Vegas vs. Ppro 2/CS3
 

I'd like to appeal to the wisdom of you all for some much needed help.

I have a project to be shot in HD. I recently bought a Canon A1, and am trying to decide whether to get the latest version of Vegas or PPro. I'm currently running PPro 1.5, which can't handle the A1's 24F and 30F modes, which is what I'd like to shoot in. So I'm clearly going to have to upgrage to something.

I've downloaded the Vegas trial, and have played with it. Coming from FCP and PPro I find it a little counterintuitive.

Questions:

1. Will I have to buy Cineform? So far the HDV editing in the Vegas trial has been very choppy and slow (I'm running a Core 2 Duo 6300, 1.5 Gigs Ram, no Raid).

2. Ideally I would love to just get Adobe CS3 and Cineform, because I'm most familiar with PPro. But the total cost of that comes out to $700 ($199 to upgrade from PPro 1.5, and $499 for Aspect HD). But unless I'm mistaken, the total cost of getting Vegas 7+DVD and Cineform NEO seems to be only $500 (B&H has Vegas 7 for $250 here: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=462195&is=REG
And, if I buy Vegas, wouldn't I be able to avoid buying Cineform NEO altogether, and just use Vegas's included Cineform codec, thus dropping the Vegas total down to $250? Would Gearshift do the trick for another $50, a $300 total?

3. Is Pinnacle Studio 11 going to be a good option to output to HD-DVD using an SD DVD burner, no matter which NLE I choose?

Thanks in advance.

I've gone through similar events like you back in last September. I decided to switch to HDV after using Canopus Storm/AP 6.0 since 2001.

My first project was to build a fast PC before buying new editing software and new HDV camcorder. I knew nothing about OC at that time. It took me 2.5 months of research to finalize the components(eVGA 680i, Core 2 Duo 6400, 2GB fast RAM, 7600GT GC, WD 150 Raptor OS drive, a single Seagate 320GB HD for media, and a 24" Dell LCD), but 2 hours to put them together. It was easy to OC from 2.1 to 3.3GHz and the system is pretty stable.

In February, I needed to decide which camera and editing software to buy for my friend's wedding in April. I bought Canon A1 (I still have my Sony DSR-250). Soon after I received the A1, I downloaded Sony Vegas trial version, test out the performance of my PC, and get familiar with the workflow. The performance is very good. At one time, I was watching a DVD movie in one window while editing. I ordered Vegas 6 and 7 upgrade from B&H ($250). There was only three weeks left for me to learn how to use the camera and the new editing software.

I just finished editing the wedding video. The "Digital Video & Audio Production for Vegas 7" tutorial helped a lot for reducing the learning curve.

I used Panasonic DMR HS2 to convert the raw footage to DVD directly. The down-converted video quality is really good and it is better than my DSR-250.

I am still in the process of learning the best way to deliver the video in regular DVD with the best picture quality. One of the ways is to print the video to tape and play it back to Panasonic for real-time encoding, then copy the file back to PC for creating the menu and authoring.

Hope you find my experience useful.

John

Adobe Deserter
 

I really don't want to get into NLE wars, and this post should be seen as relating my own personal experiences. I started off DV editing with some Pinnacle package that gave me no end of grief. I then migrated to Premiere Pro 1.5.1 which I really enjoyed and hooked me well and good. When the Adobe Production Studio Premium came out last year, I maxed out some pieces of plastic and went for it. Also, eventually, Cineform Aspect HD.
But then Premiere Pro 2 started giving me problems on exporting (it would export most of a movie and then give me an "error exporting movie/unknown error" message in the last couple of seconds. Nothing I did could resolve this. Some people suggested running the project through After Effects or doing this or that. Still not much happened, except that rendering a 30 minute movie through After Effects suddenly took something like 14 hours.
I knew I had to re-install, but that would entail, of course, re-installing all the plug-ins (Boris BCC4, a couple of After Effects 7).
So I downloaded the Vegas demo instead. And plugged in my Canon A1 into the firewire port. And waited to see what happened. And happen it did. With no problems, Vegas 7 guzzled the A1's streams (in all formats). And all of this while reading this forum and having my e-mail application open at the same time.
So, am I an Adobe deserter and a Vegas convert? Seems that way. I find Vegas incredibly stable and it renders faster on my machine (Pentium Extreme Edition, quadcore, 4GB RAM, XP SP2) than anything else I've tried. I do miss some of the plug-ins, but I can always run stuff through After Effects should I want to.
Again, just my experience.

