Feel free to come back and ask questions. Also, take a quick look at my Newsletters specifically at the "Beginner's Corner" columns. They may help some of your early questions.

9) Pan/Crop tool is quite powerfull and easy to use for animated stills a la Ken Burns.

10) Not sure if Premiere matches this now but...*every* effect is key framable

11) Not only are the audio editing tools more powerfull but it integrates flawlessly with Sound Forge...a much superior audio editor than Audition.

12) Completly format agnostic. Premiere still gives you the "red" bar when you import content other than DV AVI.

13) Less expensive but just as (if not more) robust

14) Works better on older/slower systems. Overally more responsive. Loads faster- can have multible instances run simultaneously.

Thanks for continuing the list, Glen. Anyone else?

*wait I'm still thinking* lol

15) The preview window output is adjustable. Can lower settings to yield better frame-rate on highly processed footage.

Quick off-topic question, would you Vegas guys consider the program comparable to FCP4? Don't want to start a platform flame war... forgetting the OS thing... would you say they have similar capabilities?

Many have touted Vegas as "FCP for the PC". I think FCP has better media management and more flexability on output formats- apart from that they are on par with the edge going to Vegas for it's audio prowress.

Yes, they are very comparible to each other. FCP will do a few things better and Vegas will do a few things better.

Ignacio, as someone who left FCP 4 (and like you, I have no desire to start a flame war here), I can only repeat that I am thrilled with Vegas and have no regrets that I made the switch. Yes, FCP has better media management tools as has been said many times. But there are work-a-rounds in Vegas. For ex., instead of color coding bins I moved the comments section before the clip name in the media pool and put an "X" when I've finished with a clip , as well as other indications that aid my need for speed. (Did that on old Avids anyway, before they could do some of these things.) Not having a precise match frame function in Vegas is a major error in judgement on the part of the designers IMO (hoping to see that in 5.0), but then again, the list of things that bug me are largely owing to a film background (and starting as a assistant film editor) which has its own methods/demands in the editing room that aren't as critical for the way a great many video editors seem to work. I doubt they miss a lot of the things that I long for.

On the plus side, from a pure cutting perspective, even with the things I haven't found Vegas able to do, I can work like lightening within its environment. It's both easy to use and fast to cut, which makes it a real kick to work with. I'm genuinely having a lot of fun again. I'd lost that for awhile. And while you said "forgetting the OS thing," one of my biggest gripes with FCP was really with Apple. Vegas can run flawlessly without the need for the latest and greatest cutting edge equipment. OTOH, within a year of purchasing a custom tweaked Powerbook to cut on location, changes in FCP put my system at the bottom of what was suggested to run the latest release and I began having serious problems, everything from underrun issues to a whole host of troubles. And I wasn't alone. A post house I've worked at that only uses FCP now builds the cost of a new computer system into every bid as a result. But I don't have the bucks to keep up with that game, and I don't have the patience to deal with the tech headaches that not staying on top of the tech changes/demands that each new release of FCP brings.

All in all, Vegas has some room for improvement, but I'm never going back to FCP. I have fewer headaches and more moments when I'm smiling and chuckling. Works for me. :-)

Interesting post Marcia - thanks.

Could you please elaborate on "Not having a precise match frame function in Vegas" - maybe descibe what you were previously able to do.

Thanks.

Peter

I'm agreeing with Peter. I'm not quite sure I understand exactly what you are referring to, Marcia.

IMO, Premiere Pro is Final Cut Pro for the PC. After having used FCP3, Vegas made no sense to me and Premiere Pro seemed a lot like a FCP clone. That's my 2 cents.

Glenn, you are correct. Premiere and FCP ARE closer to each other. In fact, I think some of the same programmers may have worked on both of them. Vegas takes a different approach because of coming from an audio background.

Peter, Edward,
Sitting down this morning to write out exactly what I meant in answer to your question, with FCP open next to Vegas, I realized I CAN match frame as precisely in Vegas. FCP/Avid call it "match frame," meaning in FCP I hit "F" and in Avid I click an icon, and it opens that exact frame up in the Browser (FCP/Source monitor (Avid). In Vegas I just right click and hit "open in Trimmer." I'd hit "find in media pool" right below that and totally not played with/noticed that "open in trimmer" was indeed the exact frame. I'd looked up "match frame" and couldn't find it anywhere in the dumb manual, and presumed, and moved on. The name game of all this still throws me.

Since we're on can/can't stuff, and there's obviously a great many things I haven't discovered yet (have only had the full version of Vegas about two weeks).

* Is there a way to audio scrub more precisely that slow/med/fast? There must be. I can frame by frame in other programs so that I hear each sound and can excise from it's onset. I hold down the "K" key, and hit "J" or "L". But when I do that in Vegas it starts slow and immediately speeds up. How to I make it hold the frame by frame speed?

* Is there any kind of short cut tools menu I can have floating or visible? In Avid, for example, it was always called the "hamburger menu" and you could have it open or access it from the windows or timeline.

* How do you type in a precise TC and have it take you there? There must be some trick I'm not doing right, as what (and where) I type in and what I get in response don't match. Avid's don't even require that you add the colons or semi-colon, which is nice. You just type the plus sign and the number and it takes you wherever. For ex., if I want to go from point "A" to point "B," with "B" being precisely 15 sec. later so I can render out what will become moving buttons/footage for DVDA, where and how exactly do I tell it to take me to that 15 seconds later point?

Other things will occur to me, but I have to get moving. Man, I so appreciate these boards and the ability to find the answers you need!

Marcia, check out the shortcut keys thread stickied in this forum. It has a lot of the really useful shortcuts that you probably wouldn't find yourself.

audio scrub: Hold crtl and mouse over your playhead. It should turn into a different symbol. Click and drag left/right to change scrub speed.

precise TC: double click the timecode fields in the bottom right.

But how do you get it to move one frame, and only one frame? In other words, in FCP I can hold the K down with one finger and tap the L or J which moves it one single solitary frame (in whichever direction) with each successive tap. I can only get Vegas to slow down doing what you say, not move one frame and stop until told to go on with another tap/command. Also, I played around with TC some more and realized what I was trying to do (I had already been using the TC fields in the bottom right) wasn't working owing to the ruler settings. Changed it to seconds and it worked great.

Will go do a search for that shortcut keys thread as you suggest...