Sony and Premiere Pro at DVinfo.net

Milt Lee · August 28th, 2004, 11:10 AM

So I'm getting ready to get my trusty new lap top. After seeing (and meeting) Doug do his thing at the Cine Fest 2004 last week in Denver, I'm looking at the Vaio one more time. BTW - Doug that was an amazing demonstration. 10 copies of vegas running off a 2.6 ghz laptop.

But here's the point of this post. I went to the Sony website, and when you get to the part of adding some video editing software, the choice is..... Premiere!! What gives? What is up with these guys? I mean they sell Vegas don't they? They even call it SONY VEGAS??

I was stunned. Doug, can you offer any ideas here? If I want to get a Vaio, why can't I buy Vegas 5.0, which I have to have after really seeing the differences, with it bundled.

I believe they are bundling Premiere for like $ 200.

Milt

Edward Troxel · August 28th, 2004, 12:22 PM

I imagine it *may* be because of previous contract commitments made before Sony bought Vegas. Also, Sony is a BIG corporation with lots of different divisions. Many times one division does not know what another division does.

Milt Lee · August 28th, 2004, 12:26 PM

hmmmm.... that makes sense. I wish they would straighten up though. It's such an amazing deal - $ 200 for Premiere but I'd much rather have Vegas.

oh well.
Milt

Richard Alvarez · August 28th, 2004, 04:47 PM

Bundling is a big marketing decision. For Premiere (Adobe) it's almost a standard operating procedure. (THink of all the adobe "light" or limited versions of their software that comes with different products) Because Premiere started off bundling with computers and hardware boards long ago, they still have the major market share of ALL nle's combined. (Forget which mag I read this in... but I'm pretty sure it make sense. ) I mean tons of people have premiere who don't even want it.

All of this to say that Sony/Vegas may or may not decide to substitute for premiere when and if the prior contracts expire. It could boost Vegas exposure, but it might hit the bottom line a bit. Tough trade off.

Peter Jefferson · August 29th, 2004, 07:01 AM

"10 copies of vegas running off a 2.6 ghz laptop. "

its one thing to have multiple instances runnign, but good luck running different video clips at once... on top of that, good luck running different instances which use ASIO drivers and Midi input controllers... did u see those 10 instances playing video, running various filters and transitions, all playing the clips off the same HDD all at the same time?? if so why would you want to??

NO HDD can handle that kind of data anyway... its physically impossible.. even SCSI arrays cant do this.. i have a 4 terrabyte Avid SCSI box here and theres no way it can run 10 clips off one of its drives... the aray itself is used as a backup in case the fffeed goes down, so it can handle a full live programming situation (whic is what its used for) but even then, its working like a dog. Home machines and laptops jsut cant handle this amount of bandwidth..

I dont mean to rain on anyones parade, but its just not workable to have that many running. 2 instances, i can understand.. maybe 3 (ie 2 rendering while ur editing) Any more than that, and its just not worth trying..

As for bundling, i had a client come into the shop with a brand ne VAIO with Premiere SE installed.. not Vegas.. why, who knows, but it was there.. VAIOs were initially built with sony firewire drivers for sony cam compatibilty (ie non complaint drivers for the 1394 port) recently sony made some changes to this firmeare and now this issue seems to be resolved, but if u DO have a problem, make sure u run teh standard OHCI drivers before u connect ur deck coz u may run into problems.. depending on the laptops age..

good luck with it.. laptop work is great, but i would suggst u go for an avid system if thats the case.. something like Avid Express with the Portable Mojo realtime breakout box.. with an additional HDD connected thru 1394 and use ur inbuilt HDD as the main system drive..
good luck with it :)

Milt Lee · August 29th, 2004, 01:06 PM

You make some good points. Stuff wasn't being rendered, so maybe it's a crazy demonstraton. But that machine was having to do an awful lot of processing.

I guess the thing that I have always been impressed by with Vegas is that it plays what I create immediately, and never seems to get flustered. I don't know why but I'm really comfortable with Vegas - maybe it's that I've used SAWPRO and SAWSTUDIO for years, and the work flow just feels very natural to me.

I would love to see a shootout between several systems just to see how the work is actually accomplished. I know that the demonstrations are designed to show all kinds of sexy things done so fast that it would be impossible for mere mortals to do the keystrokes much less remember all the steps that things take, but having said that, I was still really impressed.

