't?

If you have access to a Macintosh, I would definetely go with Final Cut Pro..
It is very well intergrated.

<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Thomas : Why are there so few users (comparatively)? Slow to gain momentum, or an undiscovered gem? What does Vegas 5 have that PP doesn't? -->>>

I think there's a variety of reasons: It's newer, is just now gaining momentum, is an "undiscovered gem", hasn't been bundled with tons of machines.

What does Vegas 5 have that PP doesn't? Much harder question. They both edit video and do it well. However, many of us are MUCH more productive in Vegas than PP because of the workflow. Bottom line: BOTH have featchers the other doesn't.

Some things I like about Vegas:
Great previews (even external) without rendering of EVERYTHING, ability to adjust settings on the file while the timeline is still playing, scripts, velocity envelope, Pan/Crop & Track Motion tools, great compositing tools, great audio tools, etc.....

> that that FCP is a Mac only product, while
> Vegas/Premiere are PC only

You can actually run Premiere on a Mac, just not the latest version. FCP is great. The way it previews in real time with near-full quality is great and can save you a lot of money in terms of real-time hardware you would need with other programs. I used Premiere before but after FCP there is no going back. I have read good things about Vegas but I don't know if you can use a wide range of plug-ins in Vegas, whereas in FCP you can use After Effect and Premiere Plug-Ins as well as the wide range of plug-ins available for FCP itself. I like to fool around with plug-ins but that's just me ;-)

with Prem Pro, i wouldnt touch it without a matrox RTx100...

as software only packages go, Vegas really is the shiznit..

prem pro with a matrox rtx100 gives it a good run, and final renders are realtime for the matrox as oppsed to hours upon hours from V5..

I use vegas 5 by the way.. workflow, ease of effect management, audio, etc etc etc etc

Well I ended up going the V5+DVD route, and after a little toying I am pleased as can be. Blows my mind on what I was missing with Premiere, and with no experience outside of low end consumer DVD authoring software, I was able to author the nicest disc I have made to date in just a couple of hours in DVD Architect, including menu design!

WOW. I must say, it was only comments I found on this board that made my decision to go the Vegas route, and no turning back here! Now I have to get my hands on Spot's book...

I've got Spots book for Vegas 4. It's fantastic and really worth the money.

Chris: what specifically do you like most about Vegas compared to Premiere? What do you think of the interface?

Chris: what specifically do you like most about Vegas compared to Premiere? What do you think of the interface?
I used the demo a few times before buying it, but only once or twice, and since the purchase 3 days ago, I have put one piece together, and after such limited experience, here's what I came up with. Keep in mind I have never used premiere pro, and I have to assume that some of my bitches have been corrected in their latest version.. I was using Premiere 6.5

The timeline took me a few minutes to understand compared to premiere, Vegas drops the audio from the track, right below it, instead of in a 2nd timeline area for audio. Once I felt comfortable with that minor change, the flexibility of the Vegas tracks is infinitely better than premiere, each track can have transitions, instead of just 1 in premiere 6.5. controlling transitions is a breeze, since you simply overlap each event the required duration and then apply the transition or adjust the fade as required, which Vegas automatically applies upon overlapping. In premiere, to apply a transition, you drop to clips on track 1, place the transition between them, and then fine tune the transition duration by dragging each end of the transition, if you have 2 clips that you want that have no leading or trailing footage (ie. captured at 4 seconds each, and to be displayed at 4 second each) in premiere you must trim the end of the first one, then the start of the second one, before applying the transition, then apply the transition, correct the trimmed sections then adjust the transition length. Vegas, overlap each full clip, drop a transition, done.

If you want a simple linear fade premiere can do that on any track by dropping video on the track above, then adjusting the transparency; Vegas, just overlap the clips on one track, done. The to top it all off, you have automated control on the fade, with 25 different cross fades that control how each clip fades, from linear to soft starts, soft finishes and probably more others than I will ever use..

The real-time preview of Vegas is much more fluid on My older P4 1.8 than premiere 6.5 was.

The 2 pass VBR MPEG-2 encoding option in Vegas is nice. Not available in premiere.

The color corrections are much more powerful in Vegas. The standard filters and FX are quite impressive. Premiere, not so nice, no secondary color corrector at all.

Velocity envelope! Premiere slow mo sucks. Not even useable below 50%, as the video gets too choppy. Vegas, change the speed mid clip if you like, then slow it to a stop, even reverse adjust the curve from linier to whatever you like. Drop below 50% and the clip still looks very nice.

Sony cookie cutter means no more requirement to create a mask in an image editor if you want to isolate a color, blur a face, or bring a piece of video from a lower track up through.

At my resolution, I can easily fit 10 even 15 or more tracks into my timeline window, all visible on screen, still with all the extras like the preview and explorer window, and still easy to work with.

And that is just a few of the likes after my first session... I am sure more will develop as I play, and dive deeper.