CS4: it's about time

[Roger Shealy]

I have Vegas Pro 8, like it, and am getting fairly proficient at it. I just purchased CS4 as part of an Adobe Suite. Is CS4 superior to Vegas 8, or is this a preference issue. If it's technically better or more efficient, I'm willing to learn it. If its a "flavor" thing, I'll probably stick with Vegas.

Anybody out there used both extensively and have an opinion on their relative merits?

[Nathan Quattrini]

My big Q is did they make Audition for the Mac yet? Biggest disappointment was finally buying a Mac for editing and not getting Audition at all. SB was trash in CS3

[Brian Brown]

Originally Posted by Roger Shealy

I have Vegas Pro 8, like it, and am getting fairly proficient at it. I just purchased CS4 as part of an Adobe Suite. Is CS4 superior to Vegas 8, or is this a preference issue. If it's technically better or more efficient, I'm willing to learn it. If its a "flavor" thing, I'll probably stick with Vegas.

Anybody out there used both extensively and have an opinion on their relative merits?

I'm a "Premiere Pro guy" since version 1.0, but I did try the Vegas trial a bit over a year ago. I found it to be extremely fast at cutting video, was format-agnostic (and PPro at the time was not), and even had some decent built-in masking tools (PPro does not). What I found lacking was the motion and transformation tools were limiting or just too time consuming. I do a lot of panning and zooming of HD video and stils into SD and Web resolutions, and Vegas was just very hard to keyframe motion for me. Otherwise, it looked like a very robust program. Its audio tools are second-to-none.

But Adobe gives me a Suite approach, and is the apps are even more integrated now with CS4. AE does killer titles and motion graphics, not to mention effects like nothing else. Encore is a great authoring tool, and Photoshop is... well, Photoshop. OnLocation does tapeless and provides great location tools and scopes. And I'm just very, very comfortable with it now.

If you're considering Vegas, go ahead and try the trial. Maybe you'll find it suits you and your workflow. There's a lot of editors out there that LOVE it.

Good luck,
Brian Brown

[Roger Shealy]

Brian,

Thanks for the info. I already have Vegas 8 and have been using it and earlier versions for about 4 years. I'm getting CS4 (whole Adobe Suite) and hate to fool around learning a new editor if it's not significantly better. I've found Vegas keyframing quite easy and I use it extensively. You do need to use blur functions to avoid a jittery effect. Perhaps others build that in automatically???

If CS4 isn't significantly better, I'd rather spend my time learning PhotoShop and the other portions of Adobe. Vegas titling is very hard, I think needlessly so.

[Brian Parker]

Originally Posted by Brian Brown

Brian, a quick way to do what you want to do is make a master sequence and nest your "working" timeline in it. You'll then have one single timeline of audio you can effect and add other master tracks to. I'll almost always do this at the "scoring" stage of production. I have one track of multiple interviews (what I usually shoot) and run some compression on it to even out the levels and compress the dynamic range a bit with just a single track to worry about. And then I can run a SoundBooth score or royalty-free track under the piece, adjusting the gain as needed.

HTH,
Brian Brown

That sounds like an efficient way to edit a whole track in one pass, and it would work for me if all the audio were from the same source, but at the moment I'd rather have a quick way to take all the audio from the video clips and work on them in Sounbooth.

[Brian Brown]

Originally Posted by Roger Shealy

Brian,
If CS4 isn't significantly better, I'd rather spend my time learning PhotoShop and the other portions of Adobe. Vegas titling is very hard, I think needlessly so.

Roger, not sure why I missed the whole "I have Vegas" thing in your post... sorry. Too many late nights. Yes, learning a new NLE will be painful indeed, esp. if you're already proficient with Vegas. It's a very fast editor, for sure, and PPro will frustrate you in certain areas.

I think where PPro would shine over the other NLEs, including FCP, is the integration with the rest of the Adobe apps if an editor spends a lot of time with those. Renderless comps to and from After Effects is a huge boon for me. I don't even bother with titling in PPro, although I think its titling is quite good. But I have a whole slew of lower-thirds projects made up as AE comps that I can drop right into PPro via Dynamic Link. One could even use an Excel file to automate text title insertion to AE via scripting... but I really don't do a ton of titles. Bringing in layered Photoshop files is another huge plus, along with the new blending mode support for PPro CS4.

