My experience at a local Videographer's Association meeting.....

Nick Jushchyshyn · September 29th, 2004, 09:04 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Pat Chaney : I think Microsoft should buy it and rename it "My NLE". -->>>Actually, if that were to happen, they'd probably call it Windows Media Editor, Quicktime support would be stripped from the application and DVD's authored with DVDa would only play in Xbox players. :P

(on the good side, it would probably become a free component of MS Office)

BTW: The latest issue of DV Magazine has a "hands on" review of Vegas 5 that turned out fundamentally positive, but did highlight some reasons that the author considered it as not being quite up to his definition of "professional".

Anyway, despite the fact that I don't use ANY of the software being discussed here, this has turned very interesting thread to watch.
Have fun.

Josh Bass · September 29th, 2004, 09:39 AM

Vegas doesn't advertise too much, do they? You see Avid/Premiere ads in all the trade mags and whatnot, but not too much Vegas. That could be part of iit. Plus, it's newer than the rest, right?

Simon Wyndham · September 29th, 2004, 09:41 AM

Nick, could you highlight some of the reasons the reviewer gave? It would be interesting to know whether the falws he found in Vegas were also flaws in Premiere or some of the other editors.

We know there are issues with EDL support in Vegas, and it's media bins, but to me such things pale into insignificance when it comes to comparing what Vegas can do compared to other editors as opposed to what it can't do (which isn't a whole lot!)

Josh Bass · September 29th, 2004, 09:46 AM

Well, now, that depends, doesn't it? If you do longform projects that include separate online and offline edits, those media bins and EDLs would be of the utmost importance, no?

Simon Wyndham · September 29th, 2004, 09:55 AM

Yes, that's true. But it depends what you are want to do with the package.

I do video for a living, therefore I am a professional. I don't have any use for seperate online and offline edits.

So perhaps Vegas is not suited to broadcast applications (but then DPS Velocity would be a far better choice for that anyway than FCP or Premiere), but it is professionally suited to corporate and independent digital moviemaking.

While someone could say that the EDL system in Vegas means it can't be classed as pro software, by the same token I could cite some of the lack of audio abilities of the other packages as reasons why they couldn't be classed as pro. Horses for courses

Nick Jushchyshyn · September 29th, 2004, 06:54 PM

One of his main complaints was the EDL support (though this surprised me since the article opens with a note about Premiere Pro having "come of age" and I thought Premiere had DROPED EDL altogether.)

He also felt that Vegas' proprietary plugin interface was a detractor since it could not take advantage of the "vast array of AE plugins". (Can Avid do this?)

I think his other two main complaints were that the interface was realatively foriegn vs Avid, Premiere and FCP so he had to tweek it quite a bit to get comfortable. (Though the fact that it COULD be tweeked was a plus.) and that the "single-sequence-per-project" limitation (vs nested timelines of Premiere and the like) was too constraining to use Vegas for anything other than short, self contained projects.

He did devote nearly a full column of text to the "Audio Wonderland" of sounds features.

Anyway, the full article is in the November DV Magazine.

In the long run, the real issue is that "professional" is a subjective term. It seems to me that a professional, independant videographer would get more than enough functionality out of Vegas or any other NLE in it's class. Selection criteria falls along the lines of personal preference, desired pre-packaged feature set and even to some degree cost. Vegas, and others in its class, should have no problem filling this professional need.

For a professional studio with multiple people, working simultaniously on multiple projects, with multiple tools (from different hardware and software manufactures), everything needs to work EXTREMELY well with each other and lots of automation and interconnectivity realated features are of greater value than the pre-packaged feature set of any single tool. I think it's in this context that Vegas falls short of meeting "professional" needs.

Just MHO.
Have fun.

[EDIT:
BTW: I should say that I'm always ammused at people who do nothing but edit their own DV footage thumb their noses at sensationally feature rich software because they consider it cheap and unprofessional compared to the $1000 program on their computer that has over half its features neglected.
Oh well.
/EDIT]

Josh Bass · September 29th, 2004, 07:18 PM

Listening, Sony? Wanna sell more copies?

