Which editing software?

[Dylan Couper]

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

[Kevin Shaw]

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

[Chris Thomas]

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.