recently i was hired to shoot a documentary using Panny 102B PAL for a production company which will eventually be telecasted on a National-TV network . After the shoot, i had to dump the tapes into a harddrive and submit that to the company which is then edited by them under my supervision. They gave me an editor who works on avid while i edit my stuff on vegas-6( this is my first production for a TV network, all my work is limited to corporate videos and weddings). when i suggested him to have a look at sonyvegas, first, he never knew sonyvegas existed. second, he instantly turned it down saying " NLE's like PPro & vegas etc are good for semi pro editing stuff like weddings and corporate dvd's, but are not professional. u cant use them for editing stuff that has to be broadcasted. They all look good at the editing desk, but once broadcasted u will know the real difference. thats the reason why avid is used the world over". i used vegas capture to dump the tapes (.avi), now he wants them to be re captured using avid (.omf)...when i tried to convince him that any NLE can be used because the video is all 1's and 0's on the tape and harddisk he was not convinced. Now iam confused. was he true?

thanks
krishna.

There are differences in the way some NLE's render video that can lead to quality issues, but to say Vegas and Premiere are no good for broadcast is rubbish.

I'm sure that someone smarter than myself can speak to the technical side of your situation,

But let me suggest that the 're-caping' the tapes might be something you need to discuss with your client. I doubt it's something you planned on, and obviously means extra work.

I believe that OMF is an Avid-specific format that's actually a quicktime file which is why he'd have to recapture everything to do any editing on his system.
There is a PC version of this codec at http://www.avid.com/onlineSupport/supportcontent.asp?productID=0&contentID=9993 but I've never tried rendering out with it and having an Avid user try it so there's no guarantees that it would work for you.
As far as Vegas not being acceptable for broadcast, I can personally say that's a load of B.S. as I've done it numerous times.

Yeah, total BS. You were right in the "1's and 0's" comment. Television has a specific standard, and Vegas follows those standards. Saying Vegas isn't good for broadcast is like saying Photoshop is an amateur program for photos.

There's an ABC affiliate in Dallas using Sony Vegas for broadcast... full story here:

http://vegas.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=28885

Was going to mention that fact Chris, but you beat me to it!

-gb-

Sorry for stealin' your thunder, Greg!

No problem! I remember my first meeting in person with you and DSE for dinner when he was here doing that training in 2004. Paul's Porterhouse...ummmm steak.

-gb-

Krishna,
your manager/editor/whomever says Vegas can't be used for broadcast is ignorant and apparently doesn't want to learn.
AVID, FCP, or whatever his favorite is, cannot take footage from say...A DSR 250 or XDCAMHD camera and make a higher quality output image than Vegas (or Premiere Pro, or anything else that uses digital ingest).
ABC Nightline, MTV, ESPN, FOX, Playboy Television, FOX Sports, CNN, BELO Group, and several other monstrously large broadcasting organizations use Vegas in some capacity or another in their editing bays. I know, because I've trained them.

I suspect, he just doesn't want to do the conversion to OMF files, and wants you to hand them to him in that format. His excuse is silly.

That being said, you can either recapture, or put it on him to do the conversion.
(Yes, I edit on Avid)

"...vegas not good for broadcast..."

While I agree with all the posts above, and have been using Vegas exclusively for many years on my in-house projects, I'd suggest that what your editor wants to do is not such a bad idea, and even makes a lot of sense. Vegas is fine for broadcast, but...

You hire an editor - give him or her what they need to do a good job the best way they know how, or find a different editor. Workflow is everything.

In the US (in India?), if you want to fit your work into the larger world of editing facilities, broadcasters, and freelancers, you'll find that most are using Avid and Final Cut Pro. These products are not "better", they're not "better for broadcast", but they have market share and they represent working standards for projects that move between facilities.

Think like a producer, think about why you are at an outside facility for this project, think about the life of the project, and make a choice that is mostly right. Any choice you make will compromise something, so make it the best compromise you can.

There can be extremely subtle differences in how the systems handle footage... for example, the NLEs differ a little bit in how they handle chroma filtering and interpolation. Encoding and decoding is done by the VTRs and the codecs used by each system. It doesn't make that much of a difference though, except when keying. If you are keying, then you want chroma interpolation (or better) applied... although it that case, quality is highly dependent on your keyer (which you can do outside your NLE).

You can see different codecs at
http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
i.e. the Avid UC 4:2:2 codec produces different results than Apple's.

The NLEs also differ in their buginess (FCP is sometimes bad in this department when it comes to filters, 10-bit, and superblacks) and in how their scopes work.

All in all though, the quality differences are fairly insignificant.... talent/content and workflow are things I would worry about more.