And there's certain video effects that AE does that nothing else will. The Wiggle function, Displacement Map, Keylight (for keying), Motion Tile, and Fractal Noise (for on-the-fly motion backgrounds) and a few others come readily to mind. Being able to do these two-way, rederlessly (is that a word?) between PPR and AE is huge.

Do you know if Vegas supports a render queue or is it "render one timeline and wait" the way PPro was with CS3 and earlier? The render queue really changed my life. There's no way I would want to live without it now.

But edit with Vegas as you get the CS4 Suite... and then maybe stick a proverbial toe in the water with PPro when you have a little time to try it out. Since you'll be getting it for free (so to speak), there's no rush. It will all be different and weird, but maybe you'll see some improvements to your workflow on certain projects that make the pain worthwhile. Or maybe you'll won't and then: what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Har.

Cheers,
Brian

p.s. your registration with Adobe entitles you to free training on lynda.com for 30 days. There's some awesome tutorials on there for getting up to speed with any of the Adobe apps, including PPro.

[James Hooey]

Originally Posted by Roger Shealy

I have Vegas Pro 8, like it, and am getting fairly proficient at it. I just purchased CS4 as part of an Adobe Suite. Is CS4 superior to Vegas 8, or is this a preference issue. If it's technically better or more efficient, I'm willing to learn it. If its a "flavor" thing, I'll probably stick with Vegas.

Anybody out there used both extensively and have an opinion on their relative merits?

Roger, moving from Vegas to Premiere CS4 is not that hard or worrysome....I've used exlusively Vegas Video all the way from 4.0 days to present, and bought my first Adobe product 'CS4 Production Suite' less than a month ago.

I still will edit in Vegas for it's great speed and good audio mixing abilities. Another plus is the Cineform intermediate codec that comes with Vegas. For content that is not exceedingly heavy on effects I think it is a superior editor. It doesn't take long to learn to do the same things in Premiere, but it is a slower process to cut and paste and rip and shred and all the quick ways that Vegas just lets you basically paint video (you know what I mean :)

Having said that, you will like the Adobe suite for some great benefits....After Effects is incredible. Third party support, tutorials and the user community is broader which is good because the Adobe software is deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. I am only working with HDV so there are no technical glitches for me between software, however CS4 is reportedly current king of the filetype and format compatibility, which depending on your current or future needs will go a long way. Biggest concern with Premiere may be the audio side of things but right now I don't know it's capabilities and have only done some small tests in Soundbooth.

There both good professional editors so if your getting them both then get to it!! Learn it all!

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Roger Shealy

If CS4 isn't significantly better, I'd rather spend my time learning PhotoShop and the other portions of Adobe. Vegas titling is very hard, I think needlessly so.

It's not a matter of one being "better" then the other, the largest advantage of a complete CS4 setup is integration, there is no other software NLE supplier that gives the same amount of integration adobe has. The combo AE, premiere, photoshop, encore and audition for instance all have been designed to do one specific task and to do it well, only because they can work together as one it lifts this program well above what any other competitor has to offer.

[Jay Yellamaty]

Hi Brian;

Great review on CS4. Can you tell us which platform and OS you have ? I'm planning on upgrading from an older version to CS4 and would like to go with Vista 64 and would like to know if XP or Vista 32 are a better choice. Thanks.

[Floris van Eck]

But Premiere Pro is still the weakest link in the complete package. On my Mac, I cannot see the video I am capturing. HDV scene detection does not work properly and 3-point editing also does not work as efficiently as in FCP or Avid.

AE, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Encore are all the best of their class. But Premiere Pro is still not as good as Final Cut Pro or Avid. Not even close.

I hope we will see a big major update next time, because I really do see the advantage of the Adobe Creative Suite and Dynamic Link. Can speed up your workflow tremendously.

