Why Vegas?
 

Let me say that I'm an FCP guy since v2 (I can already feel the loathe building toward me).

Anyway, I've been out of the scene for that last couple years and I no longer have a Mac. I'm ready to get going again and my knee-jerk reaction is to buy a Mac and FCP Studio. But, since I here so many good things about Vegas, I was hoping all of you Vegas junkies might try to make a believer out of me before I blow $3000 on an editing system. My question is simple, why Vegas? Why not FCP? For that matter, why not Adobe Premiere?

Oh, and please, no Apple haters. I'm simply looking for an objective comparison of the two editing systems. All opinions welcome, but people who have used both might really help me decide pros/cons.

Thanks!

If you are working in an FCP market it may make the most sense to get back into FCP. Likewise, if you like the FCP workflow.

For me, I found the FCP workflow difficult by comparison to Vegas. I frequently do multitrack audio, Vegas excels at this. Much of my work outputs to WMV for distribution, it is very helpful to be in the PC world when encoding to wmv whether you use Vegas or not.

I do a lot of work in the PC market - software demos, presentation dev., etc., so being PC based is an advantage. The fact that I can cut together all kinds of different sources on one timeline is very handy in presentations work. Vegas has been referred to as the "swiss army knife" of NLEs, this happens to be pretty important in my work.

Finally, I find the Vegas workflow to be very fast and understandable. After taking 3 days of FCP training (3 more coming later this month) I continue to find myself scratching my head wondering why the gui is the way it is, why some commonly used functions are multiple clicks or keystrokes away from the top layer, etc.

In addition to my production and development work, I also teach in a community college. Our mission is preparation for employment, our NLE is FCP, as it should be (or, arguably, AVID).

PS. You'll find some other interesting threads on this subject if you search back in the forum.

Have no fear, we don't tolerate platform wars here at DV Info Net.

Vegas' main advantages are:
- Cheap / will run on just about anything. Price/performance is pretty good when you factor in the cost of the computer (for a single CPU system, PCs tend to be cheaper).

- Very stable. FCP has a lot more bugs than Vegas; they're very annoying when you encounter them. Some bugs like the media manager are long-standing.

- Swiss army knife. Vegas started out as an audio multitrack program so it has very strong audio tools. It also has pretty good color correction tools.

- Works well with multiple formats in the timeline.

FCP pros:

- If you need to work with other FCP users, then having a FCP system is a big plus.

- Good for cuts and dissolves editing. I find the search capability and keyboard layout to be fairly efficient. It has a slight edge over Vegas here (although it's not a huge difference). Once you learn the shortcuts, you can get pretty efficient with FCP.

Premiere:
- The creative suite bundle is a good deal if you want After Effects, and Photoshop.
- Some integration with After Effects.

-Cons: Buggy!! Layout not as good as in FCP. I never really understood Premiere, but it seems like it takes more button pushing than the other apps.

Any OS and software and hardware combination might possibly have issues. You should choose what you're comfortable with, what you can afford and what will do what you need.

I have a low end avid DV setup and FCP as well. One NLE is much older than the other and, therefore, I primarily use the newer system. I haven't used Vegas, although seeing it mentioned so often on these forums makes me want to give it a shot.

I'd say that you should try Vegas out. If you no longer have a mac so perhaps you have a PC. Before dropping $3k on an entire new system, why don't you test-drive Vegas on your current system? The cost is nowhere near $3k to do that. And besides, there's a demo, so load it up and if it works for you then you'll have all kinds of cash to spend on other things :)

For me it's ease of use.

I have both Premiere Pro 2.0 and Vegas 6d. I'm a one-man show most of the time. Vegas gets me to where I need to go pretty quick. I keep unravelling more and more layers to it. One day I may find it limiting... but certainly not yet. Also using it with DVDA is relatively painless.

If I was just a full time editor, I would probably use PPro for the snob value (I would use FCP, but I''ve always been a pc guy). Incidentally, I've heard that Vegas actually runs better on a Mac.

The other reason I went Vegas was because of the support on this board. DSE, David Jimmerson, John Rofrano, Glenn Chan...