Vegas is fine for the quality it delivers. Problem is that AVid id the standard. If compatibility and workflow some editor is used to are important, then you need to choose Avid.

It's a bit like Mac and PC. The one isn't better as the other, just different. But almost everybody uses PC. E.g. if I need to switch to Mac, I would have trouble adapting to the different workflow (trust me - I've tried a few seconds), and my work and results wouldn't benefit from that obviously....

I would say Vegas 7 is an even better choice for broadcast then 5 or 6. Realtime Mpeg2 editing without using an itermediate is great for time sensitve content. (At least it appears that way). I think they actually took they wind out of P2 with this release. IMHO

Also check out Vegas' media management features, which is one of the arguments you get from Avid people to continue using it.

thank you all guys.
in fact all day i was talking to my editor trying to understand why he said that thing and finally concluded these
1. he started his career with avid because some one told him that avid is the standard and he has been working only on avid for the last few years. so he is more comfortable with it.
2. his job never allowed him to look beyond avid
3. as long as his work pays him, he is not interested to learn things outside avid.
not that iam finding fault in him but for a day he scared the hell out of me.

krishna.

I work for a research lab. At one point we had an opening for an engineer with firmware skills, so we started interviewing people.

One guy had worked on the firmware for the traffic lights in New York. They used cheap, now obsolete, hardware and tools. And that was all the guy knew about. They didn't pay him to learn anything else, so he didn't. In every area outside of his obsolete tools, the guy knew nothing.

To this day I consider him the worst candidate I ever interviewed, simply because of his aversion to learning.

I hope your editor friend doesn't find his Avid tools obsolete some day.

Sometimes you have to work with Luddites like that. As long as you do not have to share projects, I would secretly edit with Vegas and tell him I used Avid. He would never know from the result! (This is not legal advice ;)

A good editor masters as many tools as possible.

Most of the professional Avid editors I know, can also cut on Final Cut, Premiere, Media 100 and have even tried Vegas.

But they spend most of their time on AVID because that's what sitting in the industry suites. (Speaking of Film and Television here, not necessarily advertising and boutique productions houses.)

Having taught a few software classes myself I can see where this guy is coming from. Lots of people are apprehensive about change. Some even get a little hostile about it. I think as long as you keep an open mind about everything that's out there you're in a better position professionally.

I started with Avid and worked with a friend who had Vegas. Turns out Vegas fits me really well. I don't know why. There's no real reason for it. It just seemed when I edited with Avid I was fighting to find stuff and got frustrated quickly. I used Vegas for a two days and suddenly it was like paddling down stream. Things were where I expected them to be. Work flow was quicker and better.

An open mind is good thing.

The interesting thing to note, is that Sony HAS a broadcast editor/editing system. It's called Xpri. And it looks/functions VERY MUCH like Avid. They sell it as having 'the interface standard that you know and are comfortable with'.

Xpri as people knew it got discontinued... you can no longer get Xpri hardware. Xpri however is coming back as a software NLE as part of Sonaps or something like that. Sonaps is something like a ~$1 million solution for large news organizations.

There can be extremely subtle differences in how the systems handle footage... for example, the NLEs differ a little bit in how they handle chroma filtering and interpolation. Encoding and decoding is done by the VTRs and the codecs used by each system. It doesn't make that much of a difference though, except when keying. If you are keying, then you want chroma interpolation (or better) applied... although it that case, quality is highly dependent on your keyer (which you can do outside your NLE).

You can see different codecs at
http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
i.e. the Avid UC 4:2:2 codec produces different results than Apple's.

The NLEs also differ in their buginess (FCP is sometimes bad in this department when it comes to filters, 10-bit, and superblacks) and in how their scopes work.

All in all though, the quality differences are fairly insignificant.... talent/content and workflow are things I would worry about more.

Of course, a guy who admits at the outset he's never heard of Vegas isn't exactly in a position to declare those subtle differences make Vegas unfit.

Of course, a guy who admits at the outset he's never heard of Vegas isn't exactly in a position to declare those subtle differences make Vegas unfit.


My thoughts exactly, at this point any amature with one year of videoing should know most of the larger standard software.

Having taught a few software classes myself I can see where this guy is coming from. Lots of people are apprehensive about change. Some even get a little hostile about it. I think as long as you keep an open mind about everything that's out there you're in a better position professionally.

I started with Avid and worked with a friend who had Vegas. Turns out Vegas fits me really well. I don't know why. There's no real reason for it. It just seemed when I edited with Avid I was fighting to find stuff and got frustrated quickly. I used Vegas for a two days and suddenly it was like paddling down stream. Things were where I expected them to be. Work flow was quicker and better.

