Vegas 4 vs Premiere 6.5

[Don Donatello]

OK ... have not used EDITION - but will give it a demo at next show i attend

getting back to NLE .. i don't think one starts from "zero" when one changes to a different NLE ... IMO they are all similar. you take what you learned from one and apply it to the new NLE. perhaps you need to hold a different key down for a ripple edit but you already know what a ripple edit does and doesn't do ...
so the learning curve is faster when you switch VS. the learning curve is much longer for somebody that has not used a NLE.
today it is much easier to switch .. 10 year ago you had to spend 60K to get what you can have today at $600-1500 so switching was very expensive.

i have tried the NLE's mentioned ( except edition) and i rate premiere LAST .... if you need to go back to FILM to cut negative then that leaves FCP & AVID as your choices ....

[Jeff Donald]

This thread might be of interest to some. If you search you'll find others. But Carl's point is well made, would you buy a car from a company with 10 million in market cap? Why risk your money and the potential future of your business on a marginal company?

[Don Bloom]

I did try Edition, (not the demo, the actual program) I really wish I could have gotten it to run properly on my system and perhaps I will continue to work on it because the power it has is awesome. Background rendering, insta save, not auto save; different, it saves every 1/30th of a second, the is no save button it does it automatically, you can never lose you work:)
I believe when Ver5 come out it will really take a market share. I really really wish I could get it to work and play better on my system. I was getting too far behind so I had to make a decision and I did. Vegas 4. Right, wrong or whatever, it worked for me and that's all I care about.
Come on Edition, work with me baby, work with me!!!

OOOPS! OK guys. Do you really believe that Sonic Foundry will go flat?

I'll bet on them before some other big companies. Check out UAL,MCI, Enron, Arthur Anderson and the list keeps going. Hell, even Mickey's D's stock is down. Maybe it's me, but frankly, it doesn't matter to me. If they do go out, big deal, not the 1st, certainly not the last.

SoFo has a very large following and actually is a decent product but in the long run, it doesn't matter. If Avid or Adobe or any of them went out of biz today, those that use the product would find a way to carry on, right?

[Joe Carney]

People said the same thing about Apple a few years ago, don't buy because they are going out of business. Sofo is making money. They sold off parts of the company they didnt need or want. It may take awhile, but they will be alright. Especially with new support for HD and other things coming down the pike. Part of their problem was they got too dispersed into different fields. Not any more, though it will be tough for them.

Based on the reasoning here, there should be no such thing as the shareware market, but there is, and plenty of people are making a living out of it.
SoFo has a reputation in the Audio world, and it's getting a great one in the Video world.
I think the Mac people don't like 'not' being the only ones who can crave about great sofware and interface hehehe.

As far as no job offers for Vegas? So what. The same could be said for the number one NLE in market share.....Premier.
Yet Adobe continues to move lots of product. And plenty of indendent films have been made with it.

All that matters is many people ... pro, independent and amateur, are getting real work done with Vegas, and loving it's ease of use and stability. With Vegas, you will just have to get used to your software not crashing a couple of times a day.

Some people want to make others believe if you get the wrong product, your are stuck for life. What a crock.

In the unlikely event that SoFo does go under, then I'll just have to adjust and learn something else. No big deal. In the mean time, I'm getting work done. I've been doing that my whole life.

If your are buying something for creative work the way you would buy an accounting program, that is sad. But that is exactly what many artist wannabes do.

Isn't the sky falling just another special effect?

[Jeff Donald]

I split the last post by Carl and it can be found here.

[Don Parrish]

I belive Sonic Foundry is a prime takeover candidate. No matter what happens to Sonic, it's audio video products seem to be generating a lot of sales. Maybe it would actually be good for someone to market the products differently. A more professional name, a new box, advertise as a broadcast quality NLE, lower the price a bit and presto $$$$$$$$$$$$. It does appear that VV4 is a winner, so no matter what happens to Sonic, the products will go on, someone would love to find this product up for grabs.

[Rick Spilman]

Sofo is making money.

I wish that that were true. Sonic Foundry is bleeding cash. Sonic Foundry's sales have been flat for three years. Last quarter from operations they lost $2 million on $6 million in sales. Without refiancing and asset sales they would have burned through all their cash.

Sofo is in tough shape. But what does that have to do with editing? Vegas Video is an excellent editor. If Sofo disappeared tommorrow I would still have their great software installed. Another company would buy Vegas and may or may not support it was well as Sofo does. happens all the time with software.

Worst case, in a year or two, I may have to change editors. By then Vegas will have more than paid for itself. And in a year or two I wouldn't be surprised if I am changing editors anyway. Technology changes.

[Will Fastie]

The latest rumors have Apple and Adobe exploring a merger/sale again.

I'm sure this is much more interesting to Apple than Adobe. Adobe has a very strong business model and may be the best managed software company in the PC space after Microsoft.