I have been using Vegas since version 3 and I felt it has been its effecient workflow that has kept me with it.

As was mentioned previously try Vegas out with its demo. You can get up and running for much less money if you go the PC route.

This has all been said, but I want to reinforce the very helpful community of users that are out there for Vegas.

Chad

Another thing I really like about vegas is that it caters to many different editing workflows. You can do the same thing in many different ways - in short, it's very flexible.

Vegas vs others
 

For me it came down to money.
I had older Premiere, but to upgrade to HDV compliant workflow, the cost of PPro was too high (including Cineform).

FCP is excellent, but now I had to drop a lot of money on hardware, which I had the equivalent in Windows platform already.

So Vegas it was. As others have suggested, download it, see if it fits. DSE's book Vegas 6 Editing workshop is indespensible too.

My path is going to be clearly a lot different to your own due to the fact you're a professional who has clear experience in FCP already. About 4 years ago I bought a $500 camcorder and needed an editor.. I'd been using PCs for 10+ years and I knew some of the video technicalities anyway (ie bitrates, resolutions, formats etc) so I wasn't keen on a program like ulead or pinnacle that would try and guide me thru putting together a home video.

Somehow I found Vegas (this was back on v3) and installed it and within an hour I had video footage with some titles and a few other basics on my screen and running. Fantastic thought I, it didn't offer me any help but yet it still worked. Since then I've used Avid, Premiere (in various guises, from 6.5, Pro 1.5 , Pro 2 etc) and dabbled slightly in FCP on my dad's Macbook and nothing has given me both freedom and ease of use like Vegas. In my college course when they were trying to get us to use Flash for practically every product that required motion, I'd use Vegas whether I was using video footage or not.

I've used it nonstop since and now I shoot on my Sony PD150 rather than a kids toy. I'm learning After Effects to go with it, and I'm trying to get more advanced with Avid (more for "learning industry standard" as opposed to wanting to use it myself) but at the end of the day Vegas is always going to be the editor I avidly await a new version of, and want to progress beyond my mediocre skills.

Despite now sporting the Sony brand it truly doesn't get the exposure it deserves, and in a selfish way I really don't mind.. I feel like I'm part of a more selective club who know about how great this tool is and if everyone else wants to be blinded by the Adobe badge, then thats up to them.

I've edited on Avid for the past 14 years, at work and at home, but recently tried out Vegas, and while I am still getting a handle on it (it "thinks different") one thing I really like about it is the ability to change audio settings while the preview is playing. In Avid, when the timeline plays, and you click on anything, the playback stops. That makes audio mixing a real pain for me. I'm still learning Vegas but so far so good.

I came over to Vegas3 from Studio7 back in 2002, and have bumped up to Vegas4/6/7 over the past couple of years. I have no experience with FCP or Premiere.

I can say, however, that one thing I truly enjoy about Vegas is that the software is rock-solid. With all the terabytes of DV and HDV editing over the years, I've had exactly 1 crash. One.

I wish all other software ran as well as Vegas.

with this u can also create a loop region, continuously loop and tweak EVERYTHING... from clip settings, to filters, to composites... CONTINUOUS playback all teh while making these adjustments in realtime.. video OR audio

to ME.. THIS is realtime editing... rendering is another beast altogether though..

Another beuaty is teh fact that youre nto restricted to clip "conformity" or compliance.. your also not restricted to you project settings as these can always be tweaked as u see fit, WHEN you see fit..
there is no need for conversion or anything to get the most out of the application.

IN regard to teh workflow, you CAN configure the app to behave to your favourite old NLE.. be it KB shortcuts, through to your prefered layout designOh one other thing, vegas is the only NLE that i have come across which allows you to go down to the sub frame level of teh clip WITHIN the timeline..
there is no need to use a trimmer if u do not wish to, as precise editign can be done on the timeline itself..