Milt Lee

Douglas Spotted Eagle · August 29th, 2004, 01:48 PM

Peter, whether you *believe* it or not, Milt is telling the truth. I had 10 instances running, all with filters, various formats ranging from uncompressed HD 1080P to 60 x 60 animated gifs to 4;4;4 titles and generated media, with masks, 3D motion, multitrack audio with compressors, EQ, and Verb, ACID loops looping (16 tracks of that) a 5:1 mix that consisted of over 700 bits of audio files, and more. Milt and a dozen others saw me to this. All of these instances RUNNING, not static.
Yes, a hard drive CAN and does do this. Again, it's not just my word, Milt was there along with several others.

Why would you do this in "real life?" Likely, you wouldn't.
But would you capture/acquire while editing? I do. Would you render while editing other sections? I do.
The point of the demonstration, which is not canned, not pre-planned, and not merely projects that I open up, is that Vegas runs lightly enough on the system that my 2.6 gig laptop with 512 meg of memory can run 10 instances of various file formats all at one shot. If you can do that, then you can easily see the speed at which Vegas operates, and what sort of flexibility it provides. THAT is the point of the demonstration.
To refute a couple of further points, I was rendering one project in the background while Milt was there, it was a 5 layer, 3D composite with several track motion and parent motion keyframes. It was rendering while the 10 layer project with HD in it was running the whole time in the background.
I was indeed using ASIO drivers with my Indigo sound card. No, I didn't have MIDI controllers going, but often do. People all over the world have seen me do this with the Mackie Universal Control. There is both video and images of me doing this on the Sony tour.
They were ALL 10 projects using roughly 30 different DV, HD, Quicktime/Sorenson, 32bit AVI, PNG, BMP, Canopus files, 24p, HDCam, 4:2:2 avi files, running simultaneously off the hard drive at one shot.
Were they all at 29.97? No, only 3 instances could maintain full framerate due to my small amount of RAM.
But they WERE all coming off the same drive at the same time.
I'll admit, 10 instances is a fluke, I can usually only get 7-8 instances at once.

Peter Jefferson · August 30th, 2004, 08:30 AM

DSE, i didnt mean to sound like i was dissing, i wasnt, its just the reality of the situation.. if ur runnign acentrino unit, i dont doubt that this is possible.. i never doubted it to begin with but as i said and as uve also admitted, you wouldnt get a full frame rate at playback..

one thing ive used vegas snce its inception over 5 yrs ago when it began as an adio editor.. and im a die hard fan.. always have been.. but one thing..

Its not realtime.. it never really has been..
I cant render out in realtime when im using filters,PiP, aspect ratio conversions etc etc THATS the bum deal.. now ive always been saying, i been hanging for a HW unit for Vegas to offer this and i dont see why it cant.. but im now a supplier of Video gear to many "pro's" and ive supplied DigiSuites and Avid uniits running full RAW uncompressed video at realtime, as well as MatroxRTx100 units running Prem Pro1.5 doing pretty much the same things i do in Vegas but the differnce is i can render in realtime.. wither it be MPG2 or AVI, i know that i wont be waiting 15 odd hours for a 2 hour, multi tracked render...
For DVD work and corporate deadlines, this time saving factor is MASSIVE. not only that, but it saves wear and tear on ur HDD's. Ive had 4 HDD"s fail on me..

I love vegas and still use 4, as 5 does have afew bugs which im not happy with

Peter Wright · September 2nd, 2004, 05:47 AM

I bought a Vaio almost two years ago - and it came with video editing software also owned by Sony, called Movie Shaker - seems to be about the same functionality as the XP Windows effort.

Jonathan Gentry · September 8th, 2004, 01:45 PM

Doug.. how much memory do you suggest for capturing while editing/rendering etc?

Douglas Spotted Eagle · September 8th, 2004, 10:09 PM

Well....
I have 8 gig on my main system. To run more than 4, you need a special reg mod...
2 gig is great, because it allows for sweet RAM renders, which are extremely useful to me.
Most of my machines are 2-4 gig.

