Any ex-Premiere Pro users here?

[Matt Brabender]

or you can pre-render just the looped region

[Paul Kepen]

I'm about to run out of time with the Vegas demo, but one thing that I can't get Vegas to do - even after following the steps in the help file - is adjust the length of a transition. Yes the basic grab and pull for a fade to black, but any of the other transitions I select are all set for a mere 7 frames - less then 1/3 of a second. Is there a global setting to set transition length to say 2 seconds? When I follow the steps in "help" I end up with a transition that goes from scene 1 to 2 back to 1 then finally to scene 2.
Some things I like or find easier in the PPro demo are, scene transition length-very easy and intuative, just slide the transiton time indicator, or click and enter the length of time. When you preview a clip with keyframes, the current time indicator in the keyframe window moves along so you can closely look for any obvious changes as it crossses over the keyframe during your preview. In Vegas, the keyframe time indicator stays frozen until you stop playing the clip, then jumps to the stop point. PPro gives you a shortcut box everytime you perform an action, making it easy to learn the shortcuts.
Maybe I'm missing the quick and simple way of performing these steps in Vegas, any tips would be appreciated. Thanks - PK

[Edward Troxel]

The general answer is that you simply overlap to clips and the larger the overlap, the longer the transition. With Vegas 6, it will now tell you how long that transition is as you change the overlap. If you want a EXACT transition length when you're adding new events to the timeline, you can set that in Options - Preferences on the editing tab. If you have events on the timeline and you want each of them to be overlapped a specific amount, the easiest way is via scripting.

[John Wheeler]

My analysis won't be very scientific. I don't know alot of the techno terms. I'm just a point and click type of guy. But I have messed around with 2 or 3 NLE's ..Ulead medio studio pro. Adobe premiere and vegas. And for the work that I do, I believe Vegas wins hands down. After using premiere for a year or so, i basically went bald, from pulling my hair out. The program would constantly crash. was extremely unstable. Yes, it might have been capatibility issues with the computer or capture card or what have you. But who knows. I have worked on huge projects in Vegas. I'm talking 30 tracks of video, 30 tracks of audio, effects out the wah-zoo, in one project.... and the program never even hinted at locking up or crashing. It's hard for me to explain, but the way in which you edit video on the timeline within vegas is just so refreshing. So smooth and clean. I would edit video manually, between 2 vcr's before I ever went back to premiere. The main advantage I see to premiere over vegas, is that it has more 3rd party plugin software. Other than that, I would atleast give vegas a try. Spend a week playing around with it. It's a little different at first, but it will grow on you quickly.


j.

[Paul Kepen]

Edward and John - Thanks for your replies. I am experimenting with the demo's of Vegas + PPro. Everybody seems to love Vegas, and I don't see too many people extolling the virtues of PPro. I just purchased a Sony HC-1, so I will be looking at doing HDV, probably mixed with DV from my Panny GS400. Theere are things I prefer about Vegas vs PPro, but PPro overall seems easier to use or figure out. I will be purchasing either the Adobe Video Coll ($945 w Cineform Aspect) or Vegas+DVD (plus Cineform Connect $200?) Its a matter of quality of output and ease/like using. Here's the things I don't like/can't figure out in each of them:

PREMIERE PRO

1. Endless drop down menus are a pain.

2. As you preview, the time line doesn't keep moving to stay at your current position until you stop/pause, and even then it can be stuborn about advancing to position.

3. No demo animated icon of what transition effect is.

VEGAS

1. No quick key to expand/condense timeline. The timeline horizontal scrol bar is expanded/contracted for this. When you are zoomed in it is hard to move the scroll bar - its small and it always wants to zoom out, not slide.

2. If you slide/scroll very far on the timeline, the timeline icons do NOT represent where you really are. After you stop it will update, then you find you went too far and have to do it all again.

3. Keyframing, the time indicator does not move while previewing the clip you just modified, so you can't tell when your passing over the keyframe.

4. After working in the "Event fx" you can't just hit space bar/jkl keys to preview your work, you have to mouse above the time line, or go to transport keys on botttom of timeline window.