Vegas does a great job of compositing many multiple layers and keyframing them.

vegas just has an incredible immediacy and responsiveness that FCP lacks completely. i find FCP rather clunky and convolute in comparison.

for example, whenever i used FCP and when i watch others us it, the output window is more often than not blank because the footage requires rendering. i find that unacceptable.

i am not into blind navigation. if i am editing video i want to see it. in vegas this NEVER happens. you can always play video back from the timeline no matter how many layers, filters and effects you have applied. it might drop frames but it will show you the video.

Give it a try
 

There were many great responses on why Vegas, but hey the best way is to try it. That's how I made the switch, I downloaded the demo, gave it a try and never looked back.

I love Vegas! great app. I have been using it sinc v3. and my last project was on v7. I am selling my pc though. I decided to switch to FCP last Oct. and i am having a rough time adapting to FCP. First off I am teaching myself which is tuff. But Apple says FCP edits real time, i dont think so.. Vegas is REAL TIME. I can make adjustments to keyframes, transitions, and audio, as the program is playing the time line. I love that kind of power and ease of use. I am having hell with my audio in FCP.. I hope the new version they are releasing at NAB will be a REAL TIME NLE program. So i decided to dual boot my mac and set up Vegas 7 on there too. I do feel that FCP makes a more pro looking video, i had hard time compressing my videos and having them look clean in Vegas.

On the fly
 

VEgas seems to be the most "on the fly" edit app. I used Liquid (horrible!), avid (better but everything seemed hidden or part of a seperatly purchased plugin), and yes even Windows Movie Maker.

Since I never used any of them previously I seemed to "click" with vegas fastest. Then I found this forum which pretty much taught me almost everything I know.

It was also cheaper than anything else and included DVDArch. for mastering.

That allowed me to buy the $3200 alienware system to power it.

big plus here
 

I never could understand why there was this need to render in order to see what you were working on. That was a big plus for vegas.

Peter J. also mentioned looping playback with on-the-fly adjustments. I use this more than anything else. Set the loop, hit playback, adjust color correction, adjust audio, adjust in / out points, etc etc. That is my single most used feature.

jason

Right. I was doing a little project on FCP this morning and only wanted to apply light compression to a VO. Strangely, playback stops when you want to adjust an audio filter parameter. OK, I know enough about audio that I had minimal hit-and-miss to get to my desired settings, but I was reminded how good Vegas is for this type of thing. Loop, listen, adjust while listening.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no power user of FCP, maybe there's something I'm missing.

I moved over to Vegas from Avid Liquid... I find Vegas one of the most stable editors that I have used... slick interface too. The Avid liquid 7.2 update is coming out... supposed to fix all the bugs and add a few things.... too little, too late for me.... won't be returning to liquid.... Enjoy Vegas way too much.

I thought this was good --

Excerpt from blog:

Vegas is in may ways heading in a similar vein to Adobe but in the somewhat opposite direction - rather than half a dozen apps in one box, Vegas is embracing complete editing, audio production and effective compositing in the one app rather than across different apps. Sound Forge is amazing audio surgery, Acid is an incredibly powerful multi-track recorder and sequencer but the truth is that Vegas doesn't Need either to function is a very holistic manner for end to end production. Vegas is very much part of the new bread and the three A's would do well to watch very closely what Vegas does every step forward form here as it has always been two steps ahead of them.

http://blogs.digitalmediaonlineinc.c...entry/20070411

I started using Vegas at the end of 2006 and I must say I really like it. I do have to develop my skills however. A lot can be done but you really need to take the time to find everything out. I have Douglas' book as well as all Vasst Vegas training DVDs which are really helpful. I am now editing a large project and when I am done I going to continue with the book and the dvd's.

What I really like is the visibility of everything. It is really intuitive. Douglas once mentioned that creative people are more likely to love the Vegas interface and mathematical people like the Avid/FCP look and I think there is truth in that. One thing I do miss are the double monitor screens. But I really need to start loving the Vegas loop region way of achieving the same more easily.

For me, the program really works. I only need to start remembering the shortcuts so I can get my editing speed up significantly!