August 28th, 2004, 11:10 AM	#1
Milt Lee Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Cass Lake MN Posts: 221	Sony and Premiere Pro So I'm getting ready to get my trusty new lap top. After seeing (and meeting) Doug do his thing at the Cine Fest 2004 last week in Denver, I'm looking at the Vaio one more time. BTW - Doug that was an amazing demonstration. 10 copies of vegas running off a 2.6 ghz laptop. But here's the point of this post. I went to the Sony website, and when you get to the part of adding some video editing software, the choice is..... Premiere!! What gives? What is up with these guys? I mean they sell Vegas don't they? They even call it SONY VEGAS?? I was stunned. Doug, can you offer any ideas here? If I want to get a Vaio, why can't I buy Vegas 5.0, which I have to have after really seeing the differences, with it bundled. I believe they are bundling Premiere for like $ 200. Milt __________________ Professional website - http://manykites.com Personal - http://mrdogsblog.com

August 28th, 2004, 12:22 PM	#2
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	I imagine it may be because of previous contract commitments made before Sony bought Vegas. Also, Sony is a BIG corporation with lots of different divisions. Many times one division does not know what another division does. __________________ Edward Troxel [SCVU] JETDV Scripts/Scripting Tutorials/Excalibur/Montage Magic/Newsletters

August 28th, 2004, 12:26 PM	#3
Milt Lee Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Cass Lake MN Posts: 221	hmmmm.... that makes sense. I wish they would straighten up though. It's such an amazing deal - $ 200 for Premiere but I'd much rather have Vegas. oh well. Milt __________________ Professional website - http://manykites.com Personal - http://mrdogsblog.com

August 29th, 2004, 01:06 PM	#6
Milt Lee Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Cass Lake MN Posts: 221	You make some good points. Stuff wasn't being rendered, so maybe it's a crazy demonstraton. But that machine was having to do an awful lot of processing. I guess the thing that I have always been impressed by with Vegas is that it plays what I create immediately, and never seems to get flustered. I don't know why but I'm really comfortable with Vegas - maybe it's that I've used SAWPRO and SAWSTUDIO for years, and the work flow just feels very natural to me. I would love to see a shootout between several systems just to see how the work is actually accomplished. I know that the demonstrations are designed to show all kinds of sexy things done so fast that it would be impossible for mere mortals to do the keystrokes much less remember all the steps that things take, but having said that, I was still really impressed. Milt Lee __________________ Professional website - http://manykites.com Personal - http://mrdogsblog.com

August 29th, 2004, 01:48 PM	#7
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	Peter, whether you believe it or not, Milt is telling the truth. I had 10 instances running, all with filters, various formats ranging from uncompressed HD 1080P to 60 x 60 animated gifs to 4;4;4 titles and generated media, with masks, 3D motion, multitrack audio with compressors, EQ, and Verb, ACID loops looping (16 tracks of that) a 5:1 mix that consisted of over 700 bits of audio files, and more. Milt and a dozen others saw me to this. All of these instances RUNNING, not static. Yes, a hard drive CAN and does do this. Again, it's not just my word, Milt was there along with several others. Why would you do this in "real life?" Likely, you wouldn't. But would you capture/acquire while editing? I do. Would you render while editing other sections? I do. The point of the demonstration, which is not canned, not pre-planned, and not merely projects that I open up, is that Vegas runs lightly enough on the system that my 2.6 gig laptop with 512 meg of memory can run 10 instances of various file formats all at one shot. If you can do that, then you can easily see the speed at which Vegas operates, and what sort of flexibility it provides. THAT is the point of the demonstration. To refute a couple of further points, I was rendering one project in the background while Milt was there, it was a 5 layer, 3D composite with several track motion and parent motion keyframes. It was rendering while the 10 layer project with HD in it was running the whole time in the background. I was indeed using ASIO drivers with my Indigo sound card. No, I didn't have MIDI controllers going, but often do. People all over the world have seen me do this with the Mackie Universal Control. There is both video and images of me doing this on the Sony tour. They were ALL 10 projects using roughly 30 different DV, HD, Quicktime/Sorenson, 32bit AVI, PNG, BMP, Canopus files, 24p, HDCam, 4:2:2 avi files, running simultaneously off the hard drive at one shot. Were they all at 29.97? No, only 3 instances could maintain full framerate due to my small amount of RAM. But they WERE all coming off the same drive at the same time. I'll admit, 10 instances is a fluke, I can usually only get 7-8 instances at once. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

August 28th, 2004, 04:47 PM	#4
Richard Alvarez Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: San Mateo, CA Posts: 3,840	Bundling is a big marketing decision. For Premiere (Adobe) it's almost a standard operating procedure. (THink of all the adobe "light" or limited versions of their software that comes with different products) Because Premiere started off bundling with computers and hardware boards long ago, they still have the major market share of ALL nle's combined. (Forget which mag I read this in... but I'm pretty sure it make sense. ) I mean tons of people have premiere who don't even want it. All of this to say that Sony/Vegas may or may not decide to substitute for premiere when and if the prior contracts expire. It could boost Vegas exposure, but it might hit the bottom line a bit. Tough trade off.