Carl,
Jo'burg

I use Vegas with Shiftgear for almost one year. The system is stable and easy. And I think this combination is cheapest.

Vegas vs Prem Pro
 

Yeah, the upgrade cost of PP is breathtaking... I defected to Vegas and while I will miss the realtime transitions (due to pinnacle dv500 card in PP rig), Vegas grows more and more on me. It's economical and stable.

I edit HDV M2T's on timeline without Cineform. Straight video plays fine, transitions, supers, etc are choppy but good enough I can get the sense of if will work or not. If it is critical, then I spot render that area on the timeline for smooth playback. I feel pretty comfortable with the GUI too, though I still like PP GUI a bit better (not $500 worth better though).

Besides budget, it is what feels comfortable to you. Good you are test driving them.

I run a AMD X2 4600+, 2gb ram, 2x320 sata in raid0 and it's pretty good. No matter what NLE, have the OS and NLE on a separate -physical- drive from the video files. Make sure only hard drives are on the IDE/SATA cable, not cd drives, etc.

You should see no choppieness in your rig, based on your desc.
You may want to create a separate boot install of XP (not vista) on your main hard drive and use it as an NLE only partition, no email, viruscanner, web surfing. Load up your chosen NLE and see if it is a better experience. Optimally dedicated pc is better. Buy a cheapie for web surfing.

Save the cineform for last, you may find it is not needed for your purposes, though it is a fine codec.

Greetings

I asked this question a short while ago and didn't get many responses.

Anyway, I use PP2 on a brut C2D machine. I don't have any "choppy" response with the program on this machine. Runs VERY quick. Perhaps your HD setup is borderline??? My PC has dual sets of RAID 0 volumes. I've done numerous tests and found that PP2 would run GREAT on either the OS volume or the second volume. Really no difference in application performance. I don't feel like I'm speed limited in the least. No Cineform running............. so I can't say if that would be better or not. ??? LOL, I ditched my Raptor OS drive. The Raptor was a lot slower than my RAID 0 setup. I've mirrored (with Acronis 10) the RAID OS drive to the second RAID volume for security/back-up.

As far as NLE comparisons go. LOL........... I've dug around a lot on the net and you'll get 10 different answers on that one. All of NLE's have their quirks and learning curve.................. although the 'very' general consensus is that Vegas is easier to master. If I hadn't invested in PP2 already I'd probably start with Vegas.

You should probably try to get some advice from Vegas-specific forums about the "choppy" issues you're seeing. I'm sure those folks have an answer for that one.

Good luck and keep us informed on how your search goes
JohnG

I can only speak from my own experience, but switching to Vegas was the smartest thing I ever did because it enabled me to edit with a degree of proficiency that I never achieved with Premiere. With Vegas, everything seemed like it was at my fingertips.

Unlike many here, I only do video occasionally, so my views may be quite different than that of an everyday pro.

I have Vegas 7, PPR 1.5.1 and EDius 3.62 running on my editing PC. OF the three Edius is by far the fastest at almost everything and my main editor. Speed isn't everything though!! FOr audio Vegas is the best by a long way. For keyframe control its a draw Vegas with PPRo etc, etc.... Its why I have all three.

Ron Evans

Vegas Rocks
 

I defected to Vegas from PPro 1.5, and I love it. The learning curve wasn't steep at all, and everything is really easy to do, and the render times are waaay fast.

SB

we're editing cineform in vegas .. neo hdv captures direct to cineform avi, which playback v fast in vegas ..

http://www.thehold.co.uk/misc/acute_timeline.jpg

this timeline plays back 25fps solid (PAL-land), no stuttering, with basic preview colour-correction (colour curves + black and white) .. this is at Preview/Auto or Draft/Half ... it stutters very slightly at Preview/Half with the preview colour correction, while Preview/Half plays back 25fps solid without the effects. This is "half" of 1080 which is obviously still pretty big, 960x540. Playback of preview/auto uses 25-30% cpu with preview effects. System is AMD X2 4400+, 2gb ram, raid0 (2 drives) for captures, raid01 (4 drives) for projects.

I built a system for Video Editing about 5 months ago and went through some of the same questions you are. I decided to go With Vegas 7 and dont' regret it one bit. I agree with the others on here that it is a fast and stable editing solution and for the price, I don't think it can be beat.

Jon