Why Would Final Cut Pro Be Better?

[Edward Troxel]

The editing program used, matters in the minds of your clients, it matters in your workflow and the need to port editing lists and data from one enviroment to another.

I agree with Glen here. What matters to my clients is that they get the results they desire - NOT the program I use to get those results. As for workflow, Vegas has a very fast workflow. No, it's not the best at everything (i.e. handling EDL's - although it IS better than most people give it credit for) but it does handle all of my needs quite nicely.

[Moe Belli]

First off, I'm sorry if I offended you with my post, Glen, I really, really didn't mean to do that. And, I wasn't trying to just come in here and trash Vegas either, as it's one of my favorite programs and the reason I check this forum from time to time.

"I've been shooting and editing video professionally for about 3 years now, and I SEVERELY disagree that "it only matters if your editing in your basement for your own stuff and don't have clients"- bit. lol How MORE uninformed can a person be?

When I made the remark of editing in a basement, I wasn't implying that you did nor that you don't have clients. It was meant as a general statement. I was trying to point out that if working alone and not in a post shop, any editing application you favour will do the job.

"How MORE uninformed can a person be?"

Here's my background. I own three DV editing suites, one running Premiere Pro 1.5 and Vegas/OHCI, another Canopus Edius/Storm and another with Avid Xpress DV. I'm a PC guy, but also teach film/video part-time as my schedule allows, most recently at Sheridan College here in Toronto, where I also use and instruct on Final Cut Pro. I just finished a TV series for IFC called "Make Your Movie" with Christian Bale, Norman Jewison, Peter Bogdanovitch, Robert McKee, Conrad Hall, ASC and many others, which I produced/directed/edited, and I created the Cyber Film School Internet website and Moviemaking CD-ROM (http://www.cyberfilmschool.com).

Besides juggling editing gigs, I also shoot film and video (camera resume can be found at http://www3.sympatico.ca/mbelli/camres.htm). I guess I've been in film and video for around 25 years.

In regards to Vegas being similar to Premiere Pro, I had to comment because it was an odd statement as there's very little similarity between the two programs and didn't want anyone reading this thread to get the wrong idea. They both edit DV and are equally powerful, but they do it quite differently.

"The editing program used, matters in the minds of your clients, it matters.......It does?! Wow it seems you know more about "my" cleints than "I" do. Thank you, kindly, for the insight."

In saying "your clients", I didn't mean your personal clients I was suggesting everyone's clients -- mine and yours.

"I think that Final Cut is better than Vegas, however, it's not that much better. Final Cut has to be the most overhyped program to come out ever!!!!
You said it- key word being "opinion". Thanks for your visit to the Vegas board."

I love Vegas and use it. It's really quite good. However, in a pro environment it suffers in some significant areas. I based the opinion of my thread on:

- no available hardware acceleration solutions such as those available for Final Cut or Premiere (Canopus DVStorm, Matrox DV cards)

- preview renders are lost on the Vegas timeline when clips are shifted/moved/trimmed, Premiere and Final Cut do a better job of retaining previews. Very time consuming as Vegas renders are slow, network rendering is buggy and as stated no hardware acceleration card

- no nested timelines (I know you can open mulitple instances of Vegas, it's not the same)

- awkward, clunky interface compared to others (I know I'll get a debate over this one)

- lack of dual monitor windows on computer display and with that, lack of proper trim function via monitor windows like in Premiere or Avid

- weak main titler and lack of built-in motion type tool like Apple's Motion which has valuable and simple presets for a lot of animated text effetcs right out of the box (although compositing in Vegas, I have to admit is quite strong)

- weak media management compared to others

- limited edit list support compared to others

I can give many great, great Vegas good points as well.
But the above issues are some of the reasons why TV series are using Avid and Final Cut and not Vegas. Lack of hardware support is a major problem. You can't charge competitive rates on an edit job and expect clients to sit around waiting for Vegas to render, especially on tight deadlines.

"What matters to my clients is that they get the results they desire - NOT the program I use to get those results. As for workflow, Vegas has a very fast workflow"

Couple of points:

There is a difference in perceptions, in respect and even in the expectation of quality when you work on Avid. Go to a broadcaster, look for an editing gig there and tell them you cut on a PC with Vegas... see how far you get.

It's the same perception when shoot a big budget feature or commerical -- Panavision is the standard, even an Arri won't do. Or like, shooting broadcast without a Sony broadcast camera or a Nikon if you shoot stills.

I'm not saying that this thinking is right -- because it's not entirely, but it is a factor that has to be considered in your decision when buying professional gear or editing software.


