Within the next 2-3 months, yours truly plans on investing in a NLE for home/personal use. Budget: 5-8k (including software & hardware).

What will I be using it for? Weddings, recital videos and other odd projects FOR NOW. In the future? Who knows. Hopefully bigger & better things.

I need something that won't take 6 years to learn and master.
I want to be able to burn my project to a DVD rather easily (like chapter marking in the timeline for example).
I want something with a multi-cam feature for the events I cover.
Color-correction, titling, effects, etc. are all musts as well.

I'd love to hear from the pros out there and what they would suggest. What do you use and what do you run it on?

Thanks in advance.

My favorite is Vegas. Scripts like Excalibur make Multi-cam a breeze. Color correction is also great in Vegas. Adding markers on the timeline will translate to chapter points in DVD Architect.

However, you haven't mentioned whether you prefer PC or MAC. You also haven't mentioned whether you have any previous experience with any NLE. That could make a difference.

I prefer Vegas as well. I got my system from Promax. If you don't know them, check out their site at www.promax.com. I spent about $8000.00, but that was for the whole sha-bang. Dual 3.6 Xeon, both monitors and a Sony PVM14L2 preview monitor. It also came with many extras. I also do weddings, and Vegas is a great application for event editing. What kind of camera are you using?

I prefer Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro version with FilmFX plug-in.I use it with a good pc workstation (Ibm Intellistation Z-Pro dual xeon 3.06) and a good Sony Vaio laptop (software only with Canopus advc100).
And I'm happy.

Maurizio.

I prefer Vegas as well. I got my system from Promax. If you don't know them, check out their site at www.promax.com. I spent about $8000.00, but that was for the whole sha-bang. Dual 3.6 Xeon, both monitors and a Sony PVM14L2 preview monitor. It also came with many extras. I also do weddings, and Vegas is a great application for event editing. What kind of camera are you using?

I have a Sony PD 170.

If you want to "future-proof" your investment, then Final Cut Pro Studio 5 or Avid XpressProHD 5 is your best bet. These are the only two NLEs that currently suppport full HD (DVCProHD). FCP has also been very agressive in updating and supporting new features. Avid generally follows the features that of FCP. FCP Studio will give you all the tools you need including DVD authoring.

FCP, Avid, and Liquid Edition 6 are the only NLEs that support true multi-camera editing. Vegas 6 might also -- don't know for sure.

Of course, if you go with FCP then you have to buy a Mac. But you mentioned that your budget is 5-8K including software and hardware. You can definitely buy a PowerMac Dual G5 system with FCP Studio 5 within this price range. And if you really have this budget, then FCP would be my personal selection. And this is from a person who generally prefers a PC. After Avid, there are more movies cut on FCP than any other NLE. But realize that most Hollywood Avid systems are the "professional" versions costing tens of thousands of dollars and more. I would have to say that FCP is the indie filmmakers NLE of choice.

Even if you use a PC for most/all of your other stuff, dedicating a system to editing (whether PC or Mac) is a good idea if your budget allows.

One important factor is support. I don't think you'll find better peer-to-peer support than FCP. Whenever you get stumped, it's very helpful to post a question on the NLE forum to get help.

Finally, there is the training issue. Not sure about Avid XpressProHD or Vegas 6, but I can tell you that there are many options for FCP training, including some excellent computer-based DVD tutorials. IMO, taking these tutorials is one of the best ways to learn the NLE quickly.

Good luck with your business, and let us know how it goes.

Actually, Vegas 6 does have multi cam support. It also supports Blackmagic Design for uncompressed HD editing. Avid is nice, but highly overpriced. The audio tools in Vegas are unparralled. So, to answer the original question on this thread, I think Vegas 6 will suit a wedding videographers needs perfectly, even if he plans to move onto bigger things.

If you want to "future-proof" your investment, then Final Cut Pro Studio 5 or Avid XpressProHD 5 is your best bet. These are the only two NLEs that currently suppport full HD (DVCProHD). FCP has also been very agressive in updating and supporting new features. ...FCP, Avid, and Liquid Edition 6 are the only NLEs that support true multi-camera editing. Vegas 6 might also -- don't know for sure.

Canopus Edius supports editing of DVCProHD with the optional "Canopus codec pack," and can also edit MPEG1, MPEG2, DV, uncompressed SD, native HDV, HDV converted to the Canopus HQ codec, and so on. Canopus also has the only shipping real-time HDV accelerator card, which starts at $1299 with the Edius software plus $800 for full-quality component HDTV output. And Canopus has announced that they will soon support multi-camera editing through a third-party plugin, plus they recently introduced support for Boris Red effects. They still have some work to do to make Edius a full-featured editing tool, but within the limitations of what it can do its hard to beat in terms of real-time capabilities.

Also note that Avid doesn't currently offer HDV editing, and Apple just added a proper HDV solution almost two years after the format was introduced. (They apparently did a good job, but I wouldn't call that an "aggressive" implementation schedule.) Anyway, the point is not to be too sure that the better-known names in editing are the ones leading the pack on everything.