Nick Jushchyshyn · September 29th, 2004, 07:24 PM

Oh, yeah.
I should add that in the Final words section, he DOES take time to say "I found Douglas Spotted Eagle's Vegas 4 Editing Workshop to be extremely helpful."

Kudos!

Peter Jefferson · September 30th, 2004, 06:24 AM

interesting to say that prem has "come of age.. " LOL

i mean.. prem pro was release after v4... 1.5 update was released after v5... but here the doozy.. the a/b timeline system has been ditched, the effects rack/setup has been emulated.. so which app has actualy come of age?? did it take 7 rounds for adobe to get it right?? i mean vegas 3 from 4 years ago was quite a powerhouse.. so what kind of age is it showing now??

as for video, EDL's arent the be all end all for professional work.. on top of that, i know many audio producers whove ditched ProTools to work with Vegas, SF and AcidPro

Pro, not pro.. who cares.. the fact remains you get good results out of the one applicaiton without the need to render elements jsut to see what they look like.

Prem on its own is pretty weak compared to V4/V5, throw a matrox RTx100 with it and the story changes a lil.. FCP isnt worth a mention when compared side by side to either of the 2...Pinnacle is just there.. does afew things, but nowhere near easy or fast.. and canopus have ditched their Prem Base to focus on edius.. then theres avid, which is an awsome app, ive had issues with it, but the Mojo Box im testing seems to be quite solid.. i dont like the glugginess of it, and i can work much faster with Vegas and get the same results, if not better.

in the end, its all about choice, use what your comfortable with and what will give u the results to get the job done properly.

Bogdan Vaglarov · October 1st, 2004, 06:57 AM

OK no offense here, actually Vegas would be my choice for Pro work if I do such.

Last night I decided to check the price of Vegas 5 on e-Bay.
Here is the result - judge for yourself :)

http://search.ebay.com/Vegas-5_W0QQs...ectZ1QQfromZR8

Simon Wyndham · October 1st, 2004, 08:35 AM

Here's a link to anyone who thinks Vegas isn't professional!

http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/4793

If anyone you come across looks down on Vegas, just show them that link!

Jean-Philippe Archibald · October 1st, 2004, 08:53 AM

Good words for our Edward in the link Simon pointed to us:

"Duncan also used a third-party script program called Excalibur that allowed him to streamline the multi-cam edit by automatically creating edits based on the timeline markers. "The built-in scripting language of Vegas software allows so many functions to be automated," Duncan said, adding that third-party scripts like Excalibur take advantage of the open-source design of the Vegas software, greatly enhancing its versatility and creating a huge benefit for the user. "

Peter Jefferson · October 1st, 2004, 09:00 AM

i have to take those comments (not Ed's coz Ex is not the point here) but the comments on Vegas and pretty much the "review" of how the project was made with a grain of salt.. reason being its all about Sony Shining.. dont ge me wrng, i agree with what theve written, but its a biased article.. filmed on sony cams, edited in sony products for a sony music presentation....

ps- before anyone says anything, im a hardcore vegas user and trainer.. so im not dissing the app, im dissing the way Sony are handling the whole situation..

Nick Jushchyshyn · October 1st, 2004, 09:20 AM

(BTW: Did you know that Excalibur was written, at least in part, by our good friend Edward Troxel? "Vegas Training and Tools Introduces Excalibur 3.0" :) )

Not sure that article really says much of anything different that what has already been mentioned here. While the rapid turn-around time is very impressive It's an example of a a single freelance editor, working on a single (relatively small) video project.

Again, just about any well tuned NLE in Vegas' class and up can handle such an individual task by an individual person, professional or not. (While most could not handle the turnaround time shown in the article without Sony's tight integration, of disc recording cameras and capture, most video projects are not delivered under such delivery conditions.)