5. Lack of flexibility in your various "windows" layout. ie. I click the timeline to get to the "event fx" function, the Event FX window use to pop up as a big box over the timeline and the bottom window below the time line. Now it only pops up INTO the window below the time line. I CAN"T GET IT TO GO BACK TO ON TOP! This is VERY frustrating, Help - is not help! You need a taller view to effectively use some of the filters, etc in here.

PPro will get sluggish on a project over about 45 minutes in length. It seems if I save and exit, then return to PPro, the sluggishness is gone. Vegas never seems to have any hint of sluggishness or that it might want to crash. My almost 2 years of video editng were mostly on Pinn Studio, that would crash/freeze/dump all the time if you had a project that was 30min+. NOTHING is more frustrating then to have it crash and loose several hour of work.

So, I want to be a Vegas kinda guy :-) I know there must be some sort of work around/ quick key or something around the things I mentioned, but its frustrating not knowing them. If I buy the program does it come with an old fashioned manual book? I really prefer that to these silly Help files.

[Glenn Chan]

1- Mouse scroll wheel zooms in/out. Hold shift key to modify the scroll wheel to pan/move the timeline left right. Check the shortcut keys thread stickied in the vegas forum.

3- You can scrub the video FX window as a workaround.

In the FX window's mini-timeline, click-drag the playhead around. Be sure you put the playhead back at the first frame, otherwise you may accidentally add a keyframe.

4- If you want, you can play a loop of video while you tweak the filter effects on the fly. q is the shortcut key to loop playback. Double clicking on a clip sets the loop region to that clip.

5- You can move the windows around and bring them out of the that region thing in the bottom/top. On the upper left corner, there is a column of six dots. Click-drag that to move windows around to reposition the interface to what you like.

Double-click the top part of a window to smartly size it so you see all the controls.

Hit Crtl Alt D, and then a number (0-10) to save a window layout.
Alt D, and then a number to recall a particular window/interface layout.

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Paul Kepen

1. No quick key to expand/condense timeline. The timeline horizontal scrol bar is expanded/contracted for this. When you are zoomed in it is hard to move the scroll bar - its small and it always wants to zoom out, not slide.

2. If you slide/scroll very far on the timeline, the timeline icons do NOT represent where you really are. After you stop it will update, then you find you went too far and have to do it all again.

3. Keyframing, the time indicator does not move while previewing the clip you just modified, so you can't tell when your passing over the keyframe.

4. After working in the "Event fx" you can't just hit space bar/jkl keys to preview your work, you have to mouse above the time line, or go to transport keys on botttom of timeline window.

5. Lack of flexibility in your various "windows" layout. ie. I click the timeline to get to the "event fx" function, the Event FX window use to pop up as a big box over the timeline and the bottom window below the time line. Now it only pops up INTO the window below the time line. I CAN"T GET IT TO GO BACK TO ON TOP! This is VERY frustrating, Help - is not help! You need a taller view to effectively use some of the filters, etc in here.

6. If I buy the program does it come with an old fashioned manual book? I really prefer that to these silly Help files.

1. Put your mouse over the timeline. Now scroll the mouse wheel :-)

2. Agreed, it has to read the files to pull up the picons for the new location in the file. That does take a little bit of time.

3. Never seen that as a problem. I think the keyframing in Vegas is very easy to use. You do have the Sync Cursor button you might want to try (I usually leave it turned off until I have a good use for it).

4. What if you use the F12 key instead? Besides, Vegas is the only NLE where you can set up a loop area, start playback and then adjust the FX on the fly while playback continues. Try it out!

5. Sounds like you've docked it. Just undock it. There's a series of dots on the upper left side of that window. Click on those dots and drag upwards to undock it.

6. No. It comes with online help and a PDF file. You can print the PDF file or take it somewhere that will print and bind it. You can download the PDF file now if you haven't done so.

[Paul Kepen]

Thank you, Glen and Edward, I t sounds like you guys were generous enough to solve all my simple little problems. I really, really do appreciate all the help on this forum, it makes learning a new NLE a lot quicker. I'll be busy with Christmas the next couple of days, so probably won't get to check these out until then, but again, Thank you very much and have a wonderful Holiday - PK

[Adam Woodworth]

Hi Paul,

As for the lack of a printed manual that ships with Vegas, I have to say that I find the online help in Vegas to be very well written, well laid out, and I can actually *FIND* things in the online help with use of their index or searching with keywords. For me, the online help has been a great way to quickly learn the product.

