My experience at a local Videographer's Association meeting.....
 

I just attended a GPVA (Greater Philadelphia Videographer's Association) meeting tonight- quite an interesting experience. It's nice to be surrounded by lots of talent and experience.

Anyway towards the end they did a "round table discussion" where anything goes. They would just mention topics and see where the discussion leads. One of the first things the speaker did was a show of hands and what NLE they used. Final Cut Pro....70% of the 50+ audience raises their hands. Premiere Pro...about 28% raises their hands. Pinnacle- about 4....then Vegas....3...yes a measily 3 out of the entire association- thats including myself and my friend I brought with me. So techically there was only "1" GPVA member that is a Vegas user.

There was an employee from B&H video there that was arguing with some of the members almost "aggressively" over Edius vs FCP. At one point a member blurted out that Canopus is weak on audio and how FCP is great for audio. I had to hold my tongue as I really didn't want to start mixing it up beings it was my second attendance to this association and I'm not even a paid member yet. I thought, man...if only Douglas Spotted Eagle were here....or even Trox or Gary. Man that would get ugly! However it would be interesting to see how they'd respond to such informed Vegas evangelists.

Another big issue was "real-time" capability. Ironicly enough I have no problems not having true hardware supported real-time capability. I can always adjust the res of the preview monitor to keep my frame-rates up. And if rendering time is an issue- NETWORK rendering baby!

Anyway I plan on joining the GPVA simply for the exposure to other professionals in the wedding/event videography field and the ability to network with a great deal of people. Me and a friend must have spoke to the sole Vegas user for 2 hours after the night ended. I told him about the joys of Excalibur and we even exchanged reveiws on some of the training material we've purchased including Gary K's, and Spots DVDs.

I assure you in a few months time that group will know the power of our "little" program. I hope to impress them with some of my work cut on it. Wish me luck. :)

Just keep it a secret Glen! Not too many people need to know
about this! shhhhhhhhh <g>

All the best,

hahahaha
dude, i know where ur coming from.. there are many disbelievers..

which is where i come in..

i can do more in Vegas in 5 minutes than i have seen anyone do in Premiere, FCPro, After Effects, Edius, and Liquid..

mix it up with sound forge, Acid Loops, Midi interface (im using a Yamaha RS7000) and people usually poo their pants as to teh power of it..

but one person once asked me, "Whats its mission in life.. it CANT do everything.. " " Its SHOULDNT" yadda yadda..

well it can do most things apart from realtime output (such as prem with a matrox rtx100)

so i say to those disbelievers, LIVE IN YOUR LITTLE TUNNEL-VISIONED WORLD while i pump out job after rock solid job

Funny.. i tried to change a projects settings halfway thru the project using prem pro..
I couldnt... why? Welel the argument was that you shouldnt have to.. but hang on.. what if i want to create different aspect rations for different format outputs??
you cant.. unless u start ur project all over again..

Vegas is a click of a button... some people think this is basic.. but you try mixing 4:3 with 16:9 footage with Prem Pro.. then try do it with VEgas and tell me which one is faster, easier, hassle free.........

people always look down their nose at me (especially the FCP people) when i tell them i use vegas.. ...i don't get it, ived edited on vegas for years and cant stand the work flow of other NLEs. I edited an award wining short film for the MCAI 48 hour fim festival. we won nearly every award including best in show. Afterwards people kept comenting on how nice it looked for having been shot/edited in under 48 hours. without vegas, i never would have been able to pull it off. What's more, i just finished editing a feature with vegas, and i only ran into 2 frustrations. 1. You can't import veg files on the time line like you can add sequeneces in Avid and 2. no animatte

I also get lots of clients come in asking me about what product they should pick up and I usually tell them to pick up Vegas. Easy to use and powerful.

hehehe

go to the matrox, adobe and canopus and pinnacle sites.. have a look at their support areas.. notice something??