Moe Belli
producer/director
IFC Canada, "Make Your Movie"
http://www.cyberfilmschool.com

[Simon Wyndham]

Moe, you're waaaay off the mark.

For a start what broadcast jobs are you on about? If I was commisioned to make, say, a documentary, they'd be worried about the delivery format I give them, not the editing program. In fact I know of quite a few broadcast spots that have been edited with Vegas in the past.

If however you were going for an interview to get a job as an editor in a broadcast network and only had Vegas experience, then yes, that might be a problem. But then again I don't know of many people in that kind of situation that have only edited with one package. Most of us here have used FCP or Premiere or equivilent in the past, or indeed still do for some projects.

Clunky interface? Well, I'm not going to go into detail, but the fact that you mentioned Vegas not having the same kind of trim or source window like Premiere shows that you really haven't grasped the point of the Vegas interface. Vegas allows me to perform functions in one or two clicks that on other systems would take much more. Further I can trim the clips using at least 3 different methods. That's far from clunky, and is more what I would personally describe as VERSITILE!

[Dan Euritt]

i think that moe is right on the money... and he's done a really good job of listing exactly where vegas falls short.

simon, perhaps you didn't see glenn's post, wherein he listed the lack of a magnet function in vegas: "I personally really like the way Final Cut handles snapping. When you're moving a clip around, it snaps to the edges of clips on other tracks. Vegas doesn't do this."

as i recall, in vegas you have to select the clip you want to snap to, then punch another key to select which end of that clip you want to snap to, before you can even do the edit(??)... that is a major workflow issue that requires more keystrokes per edit than the other editors do.

and there is a major bug in the so-called trim window, when it comes to selecting/de-selecting a shorter edit range from a long clip... no cure for that one, it's been discussed on the sony vegas forum at length.

the vegas titler feels pretty intuitive, but you can't export a title!! lets say you are a wedding videographer who wants to re-use titles with just minor changes... what are the options there, simon? how can you claim vegas is "versatile" when you have to recreate every single title in every project from scratch?? what a dog-slow way to edit.

on the plus side, vegas feels really dreamy to me... the way that you can move interface boxes around however you want has such a free feeling to it... this software just needs a major update before it hits it's stride... and hopefully some decent hardware support will come with it!

[Edward Troxel]

<<<-- Originally posted by Dan Euritt : as i recall, in vegas you have to select the clip you want to snap to, then punch another key to select which end of that clip you want to snap to, before you can even do the edit(??)... that is a major workflow issue that requires more keystrokes per edit than the other editors do.
-->>>

This does not make sense to me. You can easily reuse titles by simply saving presets. A simple change of the text and you are done. Scripting can also help in this matter (for example, if multiple keyframes were needed the script could add the text media and then set the two or three keyframes to the proper presets. Then only the text needs to be changed.)

[Dan Euritt]

ed, you make it sound so easy! i kinda think that we are talking about two different things, but why isn't the capability you just claimed covered in the titler section of the help file? how could sony be so stupid as to think that nobody will ever want to export a vegas title to another vegas project??

btw, i had snap capability over 10 years ago, with the old video machine software... it's really irritating to find that a modern editor like vegas won't let you do that without a bunch of extra keystrokes... not to mention the entire omission of the premiere magnet function itself.

what's funny is to hear people talk about how vegas is better because it's roots are in audio editing... rubbish... in acid 5, you don't need snapping to other tracks, because you are snapping to grid lines instead, but why should that logic be used on a video editor that doesn't have grid lines in the timeline? vegas can be so retarded with simple video editing concepts like that.

moe was being kind when he called it clumsy, lol.

thanks for suggesting presets, i'm going to try and see if it'll somehow work for titler exporting :-/

EDIT: now i remember the problem... yes, you can save a title in the timeline as a preset, but only to the default folder... multiple projects with dozens of title presets that can't be location-managed is a workflow disaster... why isn't there a "save as" for those title presets?

using windows explorer, you can see where the presets are saved as .dxp files, but deleting 'em there still leaves some kind of bastard empty placeholder preset within the vegas project that can't be deleted... it has a name but it's empty.

i think the root of the issue is the inability of vegas to do a true copy and paste function... the only thing you are doing there is pointing back to the location of the original file, instead of actually creating a true seperate copy of the file.

when you look at the vegas program file structure in windows explorer, you see no subdirectories for the different projects... that data must be somewhere else.

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

Can you run plug-ins for Premiere and/or After Effects in Vegas? I would think that might be another FCP advantage.

[Glen Elliott]

Dan you make it sound so difficult. If you want a piece of media to snap flush to the edge of another piece of media on another track it only requires you to click the edge that your going to snap to. The cursor will automatically snap to the edge of the media- then simply drag the media you wanted to "snap" up against the timeline cursor you planted when you clicked the edge of the first piece of media.

