Would vegas + DVD be considered prosumer? Let me know what ya think.

Thanks

Seth Peterson

My experience is with Vegas. I have DVDA too, but have not started using it for real yet. However, based on my own experience and reports from others, Vegas is professional, DVDA is consumer, so the package I guess is prosumer (or should that be con-fessional?)...

Consumer, prosumer,professional???
What determines what a software package is.
For several years I used a low level NLE (after getting out of lineal editing) and still was able to produce very good work, maintain a high standard and make a very nice living. When the machine died, I got a much more powerful NLE after trying most of the ones out there and decided on a particular one that fit my needs and had a learning curve that wouldn't set me back to far time wise.

I can't speak for DVDA as I don't use it but I can speak for Vegas and I will say that it is every bit as "professional" as any other NLE out there.

IF you are looking to become a 'Hollywood' editor and market yourself as such then perhaps the NLE that starts with "A" would be a better choice, but other than that I think Vegas works just fine and frankly none of my clients, be they brides and grooms or Fortune 500's really care what NLE I use to edit the work on. All they want is the product to look like either the sample or the story boards (when they use them)
Don B

Depends on your classification of Prosumer- and/or Consumer and Professional for that matter. Consumer is what it's definitly not. Consumer editing programs have limited capabilities while keeping the workflow very simple and easy to use for beginners. Granted Vegas has a nice smooth workflow but it's not for beginners. Also it's a very very powerfull NLE. Way moreso than Premiere and other NLEs in it's price range.
As far as it being professional I'm not sure- I'm not clear on what defines an NLE as professinal other than being named Avid or FCP. I'll stack Vegas against FCP anyday!

So the answer to your question- yes it's prosumer....at the very least.

What do you consider FCP? What do you consider Premier? What do you consider Avid Express? If you consider them prosumer, then, yes, Vegas would also be prosumer.

Personally, I consider Vegas to be a professional level product. DVD Architect, on the other hand, still needs some work. I would currently rate it at the low end of the prosumer level.

What are the short-commings of DvdA? I currently use DVDit but am planning on making my workflow Vegas only and start using DvdA. The only thing I heard it lacks are complex end of play settings. Is this true, are or there more features I'll be missing once I move from DVDit to Architect. I sure hope not because DVDit seems pretty archaic.

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel : Personally, I consider Vegas to be a professional level product. DVD Architect, on the other hand, still needs some work. I would currently rate it at the low end of the prosumer level. -->>>

Edward:

I already have DVDit LE(and don't use it much, as of yet) as well as Vegas 3... and I'm getting ready to upgrade to Vegas 4. Would you recommend the DVDA upgrade... or, since I can already do DVD's, would you recommend just picking up the Vegas upgrade?

It's another $200 for DVDA, and I'm having a hard time justifying it.

I'm sure it does have some benefits beings it's close knit with the vegas program itself. You can export markers as chapter points etc. Also DvdA can do animated menus and buttons...though some just think it's useless fluff.


Also from what I heard working in the Vegas+DVD workflow will alow you to create true progressive-scan DVDs with your 24p footage, which is nice beings I shoot with a DVX100.

<<<-- Originally posted by Doug Quance : I already have DVDit LE(and don't use it much, as of yet) as well as Vegas 3... and I'm getting ready to upgrade to Vegas 4. Would you recommend the DVDA upgrade... or, since I can already do DVD's, would you recommend just picking up the Vegas upgrade?

It's another $200 for DVDA, and I'm having a hard time justifying it. -->>>


YES, I recommend it - for several reasons (note: I used to use DVDit PE):
1) the DVDA purchase includes the 5.1 AC-3 encoder - sold separately for MORE than $200 (you WANT AC-3 so your audio will be compressed and you can fit more video on a DVD). To get AC-3 encoding with DVDit, you need PE and then it is only stereo.)

2) Moton Backgrounds

3) Motion Buttons

4) Much more stable

The main advantage of DVDit is end actions.

Here are some of the weakness' with DVDA
1. No support for creating subtitles.
2. No secondary audio track (directors comments....)
In the USA it's becomming increasingly common to add spanish subtitles to english speaking movies.
On the other hand, because of Vegas' excellent audio, you could easily dub a non english soundtrack and make a seperate version.

If you need DTS, you will spend A LOT of money to move up to an application that supports it.

Whether it's prosumer, consumer or pro depends on you what you want to go into your DVD. The 5.1 AC3 support is worth the price of the upgrade alone.

I would also like to see DTS support as an option in the near future, even if it costs to get it.

Thanks, Edward!

I'll go ahead and get the DVDA with the upgrade to Vegas 4.

BTW, I just ordered Excalibur (as well as Vegas Video Editing training DVD's) and from what I can see... you've got a winner in Excalibur! Lots of useful features that any Vegas editor could make good use of.

For those of you that haven't seen Excalibur in action - take a quick look. I am certain you will be impressed!

http://www.vegastoolsandtraining.com/

Thanks again, Edward!

<<<-- Originally posted by Joe Carney : Here are some of the weakness' with DVDA
1. No support for creating subtitles.
2. No secondary audio track (directors comments....) -->>>

While true, these are also features that very few $200 authoring programs include.

I just watched that demo video for Excalibur. I'd never heard of this before and all I have to say is... oh my god! What timesavers!

Wait till you see the neat tools in the next one I'm working on! :-)

oooh, is there an upgrade path, or is it a whole different set of tools?

A whole different set. For a screen-shot of the current version, look at: www.jetdv.com/scripts/VegasAssistant_03.JPG.

I'm still adding new pieces and looking at requests that come my way.

I was told by an Indy filmmaker once that you'd get laughed at if you used Vegas to cut a feature film. I have no idea why. Something about "clip management" being bad. I don't really have anything to compare it to but Premier, and I'd say Vegas definitely beats that one.

FCP is top-professional. As is Avid. You basically don't get more professional than that safe cutting 35mm film. I think Vegas is probably middle tier, with Premier being bottom tier just above NLE's packaged with camcorders and capture cards.

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel :
While true, these are also features that very few $200 authoring programs include. -->>>

The reason I haven't committed to DVDA just yet is that it doesn't have professional features. While a lot of the advanced DVD features such as subtitles would be nice, I'm talking about some basic ones like being able to write output to tape and being able to build a DVD9.

It's not clear to me that $200 for DVDA beats $99 for Pinnacle Studio 8, which has pretty amazing DVD authoring capabilities directly integrated into the editor. One could use Vegas for the heavy lifting and then take the MPEGs to Studio for authoring. (Not for DVD9s, of course.)

This is the one area where I think Sonic came up a bit short. I wish I knew what DVDA 1.5 or 2.0 was going to offer because it would make me much more likely to buy the current version now.

Will

I will need to use subtitle on my next project. Which dvd authoring soft u guys using for that matter?

I been happy with sofo dvd authoring soft so far.

Thanks!