Where software like FCP, Avid and Premiere go beyond what Vegas offers is in larger studios for situations where there are multiple people, working with multiple programs on multiple projects, all at once. Numerous fundamental features of these other programs are optimized for collaborative productions, in addition to there being a significatly greater availability of interconnected third party products to support these envirnments.

THIS is the proffesional environment that Vegas simply cannot support at this time.

That said, I'll reiterate that the above really has little-to-no bearing on individual (or small team), freelance video professionals. In this professional arena, my feeling is that the likes of FCP, Avid and Premiere have little more to offer than higher costs. (Some may argue that the larger user base of these products is an advantage, but it seems to me that there is no shortage of helpful, knowlegeable Vegas users and learning resources available when someone needs assistance.)

[EDIT: Again, just the personal opinions of an outsider that uses none of these programs. /EDIT]
Have fun.

Simon Wyndham · October 1st, 2004, 09:29 AM

Sure, there is greater third party support by other manufacturers for the likes of Avid and Premiere etc. Although on the issue of collaborative projects I should take issue.

On a collaborative project with multiple editors etc, is it not the done thing to all work with the same software? If everyone on a project owns Vegas then transferring projects via VEG files and capture files is very easy indeed.

EDL's are only useful up to a point and don't take care of anything complex done within a project. So even if an editor is better able to use such things, it can only help up to a certain point.

I would hope that in the next generation of Vegas there will be support for the XDCAM's MXF file format considering it is Sony and all that.

It would only take a certain amount of tweaking by Sony to make Vegas a total solution.

September 29th, 2004, 09:39 AM	#32
Josh Bass Slash Rules! Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 5,472	Vegas doesn't advertise too much, do they? You see Avid/Premiere ads in all the trade mags and whatnot, but not too much Vegas. That could be part of iit. Plus, it's newer than the rest, right? __________________ The Bass' camerawork The Bass on IMDB

September 29th, 2004, 09:46 AM	#34
Josh Bass Slash Rules! Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 5,472	Well, now, that depends, doesn't it? If you do longform projects that include separate online and offline edits, those media bins and EDLs would be of the utmost importance, no? __________________ The Bass' camerawork The Bass on IMDB

September 29th, 2004, 07:18 PM	#37
Josh Bass Slash Rules! Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 5,472	Listening, Sony? Wanna sell more copies? __________________ The Bass' camerawork The Bass on IMDB

October 1st, 2004, 08:53 AM	#42
Jean-Philippe Archibald Trustee Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Saguenay, Québec, Canada Posts: 1,051	Good words for our Edward in the link Simon pointed to us: "Duncan also used a third-party script program called Excalibur that allowed him to streamline the multi-cam edit by automatically creating edits based on the timeline markers. "The built-in scripting language of Vegas software allows so many functions to be automated," Duncan said, adding that third-party scripts like Excalibur take advantage of the open-source design of the Vegas software, greatly enhancing its versatility and creating a huge benefit for the user. " __________________ Jean-Philippe Archibald http://www.jparchibald.com - http://www.vimeo.com/jparchib

September 29th, 2004, 09:04 AM	#31
Nick Jushchyshyn Major Player Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA Posts: 548	<<<-- Originally posted by Pat Chaney : I think Microsoft should buy it and rename it "My NLE". -->>>Actually, if that were to happen, they'd probably call it Windows Media Editor, Quicktime support would be stripped from the application and DVD's authored with DVDa would only play in Xbox players. :P (on the good side, it would probably become a free component of MS Office) BTW: The latest issue of DV Magazine has a "hands on" review of Vegas 5 that turned out fundamentally positive, but did highlight some reasons that the author considered it as not being quite up to his definition of "professional". Anyway, despite the fact that I don't use ANY of the software being discussed here, this has turned very interesting thread to watch. Have fun.