2 things.

theyre all complaining about things they CANT do (or refine in realtime) or having issues with instant death

the other is compatibility lists.. u can run vegas on anything and it will do what it says it will do.. try do have the shit u can do with Vegas on a standalone prem unit (without matrox help) and Vegas poos on everything on the market..

yeah i always wonder... why don't more people know about vegas yet? it's sorta "the little engine that could". i mean back in its "video vegas" days no1 took it seriously. they thought it was just another consumer-friendly app... until v.3?v.4? came along. it started blowing everything out of its surpassing everything.

problem is that first impressions count, so some people will still think that Vegas is a simple basic consumer editor.

On the one hand I don't care because I now those doubters are missing out. But on the other I do care because I like to be taken seriously in what I do.

I'm currently editing a feature, and you can be sure that somewhere in the credits, much as some people stick the Avid logo on, I'll be pointing out that it was done using Vegas!

Tell the FCP people what I tell them.

"Vegas is like Final Cut Pro for the PC. Except Vegas is fast, and stable."

While it has it's downsides, Vegas is an awesome program.

I can't remember how long it took a friend of mine to switch. He was using Premiere, and it was going REALLY slow on long shows. It was fiddly and unstable also.

I practically had to yell at him and say "USE VEGAS YOU DUMB ***K".

Guess what, he used Vegas for is latest job (He edits wrestling shows) and I got an email during his editing session "Vegas rocks!" simple as that.

He does multicam shows so he's rapt how vegas handles this so easily.


Aaron

Every program has it's downsides. But Vegas has less downsides than most others.

Glad to hear the wrestling guy finally caught up!

Personally I think the name does Vegas more harm than good. It doesn't really conjure up images of a professional editor, and harks back to it's origins when it was a bit basic.

Premiere users are the worst to pursuade. I recently upgraded to Vegas 5 and transferred my Vegas 4 license to my colleague (another thing in Vegas's favour is the ease of doing such an operation via the helpful people at Sony). Yet so far he has barely tried it, despite agreeing with me how cool some of the stuff it could do was when I went around to demonstrate stuff to him.

One thing I have found with Vegas is that a number of the things it can do to ease the workload aren't immediately apparent. As well there are several different ways of doing the same operation sometimes. The Premiere users usual first complaint is that there isn't a source or preview window in the usual place!

You just can't tell some people.

Do you think maybe we can petition Sony to change the name?

Yes, please. Something powerfully cheesy, like Proteus, StreamEdit, Timeline, anything but "Vegas." If you call it "Vegas," you might as well call it "Happy Fun Video", or "My Wittle Video Editor." Thoses names not powerful enough? How bout "Max Power" or "Muscle Edit," Or "Nuclear Death Editor".



I believe I got the court reporting firm my friend works at to use it, simply 'cause I told him it was a good NLE, and this other production company (and by "production company" I mean guy working out of his apartment) to use it as well, simply by recommending it.

I've been ridiculed, laughed at etc. for using it and saying how sweet it is. I remember a gig that never materialized (tells you something, eh?), where I had to show these guys my reel, and someone asked me how I'd put it together, and I mentioned Vegas, and they said something about. . ."(chuckle), well we'll be editing on something a little more professional than Vegas" (I think they had FCP). This is also the gig where one guy told me they'd do the lighting in post, and not to worry about it on set (no, really!), and were really surprised when I told them miniDV blown up to 35mm wouldn't look like 35mm blown up to 35mm. . .and then they told me "not to tell that to our investors."

Anyway, I still say, in my experience, better scrub tool, and fix the media bin glitch that occurs with Win XP, and enable it to do real EDLs, and it's perfect.

I know I have no idea what I'm talking about, so keep that in mind as you read this.

C'mon, all Sony has to do is to add "Pro" to the end of the name. ;)

Final Cut Pro
Premiere Pro
Vegas Pro

Maybe someday we'll even see Avid Pro.

