Back in Vegas

[Charles Newcomb]

I gave it a valiant effort. A year ago I bought a Mac and all the software and then got Final Cut Studio 2, now Final Cut Studio 3, and upgraded to Snow Leopard. I even got a Macbook Pro for field work. Try as I might, and God knows I've tried, I just can't come to like FCP. I hate it. You have to go outside the program do do many things you can do from the timeline in Vegas, and you have to render everything to see how it's going to look. I found myself continually going back to Sony Vegas on the Windows side of the Mac in order to work efficiently and quickly. But even with Bootcamp and running Vegas in WIndows, there are glitches. So I'm going to buy a new Windows machine and sell this tank to some Apple fanboy.

By the way... I'm convinced now the Mac snobs are only that way because they've never used anything else. At least I TRIED FCP for a year.

So... having been away from the Windows environment for a while, I thought some advice would be in order. My old WIndows machine (and Windows on the Mac) ran under 32 bit XP Pro. The machine I'm looking at has 64 bit W7 and 16GB RAM. My version of Vegas is 8.0d (I think) , so I'll have to upgrade. If I do that, will all my veggies and previous projects open?

Suggestions (without getting too technical) deeply appreciated.

[Edward Troxel]

I would upgrade to 9. You might want to install both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. While many plugins do work in 64-bit (i.e. NewBlue, Excalibur, Ultimate S, etc...) many others do not (i.e. Magic Bullet, Pixelan, etc...). The 32-bit plugins still work in the 32-bit version of Vegas on the 64-bit OS's, though.

Your older VEG files will open. You should immediately do a Save As because if you save over the older version, you will not be able to open them again in the older versions of Vegas.

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Charles Newcomb

you have to render everything to see how it's going to look.

This was my main beef too, no matter how much horsepower under the hood, it was render render render. Color was out of my pay grade and I didn't have the hardware to do it justice anyhow. I did like Soundtrack pro though.

Best bang for you buck to my mind is a Dell Refurb, but if you were able to afford a Mac and FCP in the first place, that's probably not an issue. Dell does offer tech support, which isn't the same thing as *good* tech support.

[Gerald Webb]

Re. getting Vegas 9 64 bit, see my thread on XP v 7 64bit. Ive got dramas but that may be just me and my wacky PC.
If you have 8c I personally would not outlay any more cash for 9, not yet anyway.

I did the same thing with Mac, I read everywhere that to have any kind of career in video you MUST learn FCP. So when an Imac was on special one day......... well lets just say the wife rolled her eyes in disgust. lol.
I got Final cut express and had a valiant effort at a heap of tutorials, but in the end, IMO the program seems archaic compared to Vegas, it is soooooooooo slow in everything you do.
Has some really good fx and LIve Type was fun, but Im back in Vegas again, for good i think.
If only Vegas would get bezier keyframing , then it would be the bomb!

[Keith Paisley]

funny, I went through the same thing, but I didn't last as long. I wasted hundreds of dollars on final cut only to learn that it is absolute garbage. I only tried making it work for a few weeks, but the more I tried living with it, the quicker I learned it would never suit my needs. RENDER RENDER RENDER EVERYTHING HAS TO FREAKING RENDER. Vegas, even in a VMWARE VIRTUAL MACHINE is MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than Final Cut. Vegas absolutely SCREAMS on my macbook pro when booting win 7 in bootcamp.

It sucks because I have to boot into bootcamp to do my video editing on the road, and I have to maintain a dedicated windows 7 video editing machine in my office (my main desktop machine is also a mac), but it's worth it. I honestly do not understand, for the life of me, how mac zealots convinced themselves and so many other folks that Final Cut was worth the hassle. It's a crime that Apple doesn't offer some sort of trial download of Final Cut.

My life would be much easier if Sony would port Vegas to OSX...

[Charles Newcomb]

Whew. I'm glad it wasn't just me.

I'm keeping the MacBookPro and FCS on that, just for the times when someone absolutely HAS to have QT .mov files handed over at the shoot. That's happened a couple of times.

I am a bit out of the Windows loop, however. But I've come to trust Edward's generous advice over the years, so maybe I'll do the dual 32/64 bit route until things settle in. Or maybe I'll just stick with V8 and XP Pro for awhile.

BTW: I did not try VMWare or Parallels with Vegas on my Mac. Neither supported Firewire at the time I looked into it, so it would have been pointless. Also, I did not know you could run W7 under Bootcamp. I thought you could only run XP.