August 29th, 2004, 07:01 AM	#5
Peter Jefferson Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Aus Posts: 3,884	"10 copies of vegas running off a 2.6 ghz laptop. " its one thing to have multiple instances runnign, but good luck running different video clips at once... on top of that, good luck running different instances which use ASIO drivers and Midi input controllers... did u see those 10 instances playing video, running various filters and transitions, all playing the clips off the same HDD all at the same time?? if so why would you want to?? NO HDD can handle that kind of data anyway... its physically impossible.. even SCSI arrays cant do this.. i have a 4 terrabyte Avid SCSI box here and theres no way it can run 10 clips off one of its drives... the aray itself is used as a backup in case the fffeed goes down, so it can handle a full live programming situation (whic is what its used for) but even then, its working like a dog. Home machines and laptops jsut cant handle this amount of bandwidth.. I dont mean to rain on anyones parade, but its just not workable to have that many running. 2 instances, i can understand.. maybe 3 (ie 2 rendering while ur editing) Any more than that, and its just not worth trying.. As for bundling, i had a client come into the shop with a brand ne VAIO with Premiere SE installed.. not Vegas.. why, who knows, but it was there.. VAIOs were initially built with sony firewire drivers for sony cam compatibilty (ie non complaint drivers for the 1394 port) recently sony made some changes to this firmeare and now this issue seems to be resolved, but if u DO have a problem, make sure u run teh standard OHCI drivers before u connect ur deck coz u may run into problems.. depending on the laptops age.. good luck with it.. laptop work is great, but i would suggst u go for an avid system if thats the case.. something like Avid Express with the Portable Mojo realtime breakout box.. with an additional HDD connected thru 1394 and use ur inbuilt HDD as the main system drive.. good luck with it :)

August 30th, 2004, 08:30 AM	#8
Peter Jefferson Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Aus Posts: 3,884	DSE, i didnt mean to sound like i was dissing, i wasnt, its just the reality of the situation.. if ur runnign acentrino unit, i dont doubt that this is possible.. i never doubted it to begin with but as i said and as uve also admitted, you wouldnt get a full frame rate at playback.. one thing ive used vegas snce its inception over 5 yrs ago when it began as an adio editor.. and im a die hard fan.. always have been.. but one thing.. Its not realtime.. it never really has been.. I cant render out in realtime when im using filters,PiP, aspect ratio conversions etc etc THATS the bum deal.. now ive always been saying, i been hanging for a HW unit for Vegas to offer this and i dont see why it cant.. but im now a supplier of Video gear to many "pro's" and ive supplied DigiSuites and Avid uniits running full RAW uncompressed video at realtime, as well as MatroxRTx100 units running Prem Pro1.5 doing pretty much the same things i do in Vegas but the differnce is i can render in realtime.. wither it be MPG2 or AVI, i know that i wont be waiting 15 odd hours for a 2 hour, multi tracked render... For DVD work and corporate deadlines, this time saving factor is MASSIVE. not only that, but it saves wear and tear on ur HDD's. Ive had 4 HDD"s fail on me.. I love vegas and still use 4, as 5 does have afew bugs which im not happy with

September 2nd, 2004, 05:47 AM	#9
Peter Wright Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 193	I bought a Vaio almost two years ago - and it came with video editing software also owned by Sony, called Movie Shaker - seems to be about the same functionality as the XP Windows effort.

September 8th, 2004, 01:45 PM	#10
Jonathan Gentry Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 183	Doug.. how much memory do you suggest for capturing while editing/rendering etc?

September 8th, 2004, 10:09 PM	#11
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	Well.... I have 8 gig on my main system. To run more than 4, you need a special reg mod... 2 gig is great, because it allows for sweet RAM renders, which are extremely useful to me. Most of my machines are 2-4 gig. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com