Re: My experience at a local Videographer's Association meeting.....
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Glen Elliott : a show of hands and what NLE they used. Final Cut Pro....70% of the 50+ audience raises their hands. -->>>

Good thing I wasn't there... it would have been 72% ;-)

<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper: Do you think maybe we can petition Sony to change the name? -->>

Since I don't use PC's I have no experience with Vegas, but it does sound nice and my experience with Premiere on the Mac is enough to keep me away from it. But I've never understood that name either. Why would you want to associate your product with "Vegas?" To me it conjures up images of expensive, tasteless glitz with no substance and gambling against impossible odds where you are pretty much assured of losing your money? ;-)

Glenn,

Have you never heard of Avid XpressDVPro???

I think a lot of people are ignorant of different programs strengths and weakness. It's possible to download a demo version of all of these programs, but to really understand a programs strengths and weakness, you have to use it on a day to day basis, mastering it's specific workflow. How many people have the time and inclination, (let alone money) to master FCP, AVID, Premiere, Vegas et al. Sure, a quick test drive and tire kick maybe, but master it? Hell, even dedicated Vegas users will confess to "learning a new trick" every so often.

All of these programs have shortcuts, that make them strong, and workarounds for their weeknesses. Seriously, look at any debate between platforms and you will see "XYZ will do this, can your program do that?" and the answer is "Well, I can if I do this first, but I don't need that application." or, "Well I use (insert third party app here) for that feature."

It seems like Vegas has a deep and loyal following, which is great. The complaining "We don't get no respect" really grows out of the fact that it's relatively new on the scene. The film industry has litterally billions of dollars and hours of time invested in Avid technology and training. Try turning that battleship around. Not going to happen overnite. Instead, FCP went after the small indy shops, and is making a serious inroad there. Serious enough for Avid to trickle down the high end features to it's "prosumer" line. One of the big selling points for Avid XpressDVPro is that if you master it, you can pretty much walk in to an Avid Composer or Symphony and start editing. That's important to people who want to work in the industry, cutting FILMS.

Premiere got it's leg up by marketing as a bundle with hardware packages for years. It's still the most widly used prosumer editing software. If Vegas were to ship bundled with millions of computers or hardware cards, it too, would be the household name that premire is.

In short, if the program does what you want and makes you happy, don't get hung up on what other people think about it.

Make movies.

What’s in a name?
 

>>>>Do you think maybe we can petition Sony to change the name?

Why?

If it helps, think of the following acronym:

“Video Editing, Graphics And Sound”.

This sums it up the product and touts its strengths.

When I first heard the name, I too immediately dismissed the product, sight unseen.

While researching my needs for a full length feature project, the choices increasingly became limited to fewer and fewer products until only Vegas was left. Since I picked up my copy, I haven't looked back.

I know what works for me, and anyone who knocks what I use gets filed under the category of "someone else's problem".

I'm too pre-occupied with my full-length feature, (coming attractions trailer coming soon) made possible partly through the existence of Vegas, to be concerned with non-believers.

Brian

"problem is that first impressions count, so some people will still think that Vegas is a simple basic consumer editor"

Ive also had some snide comments made about it being "an effects box" or an "audio editor with video bolted on"

funny though that Vegas was one of the first NLE's with a timecode filter option.. also the first NLE to be able to run DX plugins...

then Pinnacle went out abnd bought another companies technology (Steinberg) (as they did with Liquid) and theyre going to slowly try to integrate that element into liquid to compete..

Thing is, ive been messing with L6 now and i still cant do half the shit i can do with Vegas..

Prem Pro 1.5 really does kick ass with a MatroxRTx100... without it, u can forget it.. but one thing even with HW.. it still needs to render certain elements..
also Encore doesnt create sceene selection menus based on yoru chapter headers with autolinking, as u can easily do with 2 clicks in Architect..

theres alot Vegas can do and from where i stand thers only TWO weekness
I am a ProVideo Supplier to about 80% of Sydneys Videography ommunity, and for them to take this app seriously, i really ahve to sit with them for over an hour.. when they sit with me, i say
"tell me what you want me to do.. what do u do that annoys u in ur current NLE"
I can usually recreate their request in a matter of seconds without needing to go into copious amounts of screens and menus as i would with PremPro, Edius, FCP and Liquid.
Once they see what it can do in realtime during the preview process, they usually shut up abou the "unprofessional" results.