[Dave Blackhurst]

If you've already got Vegas 8 (can't justify 9 myself, 8 does what I need), you can always download whatever the last build (c?) was, AND there's a 64 bit version (8.1), which you can enter your serial # and it will work right alongside the 32 bit version (doing that right now since my multicam doesn't work in the 64 bit version).

Trying to refine the workflow a bit, but right now it's edit in 8c, and render in 8.1... still working all the kinks out of Win 7 and all my apps!

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good evening,

what an intersting thread. Probably, like Most, I have thought about going to a MAC (particularly when I used adobe). I have not because I am kind of cheap by nature and there is far more support software in the PC world. Sense my move to Vegas from premiere pro the urge totally dwindled.


I run two machines a 32 bit xp dual core and a Dell xps work station with an I7 quad in a 64 bit configuration. with 6 gigs of ram.

8c works very well in the 32 bit environment!!
8.1a in 64 bit caused me way to much greif.

9 in the latest form is good and now runs cineform too and I have no problems with it.

9 in the latest 64 bit form is working excellent for me and I have been running some serious composited and cc work through it and it is first class so far. However I have not got it using the cineform yet, do not know why!!

if you want 64 bit I would go with 9!!!

I have both 9's and 8.0c on both desk tops and only 8 c on my laptop.


Good Luck

[Chris Barcellos]

Ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... You guys need to stop spreading the word around. We don't want the Vegas people to start running up the price of the program..

The first time I used Vegas 7 coming out of Premiere Pro 2.0, I figured I wasn't doing something right. Everything seemed to simplified. I must have been doing something wrong...I actually quit using it after trying it, because I couldn't figure out how to do things "harder". Yes, I said harder. The other programs have all these steps you had to go through. I had seen some fighting through all the Final Cut rituals. I had done the same in Premiere. Vegas was obviously not doing things right. It just couldn't be that easy. I let it rest a couple of months. Finally I came back to it, and it just seemed so much cleaner and user friendly. That was about 2 and half years ago, and I am up to 9 now, upgrading as I go along at the discount initial upgrade prices that Vegas offers. .

[Imran Zaidi]

I just went through the same drama myself. I do a lot of daily work on my macbook and was considering committing to editing on Mac too, shifting away from the old version of Vegas I had on my old video editing PC. But I needed new hardware. In the end the decision was about performance vs cost. I knew I needed an i7, but the cheapest you can get into an i7 on a Mac is the $2300ish iMac (limited in its own way). I got myself into a super fast i7 flexible PC workstation with 8gb RAM and RAID for under $1200 (which on an iMac is both super-expensive and impossible, respectively). That leaves a lot of room for other hardware and software. And I happily continue to use my macbook for writing and other supportive works.

Plus, let's be realistic, many of us do most if not all of our post work ourselves- it's not like we're collaborating in large teams where more industry standard tools may be necessary. Pick the thing that will get you the most bang for the buck. And effort. I mean, Vegas is pretty effortless considering how capable it is.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Yup Vegas is still one of the best kept secrets. My switch to Final Cut Pro only resulted in adding a couple of Macs to my office. But, I just can't give up the Vegas workstations, which was kinda the point. Two years in, and I'm still stuck straddling both NLEs. FCP because I have to, but Vegas because I want to.

Vegas for the Mac. That would be a nice Christmas present.

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

The other programs have all these steps you had to go through.

That's what I thought with FCP as well. Too many steps.

This isn't a a mac versus pc thing, frankly I think Mac is way better, my Mac just works, I literally have to keep soft classical music on 24-7 to keep my pc happy. FCP is also way slower than Edius.

[Mike Calla]

Originally Posted by Imran Zaidi

let's be realistic, many of us do most if not all of our post work ourselves- it's not like we're collaborating in large teams where more industry standard tools may be necessary.

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

...coming out of Premiere Pro 2.0, I figured I wasn't doing something right. Everything seemed to simplified. I must have been doing something wrong...

Agreed!!! FCP, AVID and Adobe all have that multi-user collaboration in mind... if that what makes them "pro" so be it!

I too came out of Premiere and AVID - when i started using Vegas i couldn't believe it was that easy!

I just mentioned this in another post - i tried AVID and Premiere again (don't hate me), i just wanted to see what the newest versions were like - so many steps... Not....For....Me!

[Chris Barcellos]

Right on cue, my Sony Media news letter boasts about Video Maker Magazine selecting Vegas Pro and CS4 in a tie for Best Video Editing Packages for 2009:

Videomaker's Best Video Products of the Year 2009 (page 2)


Here is their article/review of Vegas:

Videomaker's 2009 Best Video Editing Suite: Sony Vegas 9 Pro Video Editing Software Review