Thanks for your help guys! Looks like i can use vegas after all :)

Boris RED
Boris FX
Boris Graffiti

I just gave a large list of links in this thread

Since you have Vegas, you may want to consider DVD Architect.

Edward,

Thank you for releasing the beta RC3 version of your film look plugin. Pretty cool.

Vegas then After effects for 24p?
 

since After Effects doesnt support the 24p pulldown, do i have to import my footage into Vegas, apply the pulldown, save AVI's and then edit like normal in After Effects? I'm a newbie so excuse me if i dont know what im talking about. Thanks.

This thread may be of help.

According to this, Vegas drops frames to achieve 24p.

perhaps i should clarify... the video will be shot at 24pA with my DVX100

vegas transitions
 

I love vegas because its so rock solid and PPro does have crash issues. Actually a lot of my clients for the wedding videos I do love the cheesy wedding transitions and since I'm always juggling 10 clients at once its a lot easier popping in some pre-made trans then having to spend hours making one. You can't tell me you never use a simple cross dissolve? Of course in my corporate videos I never bother with trans either.

I CAN say that 99.9% of my wedding transitions are crossfades. Very rarely I'll use a flash transition and even more rarely something like a page curl.

No problem. Also thanks to Dave ("filmy") for creating the install program and looks.

trans in Vegas
 

Yeah I use about 80 percent fades, then a lot of quick cuts, I like to use an imaginative trans at title sequences for small vignettes I produce inside the project. I think just sticking to one thing throughtout ie direct cuts makes the wedding video a bit boring. I try to make it like an action video when producing a wedding, I want people to want to watch it more then once as in most weddings all people want to see is the rings, kiss, and the crazy drunken dancing at the end. How many of your own friends have you tortured with your own wedding video, not people want to watch you greet your ten thousand cousins!? Of course it starts with good shots!

Discovered super process to give my footage a unique "look"
 

First off, this maybe somewhat old news...but maybe it may not be for others.

I shoot with a XL1s and at times due to no control over lighting (weddings...etc), the footage is less than ideal. Vegas does a fairly good job getting rid of the video noise...but in spite of NUMEROUS configurations, I never got the "Look" I desired. Well... I finally found a somewhat simple process to REALLY clean up less-than-ideal lighted footage and give it a unique look.

I simply frame serve out to Virtual dub and
use Donald Graft's Smart Smooth Filter (http://neuron2.net/). Try it...you may be blown away as I was the first time using it.....

Donald's got some nice papers archived in the Library of his site.

Those looking for the filters will find them under the Mine section. (It took me a few minutes to figure this out.)

Best Quicktime import settings?
 

Is anybody familiar with which Quicktime settings are best for importing into Vegas? I'm attempting to rebuild a project from FCP and would like to lay a Quicktime output from FCP under the EDL I already brought in, to use as my guide tracks for laying in the Vegas media files.

When doing a Quicktime output from FCP the optional settings include everything from "video" to Uncompressed (8 bit or 10 bit) to MPEG-4 to Sorenson Video (reg or 3) to DV/DVCPRO - NTSC, and more.

Thing is, I may just use it as a guide track then chuck it, in which case the settings are all that critical, but there is one piece of footage that I'd thrown into this project from a tape that I can't find, in which case, for that piece, the best settings I can come up with to blend with the other DVX footage could matter a great deal.

As always, any insights anyone has would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Marcia

Thanks Robert for posting the link to Don's filters....I'm so used to navigating his website that I forgot it might be difficult on first visit....