They both have advantages and disadvantages. To say one is "better" than the other is a matter of personal opinion. Vegas is better for some users- FCP others.

Don't be mistaken- Vegas DOES have it's advantages as well:

- price
- scalability. Can run well on much slower hardware
- open architechture (people like Edward can write elaborate scripts to help comon editing tasks- ie Mulit Cam editing!)
- Much stronger audio tools
- Format agnostic, drop practically any type of media onto the timeline- NO RENDERING
- Mutiple instances can be run
- Network rendering (don't know if FCP has this)
- Velocity envelopes
- Transition Progress envelopes
- Bezier Masking and 3d compositing
- Customizable FX packages
...to name a few

[Simon Wyndham]

Exactly!

[Jim Lafferty]

Moe -- excellent post!

I agree with about 85% of what you say, save the "clunky interface" and "dual monitor" comments which seem to come from someone expecting Vegas to work like every other NLE.

All told, though, you're pretty spot on.

- jim

[Moe Belli]

<<<-- Originally posted by Simon Wyndham : Moe, you're waaaay off the mark.

For a start what broadcast jobs are you on about? If I was commisioned to make, say, a documentary, they'd be worried about the delivery format I give them, not the editing program. In fact I know of quite a few broadcast spots that have been edited with Vegas in the past.

Clunky interface? Well, I'm not going to go into detail, but the fact that you mentioned Vegas not having the same kind of trim or source window like Premiere shows that you really haven't grasped the point of the Vegas interface. Vegas allows me to perform functions in one or two clicks that on other systems would take much more. Further I can trim the clips using at least 3 different methods. That's far from clunky, and is more what I would personally describe as VERSITILE! -->>>

Sorry, guys, I was out of the country shooting most of the time, so I kind of neglected this post.

What I meant by a broadcast job is more or less one that is comissioned by a broadcaster, not one where an independent producer makes a series or doc, then sells to a network. The later of course can be cut with anything, and in the DV environment there is no quality diff between DV editing systems, although in fairness to Canopus I do feel their DV codec is slightly superior (yikes, now the wrath of this forum on how great the Sony Vegas DV codec is).

If a series or doc you make has a broadcaster involved up front (they have given you money to make it), as in my IFC series and other TV projects I've done -- the broadcaster depending on how much money or how much is at stake, or even how green the you are -- can easily breathe down your neck from principal photography to when you are cutting the thing to make sure the quality is there and they are getting their money's worth. So everything can come into question. Like, why are you using a little DV camera? What is the size of your crew? Why don't you cut on Avid like everyone else at CBC-TV or the last producer we used?

So, even though it might not make a difference in the current project, the network brass might reconsider the next project with you, if they think the quality isn't there or that you are not using top notch gear and equipment (this of course varies depending on how much money they have kicked in).

Now having said that, if the show is amazing and wins awards they don't give a crap, just know that if you are using your little DV handycam and Microsoft Moviemaker to cut instead of Final Cut or Avid and they know about it -- the show's gonna have to be ten times better than anything else.

Also, if you are a top notch producer with a track record, you could tell them you're gonna make your next project in Super 8 and your kid nephew is going to cut it with a cement splicer. They won't care cause of your rep!!!

Damn, hope I making some sense here???

Look, I love Vegas and use it for final audio mixing on my projects (that's why on occassion I pop by here). But to go back to your third paragraph in regards to clunky interface, let me re-phrase that, the interface is not a typical one with source/program dual monitor view found in every other editing app like Avid, Final Cut, Premiere and even Canopus Edius.

If we had a contest, you might beat me at getting work done more quickly with Vegas than me with Premiere, but you have to admit that in does not adhere to industry standards and one has to re-learn quite a bit to use it.

It's like if Panasonic makes a DVCPro50 camcorder to compete with Sony's Digital Betacam and then shoves the white/black balance button to the back, the gain to the top and the off/on button to the other side. THIS IS NOT DONE. A pro camera has to pretty well have most basic settings in exactly the same place or they would not be able to immediately pick it up the camera and go shoot with it. So -- look at most broadcast cams from Panasonic, Sony and Ikegami and tell me why they all look almost identical.

Vegas moves everything around, and that's fine -- was Vegas ever targetted by Sound Forge as a professional DV editing system? Look at it's roots and evolution, not sure that was ever the market. However, things could change and Vegas would have to change it's interface to suit that specific market. So, maybe we'll see Vegas Pro soon and I'm sure if we do, it will have an option to display a source/program dual window as well.

Good thread guys, great discussion.


Moe Belli