September 29th, 2004, 09:41 AM	#33
Simon Wyndham Trustee Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Malvern UK Posts: 1,931	Nick, could you highlight some of the reasons the reviewer gave? It would be interesting to know whether the falws he found in Vegas were also flaws in Premiere or some of the other editors. We know there are issues with EDL support in Vegas, and it's media bins, but to me such things pale into insignificance when it comes to comparing what Vegas can do compared to other editors as opposed to what it can't do (which isn't a whole lot!)

September 29th, 2004, 09:55 AM	#35
Simon Wyndham Trustee Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Malvern UK Posts: 1,931	Yes, that's true. But it depends what you are want to do with the package. I do video for a living, therefore I am a professional. I don't have any use for seperate online and offline edits. So perhaps Vegas is not suited to broadcast applications (but then DPS Velocity would be a far better choice for that anyway than FCP or Premiere), but it is professionally suited to corporate and independent digital moviemaking. While someone could say that the EDL system in Vegas means it can't be classed as pro software, by the same token I could cite some of the lack of audio abilities of the other packages as reasons why they couldn't be classed as pro. Horses for courses

September 29th, 2004, 06:54 PM	#36
Nick Jushchyshyn Major Player Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA Posts: 548	One of his main complaints was the EDL support (though this surprised me since the article opens with a note about Premiere Pro having "come of age" and I thought Premiere had DROPED EDL altogether.) He also felt that Vegas' proprietary plugin interface was a detractor since it could not take advantage of the "vast array of AE plugins". (Can Avid do this?) I think his other two main complaints were that the interface was realatively foriegn vs Avid, Premiere and FCP so he had to tweek it quite a bit to get comfortable. (Though the fact that it COULD be tweeked was a plus.) and that the "single-sequence-per-project" limitation (vs nested timelines of Premiere and the like) was too constraining to use Vegas for anything other than short, self contained projects. He did devote nearly a full column of text to the "Audio Wonderland" of sounds features. Anyway, the full article is in the November DV Magazine. In the long run, the real issue is that "professional" is a subjective term. It seems to me that a professional, independant videographer would get more than enough functionality out of Vegas or any other NLE in it's class. Selection criteria falls along the lines of personal preference, desired pre-packaged feature set and even to some degree cost. Vegas, and others in its class, should have no problem filling this professional need. For a professional studio with multiple people, working simultaniously on multiple projects, with multiple tools (from different hardware and software manufactures), everything needs to work EXTREMELY well with each other and lots of automation and interconnectivity realated features are of greater value than the pre-packaged feature set of any single tool. I think it's in this context that Vegas falls short of meeting "professional" needs. Just MHO. Have fun. [EDIT: BTW: I should say that I'm always ammused at people who do nothing but edit their own DV footage thumb their noses at sensationally feature rich software because they consider it cheap and unprofessional compared to the $1000 program on their computer that has over half its features neglected. Oh well. /EDIT]

September 29th, 2004, 07:24 PM	#38
Nick Jushchyshyn Major Player Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA Posts: 548	Oh, yeah. I should add that in the Final words section, he DOES take time to say "I found Douglas Spotted Eagle's Vegas 4 Editing Workshop to be extremely helpful." Kudos!

September 30th, 2004, 06:24 AM	#39
Peter Jefferson Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Aus Posts: 3,884	interesting to say that prem has "come of age.. " LOL i mean.. prem pro was release after v4... 1.5 update was released after v5... but here the doozy.. the a/b timeline system has been ditched, the effects rack/setup has been emulated.. so which app has actualy come of age?? did it take 7 rounds for adobe to get it right?? i mean vegas 3 from 4 years ago was quite a powerhouse.. so what kind of age is it showing now?? as for video, EDL's arent the be all end all for professional work.. on top of that, i know many audio producers whove ditched ProTools to work with Vegas, SF and AcidPro Pro, not pro.. who cares.. the fact remains you get good results out of the one applicaiton without the need to render elements jsut to see what they look like. Prem on its own is pretty weak compared to V4/V5, throw a matrox RTx100 with it and the story changes a lil.. FCP isnt worth a mention when compared side by side to either of the 2...Pinnacle is just there.. does afew things, but nowhere near easy or fast.. and canopus have ditched their Prem Base to focus on edius.. then theres avid, which is an awsome app, ive had issues with it, but the Mojo Box im testing seems to be quite solid.. i dont like the glugginess of it, and i can work much faster with Vegas and get the same results, if not better. in the end, its all about choice, use what your comfortable with and what will give u the results to get the job done properly.