And for some general Vegas thoughts:

I have been using Vegas for about 2 years or so, and I've tried using Premiere Pro 1.5, but the interface is very obnoxious to me. Not only does it have the problems mentioned above, like not being able to play and tweak FX at the same time, but PPro just seems to be slow in general. For example, it takes a bit longer for PPro to play video after you hit the spacebar/play button.

It was mentioned that Vegas was the only NLE where you can loop and modify FX at the same time, and that may be true on Windows, but Final Cut Pro can do this, it's just a bit more convoluted and requires a separate (specific) video preview window open.

One of my biggest problems with PPro (and perhaps FCP, I'm not sure how this works in FCP?) is that you cannot preview what a plugin preset will do to your video in PPro. In Vegas, you apply a plugin, then you can select different presets from the list and the preview window will show you the results. In PPro, plugin "presets" actually behave more like individual plugins -- you have to apply one, see the result, then disable/remove it, apply another, see the results, etc etc... Extremely annoying if you're like me and enjoy using the Magic Bullet Film Look plugin with all it's presets.

That said, one of my biggest problems with Vegas is it's outdated and arcane plugin API. If you're interested in developing DirectX plugins in C/C++ for Vegas, strap yourself in for some ridiculous obnoxious Microsoft-isms.

Also many people have said that Vegas is very stable and reliable. And while I have to admit Vegas crashes very rarely, it does have a few problems that I've run into:

1) Setting Vegas' RAM limit to more than 1.5GB of RAM would cause Vegas to always crash during a RAM preview that filled up it's limit. Bummer.

2) I've had a few consistent problems with Vegas rendering incorrect output in certain circumstances. After editing my short film for a few hours, I would tell Vegas to render the video to a single AVI file, and after it was done parts of the video would be completely incorrect -- that is, the video would change scenes all of the sudden! It's like Vegas has a mind of it's own and re-edited my footage. I found that I have to close Vegas and then reopen the project before rendering it out to disk. It's the only reliable way to do it. Sounds like a memory handling bug in Vegas.

Anyways, have fun with whatever you use!

Happy Holidays!
Adam

[Paul Kepen]

Thanks Adam for your input. I'm not a programmer, so I certainly won't be doing any C++iting for Vegas. I'm surprised to hear about your video coming out incorrectly in Vegas.

From what I've seen on a G5 Mac with FCP running, PPro and FCP are almost identical, at least in the basics and how the interface works.

My experience with burning a DVD from a project that I've played with in both PPro and Vegas, is that the Vegas output is cleaner and richer. This is strange because with both I hada to output as an AVI to Premiere Elements and burn with that (Its a Adobe licensed version of Sonic).

[David Ennis]

Originally Posted by Adam Woodworth

...After editing my short film for a few hours, I would tell Vegas to render the video to a single AVI file, and after it was done parts of the video would be completely incorrect -- that is, the video would change scenes all of the sudden! It's like Vegas has a mind of it's own and re-edited my footage. I found that I have to close Vegas and then reopen the project before rendering it out to disk. It's the only reliable way to do it. Sounds like a memory handling bug in Vegas...

I just had that experience for the first time a few days ago. During a 2.5 hour avi to avi render, Vegas ignored half of the dissolve transitions in a 2 minute segment of an hour-long piece. Fortunately, Vegas made it easy to accurately isolate and render just the offending section and insert it into the main veg for the final render to MPG2. Rebooting before rendering is a good call.

[John L Scott]

So, I have read for days on forums (mainly this one) and agree on one thing. PPro does crash a lot. I thought it was my PC or all the little demo programs I downloaded and tried. I have Media Studio Pro, PPro1.5, and looks like I will be using Vegas 6 because it sounds most stable. I have very limited experience in NLE but enough to know it's not my PC... One habit I got into with PPro was to limit my scene rendering to small 3 to 5 mins because of crashing. Then I would use another program to piece it together and make the final. Mind you I really haven't done any thing longer than 30 mins. I learned to limit transistions just from experence before I read about limiting them. I downloaded the trial ver of Vegas 6 and will give it a shot. As of now I find it a little perplexing but aren't they all at first.
Two questions I would like to pose is:
1. Is Vegas an all around program for start to finish editing?
2. What in conjunction does everyone use with it?