Another problem with the above (ie tryin to turn people) was the sydney VASST tour.
There were two minds on this. The first was the existing user base who loved it and want more, which would be great coz i missed the initial VASST intro tour at Brighton Le Sands. Id love to attend the next one :)
The second are the ones who knew nothing of it (Vegas), and were die hard Prem users with matrox and digisuite boxes...
in their words, the tour didnt convince them to change, or show off what V5 can realy do.
Thats just feedback i have recieved as a supplier of Vegas. Im one of the few actual stores that offer this product as an Editign Solution.. here in Oz, its really REALLY hard to throw up PremPro side by side with Vegas and say "Vegas is better for you because... yadda yadda) due to the "realtime" element that these other kits can offer.

moving on..

the second thing thats screwing over Vegas, is exaclty that.. realtime.. ssure i can run filters etc etc etc.. but i still HAVE TO render out which is not realtime..
I can throw on a Project in Prem Pro and run multiple track layers and it will render in realtime.. to do the same thing, with vegas were looking at 5-6 times slower than realtime (for eg a composite greenscreen segment, with some overlays, colour correction, 16:9 Mask plus afew titles...)

i love vegas dont get me wrong, but since prem pro has bought out their single track editing as opposed to AB editing, theyve caught up a lil..
I can assure you that Vegas will NEVER have support for a Hardware unit like a Matrox RTx100.. you WONT ever find a card being released to give Vegas full frame output of mulitple video tracks..
Its just not in Sonys interests to do this.. maybe if Sonic Foundry were still in control, there may have been the option there sometime in the future, but now that Sony own Vegas, its not gonna happen (apart from the realtime SDI card, which Vegas is already unofficially compatible with)

Its a pity really, coz its an awesome program and of the zillions of apps out there, i chose it years ago and stuck with it to the current version, but it seems these other companies are catching onto Vegas' workflow system (ie Liquid, PremPro, Edius) which give them an advantage..

well see what Vegas 6 holds next year.... Im hoping for a particle generator (as found in MainConcepts Main Actor) as well as a more efficient and optimised use of the CPU and Ram of the host machine, coz rght now, its really not taking advantage of the balls in the box........
And as for rendering.. for todays pace in product output and wear and tear on equipment (ive nuked 4 HDDs already with 20hour renders that the drives cant handle), im REALLY hoping they do something about its render management..
Im dreading having to think about HD Rendering with Vegas..

Re: Re: My experience at a local Videographer's Association meeting.....
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Boyd Ostroff :
<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper: Do you think maybe we can petition Sony to change the name? -->>

Since I don't use PC's I have no experience with Vegas, but it does sound nice and my experience with Premiere on the Mac is enough to keep me away from it. But I've never understood that name either. Why would you want to associate your product with "Vegas?" To me it conjures up images of expensive, tasteless glitz with no substance and gambling against impossible odds where you are pretty much assured of losing your money? ;-) -->>>

Exactly!

Josh: I like Happy Fun Edit.

Everything is in a name. First impressions are the only ones that matter if you are selling something. Look how many cars Dodge sold before they change the Dodge Enchillada to the Dodge Viper!


From now on I'm going to qualify my use of Vegas to people that don't know it.
"Yeah, I use Vegas. It's like Avid, except it was designed in this century, like FCP except it never crashes, and like Premiere, except it's twice as fast to use."

> now that Sony own Vegas, its not gonna happen

Well, as a very basic FCP user, I have followed this thread with much interest. It does seem that Vegas is sort of like FCP for the PC. Now regarding real-time, it strikes me that it really doesn't matter. The power of FCP in my view is the way it uses Apple's hardware so well, so you don't really need extra hardware. The pros are used to spending a lot of money on NLE so they will buy realtime hardware anyway, and Apple lets them use it and that's ok too, but I don't really care. I think with computers getting faster and faster, we will end up using off-the-shelf computers more and more and their performance can already rival real-time hardware-based systems. So I think there is a big future for Vegas, and there is also a big future for FCP. I wonder what would happen if Vegas and/or FCP were to go multiplatform. Some competeition would benefit users of both, but probably neither Apple not Sony would want to do it. Since Sony also makes computers, it is in a similar position to Apple, or could be at any rate if it took Vegas and it's users seriously.