I have Vegas 7, PPRo 1.5.1 and Edius Pro3. For realtime Edius is the only one that can output realtime to tape from the timeline for almost all effects,transitions etc. I have DVRaptor RT2 card and use this to monitor or output DV. Vegas is the slowest for real output ( to tape or file). So if there are no issues that require fine keyframe control etc then the editor of choice is Edius. If I need to pan, rotate image and keyframe almost anything I do it in Vegas( or PPRo as this has numeric input for some things like rotation and easy traveling matte controls) same for all audio mixing too. But because of the really slow encoding/rendering I usually do just the piece that needs the changes then take it back into Edius.
I think its important not to get too stuck on one program, I even use Womble and Ulead Moviefactory sometimes.
This is all a hobby for me, has been from before I retired and have used Vegas from first release( mainly for audio), Edius from first release and also Premiere from first release, tried Ulead a few times too!!!!. Used Fast Video Machine before that. I tend to use the tool that does the job best rather than make the one tool do everything. I like all the programs I have for what they do best. I have my Shuttle controller set up so that the buttons all do the same thing for all the NLE's make switching between them really easy.
Ron Evans

It just works Great
 

You've probably gotten enough already, but here's my 2 cents.
Why Vegas? I'm a PC guy. I have both the adobe suite and Vegas+dvd. From what I can see, Adobe and FCP are similar. Anyways, I though Premier, was nicer looking (but really the Vegas interface shows you more detail of what you need to see) and yes the snob appeal of Adobe having a more "pro" image/reputation. Vegas works a little differently, but once you get the hang of it it is extremely flexible, capable, stable, and much much quicker and easier to work with - just like all the other respondents have stated. Oh yes, the dvd output image quality seems better as well, plus 5.1 sound support is included. I was reluctant to become a Vegas guy, but now I'm a confirmed diehard believer. I rarely fire up the adobe suite, except as a novelty on really simple projects. Not to sway you, but just try to find someone who has left Vegas for something else. Not too many out there, unless there job/career required them to use some other NLE.

Ron, the raptor with edius will be using the DV encoder/decoder of the card, not software..

one thing to note, is to not confuse the fact that vegas is STRICTLY software only... and unlike liquid, or prem pro, u dont need a HW gfx card (or encoder/decoder card) to get the most out of it... Edius is a brilliant NLE< but it carries its own flavour and to many, edius is not an easy NLE to learn

Shortcuts rule
 

I hate using the mouse all the time so I love an app that has lots of shortcuts. "Alt-V, W, 0" gets me to my rough edit screen layout. "Alt-V, W, 1" puts me in full track and color correction layout. How slick is that.

I have been tempted to buy the special editing keyboard with all the shortcuts as color coded keys, just to make it even easier and to jog my memory about some of the lesser used keys.

Jason Robinson

Why not EDIUS? Despite the praise heaped in FCP 6 and the solid package offered by Adobe -- the only NAB demo that really showed efficient pro editing was EDIUS 3.5. By "pro" I mean support for every format, dual monitors, true 3- and 4-point editing, and typical Japanese realiability and quality. Plus a GUI that is very sophisticated looking -- unlike either Premiere or FCP. (For example, full VTR transport control.)

"edius is not an easy NLE to learn." EDIUS is the easiest to learn because you edit without worrying about menus or memorizing short-cut keys. No need jog your memory with keycaps. It takes a day for any experienced editor to learn EDIUS. That's why NBC just bought 400 units and NHK uses EDIUS. Broadcasters can't have editors taking week long courses.

And, the timeline takes any frame-rate and frame-size -- plus has an HQ codec and the option of HD-SDI/analog component output for monitor. The later is not something a software-only NLE can do. Yet it is critical.

Unlke Vegas, it is missing 5.1, but you do get the best MPEG encoding tool around.

My 0.02:

Vegas for me is the straightest line between two points. It has the robustness to do most of the fancy things the quality editors like FCP, Avid, Premiere etc will do, but when you just want to take some clips, rough up a small 10 minute project, throw in some transitions, add some pans, drop a couple pieces of text somewhere, and get something out the door, I find Vegas to be a Porsche while the other editors feel like Chevys.