Examples:
I use VideoStudio for capturing. (Cause I didn't have a DV Camera till this week)
I use simple Ulead programs like 3D for fast intro and EFX.
I use PPro or Media Studio to edit the rushes.
I use either Ulead or Nero to build the final for the DVD.
I use NERO for burning the DVD. (PPro crashes because I guess it has some conflicks with the 64 bit processor I use...)
That being said it's obvious I am very green and have learned mostly on my own because I am bull headed. Sorry so long! Thanks to all here for all the help :)

"Ya can't fix it cause ya don't know how it works"

....I'm a normal guy that will not stop and ask directions....

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by John L Scott

1. Is Vegas an all around program for start to finish editing?
2. What in conjunction does everyone use with it?

1. Yes, Vegas is designed for exactly that - edit a project from start to finish.

2. Definitely get Vegas+DVD. The DVD aspect is also very powerful. However, you really don't "need" anything beyond that.

There are some things available but it's hard to say exactly which pieces would be useful to YOU. If you have some specific needs, we could surely point you in the right direction.

You might also want to get some training materials. There's the free newsletters on my website which can help get you started. There's also books and DVD training materials available from a variety of sources.

[David Ennis]

Originally Posted by John L Scott

...I use VideoStudio for capturing. (Cause I didn't have a DV Camera till this week)
I use simple Ulead programs like 3D for fast intro and EFX.
I use PPro or Media Studio to edit the rushes.
I use either Ulead or Nero to build the final for the DVD.
I use NERO for burning the DVD...

I use Vegas + DVD for all the above.

I do three-camera shoots of stage productions, choral and band concerts. Vegas lets me view all three video tracks on the editing timeline and in the preview monitor (using a picture in picture array). This makes it easy to choose which cam I want to cut to and to find the exact point where the inserted transition will be the most effective. I can view the results of all video effects edits in real time. Vegas is very powerful in terms of video effects, compositing and track motion, and I have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities. It has a nice suite of transition effects, but I pretty much stick to a mixture of straight cuts and crossfades. It also offers plenty of titling options.

Most of my productions are on the order of an hour or more long, and a few have gone close to 2 hours. Vegas has never crashed my 2.4 Ghz WinXP system, including during a render. Rendering times are reasonable by current standards, with rendering / real time ratios of about 1.5 / 1 for moderately edited avi to avi renders, and about 2.5 / 1 for avi to final MPEG-II.

[Chris Barcellos]

Except for a capture problem I'm having inside Vegas, I am beginning to get a feel for it, and I'm on at the crossroads. In the past for simple edits, I actually used Pinnacle Studio 9. I upgraded to Pinnacle Studio 10, but it seems to have a lot of bugs. What I liked about Pinnacle is you could do fairly complex edits, add music tracks, titles, transitions, and photos (Ken Burns effects included) easily. Because of the simplicity, and though I've had access and used Premiere 6.5 and a Real Time editting board, I found I could put out a decent product in most situation with that editting suite. I could easily output the product to a DVD, still in the same program. The one problem with the DVD is that it would get hung up on Transitions and titles in my Sony DVD player. My cheap players would not have a problem, but for some reason the Sony did.

I've now purchased the Sony Platinum Movie Studon + DVD, and I am getting into the learning curve on these products. I've produced DVDs, and there is, naturally, no problem with transitions. I'm thinking, unless something drastic happens, that I will be moving into this as my primary editing suite.

One issue needs resolution though. I have had the ability in Studio to capture to my USB 2.0 drives, without any problems.

In Vegas, as well as in Premiere Pro 1.51, when I start a DV capture to the USB 2.0 drives, the entire system will freeze, to the point that I cannot even shut down the system with a keyboard command, and I have to switch off the power manually.

Any body have that problem or a solution.