I bet whatever they add in Vegas 6, they won't add a better scrub tool or fix the Win XP/media bin glitch.

<<<-- Originally posted by Josh Bass : I bet whatever they add in Vegas 6, they won't add a better scrub tool or fix the Win XP/media bin glitch. -->>>

I don't know about that- in Vegas 5.0b they fixed a few things that I, in particular, brought to their attention. I've found Sony can be very receptive.

I'm just saying. . .be nice if they did, but they'll probably do a bunch of other stuff instead. I haven't upgraded, because I looked all the new stuff, and decided 4.0 was fine for now.

Josh,
Is there a Vegas users group in Houston. I'm new to Vegas and DVD Architect 2 and sure would benefit from contact with experienced users.

Thanks, Nick

No idea, friend. Sorry. I don't associate much with the locals.

FCP vs Vegas
 

Dylan Cooper said:


<<Tell the FCP people what I tell them.

"Vegas is like Final Cut Pro for the PC. Except Vegas is fast, and stable.">>

Funny, FCP Mac G5 users say just the opposite: FCP with MAC is more stable than Vegas with PC.

Interesting... I like.

I've used both and have experience crashes with both of em :/

Vegas seems to be more stable, but you will experience a low level of crashiness with it.

Final Cut:
Updates can break your system. OS X, Quicktime updates in particular.
First versions are buggy based on user reports in forums (FCP3, FCP4). Personally I found pre-patched FCP3 to be extremely crash-prone.

Vegas and Final Cut:
No configuration issues. Your hardware will work, unless using certain combinations of firewire devices.

Rarely the application will just crash for no explainable reason.

2- IMO, Vegas is NOT like Final Cut Pro. I started with FCP and Vegas made no sense to me workflow-wise.

Vegas is also a lot more powerful than Final Cut without extra help.
audio, compositing, and effects are fairly strong in Vegas. Vegas has lots of powerful tools, but you can't easily get out of Vegas if you need some special.

Final Cut has OMF export and automatic duck so you can move your project to specialized applications or online edit suites. Audio in Final Cut is weak compared to Vegas.

I think Microsoft should buy it and rename it "My NLE".

Or Apple could buy it and call it iEdit.

Apple can stay well away from my beloved Vegas!

I am utterly amazed though that despite the name more people haven't taken notice. After all look at the response V5 got at NAB this year, plus all the glowing reviews it has had across the board in magazines online and in print.

If there was one drawback with Vegas it's that I always end up messing around with it to see what else I can get it to do rather than getting on with serious work!

<<<-- Originally posted by Pat Chaney : I think Microsoft should buy it and rename it "My NLE". -->>>Actually, if that were to happen, they'd probably call it Windows Media Editor, Quicktime support would be stripped from the application and DVD's authored with DVDa would only play in Xbox players. :P

(on the good side, it would probably become a free component of MS Office)

BTW: The latest issue of DV Magazine has a "hands on" review of Vegas 5 that turned out fundamentally positive, but did highlight some reasons that the author considered it as not being quite up to his definition of "professional".

Anyway, despite the fact that I don't use ANY of the software being discussed here, this has turned very interesting thread to watch.
Have fun.

Vegas doesn't advertise too much, do they? You see Avid/Premiere ads in all the trade mags and whatnot, but not too much Vegas. That could be part of iit. Plus, it's newer than the rest, right?

Nick, could you highlight some of the reasons the reviewer gave? It would be interesting to know whether the falws he found in Vegas were also flaws in Premiere or some of the other editors.

We know there are issues with EDL support in Vegas, and it's media bins, but to me such things pale into insignificance when it comes to comparing what Vegas can do compared to other editors as opposed to what it can't do (which isn't a whole lot!)

Well, now, that depends, doesn't it? If you do longform projects that include separate online and offline edits, those media bins and EDLs would be of the utmost importance, no?