I do like the new update where you can import FCP products for further editing in Premiere Pro. Hope it works flawlessly. That way I an edit in FCP and go to Premiere Pro to add graphical layers.

[Brian Brown]

Originally Posted by Jay Yellamaty

Hi Brian;

Great review on CS4. Can you tell us which platform and OS you have ? I'm planning on upgrading from an older version to CS4 and would like to go with Vista 64 and would like to know if XP or Vista 32 are a better choice. Thanks.

Hi Jay:

I've been using Vista 64-bit for over a year now... first with the CS3 suite and now CS4. It allows me to access the full 8GB of RAM in my system, making multi-tasking between the Adobe apps very robust.

With the new CS4 suite, only Photoshop is a 64-bit application, so there's no inherent speed advantage for rendering or previews of the video apps with a 64-bit OS compared to its 32-bit counterparts. But the RAM thing is a HUGE thing for me... regularly leveraging AE, PPro, and Photoshop at full tilt in any given editing session. Also, AE gets its own 4GB chunk for RAM previews, and that's a big advantage compared to just 2GB under 32-bit Windows. Software like Nucleo Pro would give me even more RAM to RAM preview (full system RAM)... along with background rendering, etc.

If you're going to build a 64-bit sytem, component selection is critical to insure a workable, stable environment. Most high-end hardware and peripherals now have Vista-64-bit drivers... but it's best to check before putting together a system and certainly before upgrading an existing system.

HTH,
Brian

[Floris van Eck]

I am currently trying some things out but it seems nothing has changed since CS2.

Quicktime files captured in Final Cut Pro don't play very well in Premiere. They stutter so it looks like they are out of sync because audio is playing normally but video is lagging behind. This happens every 5 or so seconds before it catches up again.

I also captured a tape with Premiere Pro, and the MPEG file resulting from it crashes Final Cut Pro. So great interoperability here.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Floris van Eck

I am currently trying some things out but it seems nothing has changed since CS2.

Quicktime files captured in Final Cut Pro don't play very well in Premiere. They stutter so it looks like they are out of sync because audio is playing normally but video is lagging behind. This happens every 5 or so seconds before it catches up again.

I also captured a tape with Premiere Pro, and the MPEG file resulting from it crashes Final Cut Pro. So great interoperability here.

Are you not talking about rendered files here? I still have cs3 but captured files from a HDV cam doesn't give any problems opening in other pc nle's and quicktime files are handled without a problem. It sounds strange to me that captured files cause a problem, premiere doesn't change anything during that process as far as I know. Maybe it's just a mac related problem?

[Todd Clark]

Originally Posted by Todd Clark

"Premiere Pro is still not as good as Final Cut Pro or Avid. Not even close."

I totally disagree!! I would chose Premiere over Final Cut anyday!!

[Floris van Eck]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Are you not talking about rendered files here? I still have cs3 but captured files from a HDV cam doesn't give any problems opening in other pc nle's and quicktime files are handled without a problem. It sounds strange to me that captured files cause a problem, premiere doesn't change anything during that process as far as I know. Maybe it's just a mac related problem?

Premiere Pro does not capture Quicktimes but MPEG files in HDV mode. If I select capture Quicktime, I get a capture error and I cannot activate the recorder. That MPEG file crashes both Quicktime Player and Final Cut Pro on my system. Not that I want to capture with Premiere, because I cannot see what I am capturing. How can that be that I can see what I am capturing in OnLocation but not in Premiere? I expect better from Adobe.

The other way around, the Quicktime files I captured in Final Cut Pro. Just, straight capture in Quicktime HDV format, no ProRes 422 or some other specific format, playback very sluggish in Premiere Pro. The audio plays back fine but the image itself is stuttering and lags behind the audio every 5 or so seconds, catches up and the process repeats itself. This makes it completely impossible to edit normally.

The Premiere Pro captured MPEG file plays back fine in Capture. The Final Cut captured Quicktime HDV files play back without any problems in Final Cut Pro.

So long way to go Adobe, long way to go.

I stick with Final Cut Pro and will use Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Flash and maybe Encore (haven't tested it yet) but Premiere Pro is a no-go this generation.