I second what Kevin just wrote. There is alot more to the NLE world than Avid and FCP.

+1 for Vegas.

Vegas is fast, intuitive, and very powerful. The audio editing tools/capability is second to none and their effects and color correction tools are VERY comprehensive...performaning things that other NLEs would require after-market plug-ins to create. Also if you come across a good mix of filters that give you a visual effect you like- you can save it as an "effects package". Very handy. I use it all the time.

DVD Architect 2 is incredible- just completed my first 2 projects with it. Very smooth workflow- and as Edward mentioned, you simply drop markers on the timeline where you want chapter markers to be and they will be saved with the file when rendered. Once you bring it into DVD Architect it detects them and automatically creates chapter markers out of them. Then you can right-click on the file and choose "Insert Scene Selection Menu" and it'll automatically make new menus with links to the individual chapters.

what glen said is on the nail, on top of that, for weddings and private events the cost of fully fledged avid or fcp system doesnt justify the costs..
Vegas 6 has some incredible features that NEITHER of these pro systems can even sneeze at..

Vegas 6 on its own kicks some serious ass.. throw in dvda3 and the SPEED in which a dvd can be created is just gold... seriosuly, ive done it for demos and its takes a whopping 17 seconds to create a dvd with motion menu and chapter selection screen

Here's a Tour of FCP Studio 5 (http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/quicktours/) you may find helpful.

What does multi-cam support mean? Wouldn't that be multiple tracks? As long as you can drop both captured sequences on the timeline and then splice it up from there, you've got multi-cam support.

Or does this refer to some live switching thing?

Patrick

In NLE terms, multi-cam support means that you can load multiple feeds from different cameras into the timeline, sync them up, have them ALL show up on a 'multi-view' type of screen... and then simply 'switch' between views as if they were live, as the views update while watching.

Different NLE's have slightly different approaches as to how this is accomplished.

Within the next 2-3 months, yours truly plans on investing in a NLE for home/personal use. Budget: 5-8k (including software & hardware).
Thanks in advance.

I use a Matrox RT.X100 system with Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and usually comes with Adobe Encore and Audition. I have use After Effects for comps..

I also use an Avid DV system, but not as much as I use Premiere primarily because I have always used Premiere for years and more comfortable with it..

The price point on the Matrox is nice, infact I have 2 more of those systems at work as well.

I have never shot pro video, but am a hobbiest. I do want to get into the trade as a pro-hobby and have been pricing NLE SW&HW for HD editing. What I came up with is around 3k for a dual core 64bit AMD system with 2 gigs ram, dual 300gig hd and plenty of high end essentials (monitors, burners...). Including the Vegas & DVDA bundle I should top out around 3k.

I'm wondering if 2-4k should be the range for a single machine dual monitor workstation. Am I underestimating HD requirements?

Thanks

You are in the "entry" level of the ballpark. That should run fine, however you need to factor in an HD monitor of some type as well or you won't really see the fruit of your labor. Otherwise it sounds good.

I use the Adobe Premier Pro 1.5 suite with the Matrox rt.X100 Xtreme Pro real time editing card. I love it for anything from Weddings to short films to training videos. I use MultiCam from United Media to perform my multicam edits. I have done several TV commercials fro local businesses using Adobe After Effects and have never heard anything but praise. I highly recommend this system. If you build the PC for the Matrox card be sure to check out there site for compatible motherboards, chipsets, and video cards. Other than that it is easy.

Here's another vote for Vegas+DVD. I used to use Pinnacle Studio 7 and 8 products, and when I was looking for a move up, I chose Vegas over Premiere and Liquid Edition. Pinnacle's support with Studio was unexcusable. I don't know if it has gotten better - I took a very short look at Liquid Edition and decided against it, based primarily on their lack of support.

The Premiere demo crashed on me within two hours of installing it; This was version 6.x I believe. That was my one personal experience with it, but I've heard from several others about crashes. Ditto with FCP, though I don't own an Apple any longer and have not seen it first hand.

I downloaded Vegas 4 and never looked back. I've used 4, 5, and now 6. In hundreds of hours of use, I've only had one - literally ONE - system freezeup. And I think that was because I had Photoshop running with a bunch of open documents going back and forth.

Personally, if I were in your shoes, I would download the trial versions from different vendors and do a project in each of them, depending on what their trial limitations are. The nice thing about this board is that you will get a cross section of NLE users who will report good and bad things about the NLE's they use.

I know this can be seen as a negative, but I prefer the fact that I don't have to have a special PCI card with Vegas. That way my NLE is always as fast as my computer (ie, when I upgrade my PC everything about the NLE gets faster). Plus, I don't like being tied to proprietary hardware.

(edit) Vegas also has an extensible scripting layer that lots of folks have already tapped to provide unique and useful goodies. My favorite is Ultimate S 2 from VASST (dot com) which includes a slick realtime multicam utility, along with a bunch (60 or more?) of other cool stuff.

I hope this helps - good luck!

David