Yes, that's true. But it depends what you are want to do with the package.

I do video for a living, therefore I am a professional. I don't have any use for seperate online and offline edits.

So perhaps Vegas is not suited to broadcast applications (but then DPS Velocity would be a far better choice for that anyway than FCP or Premiere), but it is professionally suited to corporate and independent digital moviemaking.

While someone could say that the EDL system in Vegas means it can't be classed as pro software, by the same token I could cite some of the lack of audio abilities of the other packages as reasons why they couldn't be classed as pro. Horses for courses

One of his main complaints was the EDL support (though this surprised me since the article opens with a note about Premiere Pro having "come of age" and I thought Premiere had DROPED EDL altogether.)

He also felt that Vegas' proprietary plugin interface was a detractor since it could not take advantage of the "vast array of AE plugins". (Can Avid do this?)

I think his other two main complaints were that the interface was realatively foriegn vs Avid, Premiere and FCP so he had to tweek it quite a bit to get comfortable. (Though the fact that it COULD be tweeked was a plus.) and that the "single-sequence-per-project" limitation (vs nested timelines of Premiere and the like) was too constraining to use Vegas for anything other than short, self contained projects.

He did devote nearly a full column of text to the "Audio Wonderland" of sounds features.

Anyway, the full article is in the November DV Magazine.

In the long run, the real issue is that "professional" is a subjective term. It seems to me that a professional, independant videographer would get more than enough functionality out of Vegas or any other NLE in it's class. Selection criteria falls along the lines of personal preference, desired pre-packaged feature set and even to some degree cost. Vegas, and others in its class, should have no problem filling this professional need.

For a professional studio with multiple people, working simultaniously on multiple projects, with multiple tools (from different hardware and software manufactures), everything needs to work EXTREMELY well with each other and lots of automation and interconnectivity realated features are of greater value than the pre-packaged feature set of any single tool. I think it's in this context that Vegas falls short of meeting "professional" needs.

Just MHO.
Have fun.

[EDIT:
BTW: I should say that I'm always ammused at people who do nothing but edit their own DV footage thumb their noses at sensationally feature rich software because they consider it cheap and unprofessional compared to the $1000 program on their computer that has over half its features neglected.
Oh well.
/EDIT]

Listening, Sony? Wanna sell more copies?

Oh, yeah.
I should add that in the Final words section, he DOES take time to say "I found Douglas Spotted Eagle's Vegas 4 Editing Workshop to be extremely helpful."

Kudos!

interesting to say that prem has "come of age.. " LOL

i mean.. prem pro was release after v4... 1.5 update was released after v5... but here the doozy.. the a/b timeline system has been ditched, the effects rack/setup has been emulated.. so which app has actualy come of age?? did it take 7 rounds for adobe to get it right?? i mean vegas 3 from 4 years ago was quite a powerhouse.. so what kind of age is it showing now??

as for video, EDL's arent the be all end all for professional work.. on top of that, i know many audio producers whove ditched ProTools to work with Vegas, SF and AcidPro

Pro, not pro.. who cares.. the fact remains you get good results out of the one applicaiton without the need to render elements jsut to see what they look like.

Prem on its own is pretty weak compared to V4/V5, throw a matrox RTx100 with it and the story changes a lil.. FCP isnt worth a mention when compared side by side to either of the 2...Pinnacle is just there.. does afew things, but nowhere near easy or fast.. and canopus have ditched their Prem Base to focus on edius.. then theres avid, which is an awsome app, ive had issues with it, but the Mojo Box im testing seems to be quite solid.. i dont like the glugginess of it, and i can work much faster with Vegas and get the same results, if not better.

in the end, its all about choice, use what your comfortable with and what will give u the results to get the job done properly.

OK no offense here, actually Vegas would be my choice for Pro work if I do such.

Last night I decided to check the price of Vegas 5 on e-Bay.
Here is the result - judge for yourself :)

http://search.ebay.com/Vegas-5_W0QQs...ectZ1QQfromZR8