When I think of Vegas, I think clean workspace, no clutter, simple menus and tabs, everything intuitive. When I think the others, and especially Premiere, I think 10 steps and 5 menus in order to do that Vegas can accomplish in 2 steps and 1 menu. Vegas runs simple tabs at the bottom for all your main guts. You can quickly surf your PC for a file to import, hit your transitions, hit your clips, hit for effects. I really think a lot of editors try to make grey poupon out of mustard. Video production is still pretty straightforward. You have clips, you have transitions, you have effects, you have audio. Thats pretty much it.

Vegas lets you do 98% of the normal usage with all four of these tasks in a nanosecond. If you want that last 2% of brilliance, you have to work Vegas a little harder. But thats better than using another editor and having to armwrestle submenus, clips, bins, goofy settings, navbars, and all the rest to do what should be assumed to be an integral part of your everyday weapons chest thats parked right by your side.

I bought a book on Premiere thats 500 pages thick and went through 3 30-day evaluation copies and felt more lost and confused at the end than the beginning. I kept asking myself "That makes NO sense, why didnt they just do it THIS way...".

I bought Vegas almost sight unseen based on nothing but a solid recommendation. Within 20 minutes I was figuring it all out. Places I looked for things would magically appear because thats where a logical user would expect them to be.

Id prefer a few more effects, filters, and some other things, but I can cut a 10 minute video in Vegas and post it to the web faster than I can edit 10 photos in Photoshop, resize them, and post them online. I know it b/c Ive timed it! :)

Do you mean EDIUS 4.5?

What program do you utilize / recommend for 5.1 mixing?

Are you saying the Vegas compressing / encoding tools are not as good as what FCP (or any other NLE vendor) offers?

Actually, it's been debated by pros and consumers alike regarding Vegas' encoder vs others. Vegas uses the same Main Concept encoder that a few other apps use, but they don't use the same processing nor preprocessing. For this reason alone, several pros use Vegas. Edius/Procoder (if it was still around) can't touch the Sony output from the Main Concept encoder. The new Rhozet Carbon Coder looks great, but haven't compared it to Vegas side by side yet. They are the people that bought the Procoder technology from Canopus before Grass Valley came along and bought Edius.
Not too long ago Brian Mercer, well known compression expert, tested several encoders. He found the Vegas encoder to be the best in class. He posted the results in a professional encoders forum, and the community also found the same/agreed with him.
Compressor is such a good compression tool that darn few use it in comparison to Squeeze, particularly for MPEG 2 encodes.<sarcasm>

If you want great/better than Vegas encodes, nondiscernible from the original, try Cinemacraft. Or a hardware encoder. Cinemacraft was better than Vegas in the torture test that Brian did, but it's also 5 times the price just for the encoder. Not too many people are into spending 2K just for an encoder. But it's worth it, if you do very high end work.
Vegas' encoder is used every day all over the world for export to XDCAM HD/broadcast.

Hey DSE, in many cases, we agree on almsot everything, however with procoder2 vs main concept, (strictly MPG2 using the same bitrates as comparison here) i feel that procoder colour saturation is much more accurate, however the image is notably softer.
I also use cinemacraft encoder for my high end jobs and to get CE to match procoder one must do at least a 2 pass encode to surpass procoder, a 4 pass encode blows teh water with anything on the market IMO.. but as mentioned, price is a main differential.
With MC encoder, i find it is a brilliant and FAST tool. Much faster than either of the others and i easiy get 65fps encoding with MC whle the others are slightly longer than realtime.

The standalone MC encoder IMO is also a brilliant tool to have on hand as its even faster than the engine wthin Vegas. Even though its the same codec, it jsut runs better.. the issue i have with the MC standaloen encoder is that there is no multiple pass encoding, HOWEVER it makes up for this with teh search methods and means within the encoder.. whereby the multipass is made obsolete.