An open mind is good thing.

But on the other hand, if he has access to an Avid editing suite that meets his needs, why would he care about Vegas?

But on the other hand, if he has access to an Avid editing suite that meets his needs, why would he care about Vegas?


Because even though I have the phone number for Pizza Hut, doesn't mean I would't atleast want to know about Dominoes. Who knows, I may like it better.

Ofcourse, I've heard, not experienced, that some educational institutions are program specific, i.e. you learn on one system. That may have been that techs learning that kept him from enjoying the euphoria that Vegas brings.

To some extent, editting Video is a very personal thing that you get to like the software you are used to to get the job done.

I decided to use Vegas, and have persisted (as an amateur) to learn it well. But my brother-in-law produces videos for corporates, etc, and he swears that Avid is the best. I realise he says this because he started on Avid, knows its ideosyncracies, etc.

I work in IT, and some programmers have an almost religious attachment to their text editors! Yet there if you look at the text editors, there is really not much between them; all have the same features, etc, maybe different keystrokes but basically the same.

These discussions are so silly. You never read a book and wonder what word processor was used; why should it be different for editing?

These discussions are so silly. You never read a book and wonder what word processor was used; why should it be different for editing?

Emre, that should be framed and put up in edit suites world-wide :-)

The discussion was sparked by the original poster. That's why it was begun. The editor that the poster had to deal with, was certainly wrong that Vegas' output quality is not broadcast.

(Assuming the poster did not misquote the person)

It was apparent that the broadcast editor wanted to work with OMFI files.

That is something the poster will have to deal with.

Anyone who wants to deal with broadcast stations or film finishing suites, will wind up dealing with AVID ninety per cent of the time.

This is a reality. Doesn't matter what anyone thinks about AVID or Vegas or FCP or... you name it. The majority of television shows and films here in American are cut on Avid. Not sure about India... but it sounds like that might be true as well. Understanding that fact, when one has to go and work in a high end suite, is just something one has to do. Like going to another country. It's nice if they speak your language, but better if you speak the language of the suite you are 'visiting'.

Well from a producer's prospective I can see the editor's point.

1. Avid is the standard, and if you ever have to re-cut the show for length, or move it to another market, or adjust the master in any way, having an Avid project file is the best way to move it from facility to facility (everyone has Avid). Wheras finding Vegas in a facility might be more difficult.

2. I take it you're paying this guy to edit your show. Do you really want to put him on something that he's never used before when you're paying him by the hour? Get him something he's comfortable with, to save you all time and money. If not, he should at least be grateful that you're going to pay him to learn a new system. :)

3. I haven't used Vegas myself, but I'm sure that quality wise it's just fine for broadcast. If you're doing everything in-house I say go for it, but if someone outside your facility is going to be collaborating with you, well no one's ever been fired for going Avid.

Crimson Editor is my preference for editing text documents... Notepad ain't got nothing on it!

Vegas... I like it too... but, my productions are also TV, Film targetted. Why... Why doesnt Vegas include an "Avid EDL" export function? I know why... they are so stubborn they want to try to change the industry so people have to use Vegas. But, in retrospect... I think even more people may use vegas if in the end they could easily exort an EDL for Avid if need be. If I start my project on Vegas (lots of time) it will have to stay "Vegas" forever... so... in order to be more compatible with "The Industry" I usually cut my important projects on Avid... although... I am seriously considering Vegas for this project I am working on now... AAaa confused producer...

I've never used Vegas, but I'd imagine something like this (http://www.cuibono-soft.com/home.html) would solve your EDL problems? Even though its designed for audio, I think it can also convert all the Vegas data into something useful that other NLEs can read. However, don't quote me on it...

Vegas does have an AVID EDL export function (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=7294). You should also try using the Save As... function and change the file type...

Unfortunately though, the script that post links to has some pretty major limitations:

1. It only supports a single audio and video track
2. It only supports cuts and cross fades (dissolves)
3. Assumes all audio is stereo

i think the frame for this whole discussion--about whether vegas is suitable for broadcast or not--is simply off. maybe the lesson is that you should have requested to meet with the editor and have this discussion about workflow well in advance. the biggest lesson i ever learned in terms of workflow was to attend to delivery before i shoot anything!

if i cover every detail about delivery with a client in advance, then the project usually flows okay. if i don't touch all bases regarding delivery, then it is usually full of headaches and the challenging prospect of readjusting expectations and altering the workflow, as you are experiencing now. who cares if the guy is right or wrong in his assumptions? the more useful question is, what's the take-away for you in terms of improving the flow of future projects?