October 1st, 2004, 06:57 AM	#40
Bogdan Vaglarov Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Yokohama, Japan Posts: 366	OK no offense here, actually Vegas would be my choice for Pro work if I do such. Last night I decided to check the price of Vegas 5 on e-Bay. Here is the result - judge for yourself :) http://search.ebay.com/Vegas-5_W0QQs...ectZ1QQfromZR8

October 1st, 2004, 08:35 AM	#41
Simon Wyndham Trustee Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Malvern UK Posts: 1,931	Here's a link to anyone who thinks Vegas isn't professional! http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/4793 If anyone you come across looks down on Vegas, just show them that link!

October 1st, 2004, 09:00 AM	#43
Peter Jefferson Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Aus Posts: 3,884	i have to take those comments (not Ed's coz Ex is not the point here) but the comments on Vegas and pretty much the "review" of how the project was made with a grain of salt.. reason being its all about Sony Shining.. dont ge me wrng, i agree with what theve written, but its a biased article.. filmed on sony cams, edited in sony products for a sony music presentation.... ps- before anyone says anything, im a hardcore vegas user and trainer.. so im not dissing the app, im dissing the way Sony are handling the whole situation..

October 1st, 2004, 09:20 AM	#44
Nick Jushchyshyn Major Player Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA Posts: 548	(BTW: Did you know that Excalibur was written, at least in part, by our good friend Edward Troxel? "Vegas Training and Tools Introduces Excalibur 3.0" :) ) Not sure that article really says much of anything different that what has already been mentioned here. While the rapid turn-around time is very impressive It's an example of a a single freelance editor, working on a single (relatively small) video project. Again, just about any well tuned NLE in Vegas' class and up can handle such an individual task by an individual person, professional or not. (While most could not handle the turnaround time shown in the article without Sony's tight integration, of disc recording cameras and capture, most video projects are not delivered under such delivery conditions.) Where software like FCP, Avid and Premiere go beyond what Vegas offers is in larger studios for situations where there are multiple people, working with multiple programs on multiple projects, all at once. Numerous fundamental features of these other programs are optimized for collaborative productions, in addition to there being a significatly greater availability of interconnected third party products to support these envirnments. THIS is the proffesional environment that Vegas simply cannot support at this time. That said, I'll reiterate that the above really has little-to-no bearing on individual (or small team), freelance video professionals. In this professional arena, my feeling is that the likes of FCP, Avid and Premiere have little more to offer than higher costs. (Some may argue that the larger user base of these products is an advantage, but it seems to me that there is no shortage of helpful, knowlegeable Vegas users and learning resources available when someone needs assistance.) [EDIT: Again, just the personal opinions of an outsider that uses none of these programs. /EDIT] Have fun.

October 1st, 2004, 09:29 AM	#45
Simon Wyndham Trustee Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Malvern UK Posts: 1,931	Sure, there is greater third party support by other manufacturers for the likes of Avid and Premiere etc. Although on the issue of collaborative projects I should take issue. On a collaborative project with multiple editors etc, is it not the done thing to all work with the same software? If everyone on a project owns Vegas then transferring projects via VEG files and capture files is very easy indeed. EDL's are only useful up to a point and don't take care of anything complex done within a project. So even if an editor is better able to use such things, it can only help up to a certain point. I would hope that in the next generation of Vegas there will be support for the XDCAM's MXF file format considering it is Sony and all that. It would only take a certain amount of tweaking by Sony to make Vegas a total solution.