For me, MC is king due to cost vs time= results (with a slight sacrifice on colour)
For more colour but a softer look and less detail, id say procoder or procoder express
for pro end, id say CE with no less than a 4 pass encode

For NLE's, if u want to huff and puff around menus end with almost every decision made is through a menu, id say go edius, for menu free timeline editing with 5.1 audio options, in addition to a myriad of codec support, id say go vegas (put it this way, if u know how to resize an MSExcel cell, then youll learn vegas in no time. For 10 bit gpu assisted filters and plugin architecture, i say go PremPro2. I wont waste time in Liquid as its an acquired taste. Its VERY powerful, but that power comes at a huge sacrifice in regad to databasing, 3rd party export/imprt and drivers and file associations hijacking every other app on your system.

I actually went BACK to Procoder 1.5 vs 2, I don't care for the softness 2.0 brought to the table.
Brian's tests are what I based my posted comment.
For serious client work, we use quadpass in CC. In two pass mode it's about the same as Vegas single pass, IMO. Never done a hard-core test like Brian did though, his involved smoke, flame, and very sharp grids of varying gradiations of color, all laid together to torture the codec in a non-real world method. The tests are still on the web if you look around for BJ_M's many discussions/tests.
Procoder 1.5 has some great tools that I still like, just hate the dongle.
For 90% of our work, MC in Vegas does a great job, and as you say....very fast by comparison.
I think we're still in agreement on most everything, eh? :-)

I have been using Vegas for three years and it just works everytime.
Once you get around the work flow which is very easy (just practice) you can have a short movie up and running in a very short time with titles, color correction, fades etc....... and dont forget that this is also a great music editing tool.
I have tried Avid and to be honest it did my head in. With vegas if i have an idea i can implement it with just a click or two.
I was toying with the idea of going Mac FCP, BUT...... Vegas wins.
I hope that Sony brings out Vegas 8 with all the bells and whistles and makes this the indusrty standard NLE ?

Cheers
Simon

Still I think that Vegas has a long way to go to become a industry standard NLE. If you look at Adobe Premiere, you see a lot of big projects that are done with it lately... including complete feature films. Avid is of course the industry standard and many feature films have been done on Final Cut as well. I really hope Sony will establish Sony Vegas as an industry leading platform.

I think you can work faster with Vegas then with any other NLE.

I was using Vegas when it was only Audio and it was very good. Having transfered into scoring then to video production, I have to say Vegas is very good. Been through the giant G5's with Avid's protools and then some FCP, and could not get past the crashing. I have edited 461 projects in Vegas with as many as 24 Audio tracks and cant remember a single crash using robust (3k) PC. I currently direct a tv show called Pinned on Cox Cable networks in California and Nevada, and 100% of the show including post is done on Vegas. I do have some issues with Sony though. Vegas type...ugh! Would love to see SFX package included similar to AE but less headache and learning curve...

Good Luck!

Fred Helm, Director
PINNED
pinnedtv.com
bbrraceday.com

Canvas Media Chooses Sony Vegas Editing Solution To Cover Oscars
 

What "industry" and what "standard" Floris?

http://www.4rfv.co.uk/industrynews.asp?id=59885

When I read stuff like this, Floris, it gives me a "warm" glow in my "industry standards" - and many other places too!!

Regards

Grazie

With all the respect, but what's so special about that link? They cover an event for websites... nothing too fancy about it. I really like Vegas... but if you are working with other people in the industry... and with industry I mean broadcast / hollywood and even the indie filmmaking scene... you will find out that most of them are on Avid or Final Cut. And Vegas is totally different from those applications. The interface, the workflow...everything. So at the end it comes down that you have to adapt to Avid or Final Cut. And Adobe is hard at work to challenge those two to become industry leader. If you follow the news, you see that many big productions are now being done by Adobe. I don't care about what other people do... but I do care about my flexibility and the opportunities that are out there for me. And if you are a certified Avid or Final Cut editor there are much more possibilities in this industry then if you are for Vegas.

It will change at the end. But for now, Sony Vegas is not up to the task of creating a Hollywood feature film. Therefore I use it for quick projects as it is really fast and easy to use... and also very light on my resources.

So no offense... just my thoughts.

What makes Vegas different than Avid or Final Cut.
All theses NLE programs capture,edit,CC,FX,Output to formats of a kind.

What maks FCP better,Avid,Adobe.........