That said, if Apple bought Adobe, it would be the only reason I'd need to drop Premiere. It took a long time for Adobe to get its software working well (sort of) in the Windows UI - Mac always came first. With Apple in the picture, Mac would come first again.

Vegas isn't available for the Mac, which I consider a strong plus. Yup, I'm in the Windows camp, so I want products designed for and exploiting the environment.

As for Sonic's viability, the comments here have focused on stock price, market cap, and cash problems. I think it's more important to focus on the company's product lineup, the viability of those products given market trends, and what the company has done recently in its product space. The lineup and market trends are well known to us.

That leaves company actions. It's clear to me that Sonic is re-focusing on a higher margin segment of the business. It has done so by shifting emphasis away from its low-end products to Vegas, Acid, and Sound Forge as well as its commercial offerings.

The most obvious evidence of this is Video Factory. It may be the best editor in the under-$100 category, but all the other major players already have some kind of DVD authoring included. There is no VF 3.0 on the horizon, a fact confirmed to me by a Sonic representative at a recent show. Sonic licensed VF to Broderbund (a deal that apprently didn't happen), Nova (Video Explosion), and Sony (MovieBlast). A Sony rep told me that DVD authoring would be in its next release of the product.

So rather than duke it out with Pinnacle at the low end, Sonic has decided to duke it out with Adobe and Pinnacle (and maybe Avid et al) in the middle. Given that every comment made in this thread has been extremely positive toward Vegas, I think this strategy is sound.

I use quite a few software products supplied by companies much smaller than Sonic. Most of these I've used for years. I'm not afraid of small companies if their products have merit. I'm also not afraid of companies that have experienced difficulties if they appear to be working their way out of it.

And yes, I have decided to switch to Vegas.

Will

[Will Fastie]

There are three areas in which I think Vegas is ahead of Premiere.

• Sound - clearly a Sonic strength. Vegas may have the best sound capabilities in the category and the best set of other programs (Acid, Sound Forge, Noise Reduction, Acid Loops) to back it up.
  
• DVD - Premiere doesn't have it yet. This is an area in which Sonic could really throw the industry for a loop -- imagine what would happen if DVD Architect supported tape and could author a DVD-9? Reel DVD costs $1,000 and doesn't do DVD-9.
  
• Add-ins - When I was initially deciding which NLE to use, the most cited reason was the huge number of add-ins. Vegas has an add-in structure, one that allows users to write scripts and developers to quickly create additional functions. There are lots of developers with the right Windows skills to build these add-ins, and it will be easier than building the multi-platform add-ins required for Premiere. A few interesting add-ins could really spark interest in Vegas

Will

[Jeff Donald]

Adobe is bring out this summer Encore DVD.It promises tight integration with Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects and DVD-9 capabilities. Best of all the price, $549 USD. It will give Apple's DVD Studio Pro some serious competition. It only runs on Windows XP.

[Will Fastie]

Jeff, I do see a mention of "dual-layer" in one of Adobe's documents, but I was not able to find a specific mention of authoring DVD-9 nor any support for output to tape, which would be necessary for DVD-9 creation. I have not been able to find any product in the under $1,000 category that provides DVD-9, not even Reel DVD.

Did I miss something?

The integration between Premiere and Encore is exactly the same as that between Vegas and DVD Architect -- the export of markers for use as chapter markers. Tight integration is what Studio 8 has -- the DVD authoring process built right into the editor.

Will

[Jeff Donald]

In the PDF that can be downloaded, they mention full support for DLT tape. DVD-9 can be created from DLT tape. It is the preferred method by most replicators

[Will Fastie]

Okay, I see the DLT now. I missed it in the first reading. Thanks.

Usually, if an authoring product supports creation of DVD-9 it is prominently mentioned in the specifications. The sideways mention of DLT and dual-layer without a mention of DVD-9 leaves me suspicious. Also, DLT tape drives are not mentioned in the list of supported output devices, again leaving me wondering.

But if DVD-9 were supported, that would certainly make me think twice about Encore. My project probably does not require DVD-9, but I'm certainly going to fill a DVD-5; I could go over.

I sure don't have to have full-blown DVD authoring today. I can use Vegas now and wait to see which mid-range authoring product is best, then use it.

[Jeff Donald]

Many replicators are using DVD-R for mastering. DLT is not mandatory, like it was a couple of years ago. The material at the Adobe sight is limited. The list of drives supported is burners only. I think more details will come out this week at NAB. I think Adobe's original press release, it was also stated about support for DLT.

[Jeff Donald]

The price of Encore may go even lower. Apple just announced that DVD Studio Pro 2 will have a $500 (selling for $499) price drop when it is available in August. It offers full support for DLT and many of the popular drives. I would suspect that Adobe will have to drop the price to be competitive.