Vegas... convince me. Can I edit video with this software?

[Chris Hurd]

Howdy from Texas,

Rarely do you ever see me posting in this forum... because I'm not a Vegas user. As proud as I am that this community has been around *forever* on DV Info Net, the truth is that I just don't know what I'm missing with this software. I'm wondering if the right person here can change that.

What I need is a tutorial video -- not one that's already out there, but one that's produced fresh by a member of this community. The target run time would be 7 to 10 minutes. Your audience isn't just me, but people like me:

1. in need of a PC-based NLE and ready to buy;
2. some previous editing experience... *not quite* a beginner;
3. not a stranger to the current NLE landscape, but unfamiliar with Vegas.

This is a PAYING job. I didn't see the point of posting it in Helping Hands since it really just applies to this forum. There's a budget for this project. We'll discuss the money offline.

You can come from anywhere in the world, but the voiceover needs to be done in very clear English (sorry about that).

You don't have to physically appear in the video. It can be done entirely as a desktop presentation with voiceover, no problem. That said, if you'd like to show your face, you're perfectly welcome to do so.

This would be an exclusive for DV Info Net and it'll carry your branding plus mine.

Yes the purpose is drive new customers to Vegas, however what I'm looking for is a new-to-Vegas tutorial, not a sales pitch. Can you show me how to edit video with this software?

Contact me directly at (chris at dvinfo dot net) if you don't want to reply here. Thanks!

[Seth Bloombaum]

Interested!

I have some specific background & skills/experience that may be helpful, or maybe not...

I'll contact you off the forum.

[Chris Hurd]

Seth... you've got mail.

[Leslie Wand]

hi chris, thanks for the forum....

i think you might be just a tad too late drumming up support for vegas. whilst there are a great many die-hards still using it, i would say the great majority of serious editors have moved on, with many going to resolve.

i once used to teach video production and wholeheartedly recommended vegas, but that sort of stopped at 11, and since then, though i used it personally, couldn't recommend it due to it's growing bugs and instability.
i used 13 till resolve 12.5 came out, i tried 14 but wasn't willing to pay for bad icons and nothing much else. whilst it was under the sony banner it had some 'cachet', but since magix's take over one's left wondering....

i'm still checking in though and waiting for 15 to see if there's any future for it in my workflow.

[Graham Bernard]

Originally Posted by Leslie Wand

. . . whilst there are a great many die-hards still using it, i would say the great majority of serious editors have moved on, with many going to resolve.

What are you basing the "Great Majority" on? You have figures? Please share.

[Leslie Wand]

no figures, but looking at the various forums a great many names i knew and respected have dropped off, among them dse, johnny roy, cliff, bob, etc.,and they're all still in the industry.

among the many students (dozens) who i taught over the years nearly all of them have dropped vegas, be it that they've found themselves jobs where other nle's are used (fcp, ppro, edius, etc.,), or have simply found vegas to have become, as a few put it 'stale'. of course, it doesn't help that they are buying new computers with powerful video cards that vegas simply doesn't use...

i have used vegas extensively for over 15 years, for a while i was an ardent evangelist, but times change as do the tools of the trade. whilst vegas was the mustang of its day, it has now become (in my eyes) simply a top of the line ford sedan - it's still an nle to contend with, but by no means as powerful as it once was and most certainly lacking innovation and serious development.

[Graham Bernard]

There you have it Chris!

[David Stoneburner]

I first started with Vegas v6. I bought it to try it out. I have been using Premiere since v5 and was a strong user of Liquid Edition till Avid killed it. Never was an Avid fan and have always worked on PCs, so no FCP. I still use Vegas12 for my personal editor at home. It does the simple editing that I need to do. At work, I'm in a transition but stayed with Premiere for the last 18 years. I've have not seen the need to pay for the jump to Vegas 14, and I'm afraid that it will die out like LE. I would agree with some of the others that it's a mid level player. My recommending it would be based on the editing needs, experience and budget of the client.

[Steven Davis]

I would do it but I would have to include hours of euphemistic mild angry words staring at screen.

On a serious note, congrats for doing this. Something Sony never took time to do right.

[Jack Zhang]

I would do this but I don't have the latest version to play with. I only have Version 10, and they changed a lot in 13 and 14.

[Paul R Johnson]

I've kind of dropped Sony now that they sold the products off to Magix - who want lots of money to upgrade, and worse, the sony authentication numbers don't work on the magix site - so I've switched entirely to Adobe now.

[Steven Davis]

Paul,

I may be in the same boat. I thought FCPX may be the way for me to go. But I want to learn AE and at least for now, I plan to pick up a Mac trashcan next year, so I'm thinking of going Trashcan with an Adobe Cloud subscription.

Was Premiere challenging to learn? The last Premiere I messed with was over 12 years ago.

[Paul R Johnson]

Well, I started with it in 94 - and each evolution hasn't been too bad. I suspect that none are easier or worse than the others, just a little different that's all. I found photoshop back then impossible, but once I spent some serious time with it, I was a convert. I'm still a beginner with AE.

The one thing I have realised is that tutorials actually don't help much. If you want to make one feature work, then it points you in the right direction, but after spending an hour with AE producing some beautiful effects, I find that then trying to use these in my own projects is terrible.

Sticking 1.35 into one box and 2.76 into another teaches you nothing at all that is transferable, so you need time to experiment with the differences that 1.34 or 1.36 make.

So many territorial are people showing off, or thinking they are making tutorials, when they are not - they are showing processes - and the essential link to real projects is missing. I have never seen a tutorial where the expert says - now, I'm using an ellipse, but you could use a triangle to do x or a rectangle to to Y - they n' do this, because each decision point produces infinite numbers of possibilities.

Even simple stuff like green screen keying falls into these traps. They don't mention what you do when you do have hair with voids the green shows through, or studios too small so the shoulder get green reflections. This is the good tutorials, the rubbish ones are even more pointless.

So far - Premiere has edited everything I have needed to do. I find it fine, and the integration in the CC suite really works for me - So Vegas and Sound Forge that I actually liked, are now dead for me - and I had to spend a bit more time with Audition to get up to speed on audio, as I'd got the Sound Forge system in my head.

[Leslie Wand]

system in my head...

i think this is one of the main reasons why many people stick with whatever nle they're familiar with. this in itself is no bad thing, editing becomes much more fluid if you don't have to think about the physical process, and once you've become accustomed to using an nle it's likely you'll stick with it (unless jobs, etc., force you to work with another). sticking with it means putting up with its idiosyncrasies, bugs, etc., but because of ones familiarity and investment in both time and money, we tend to defend our choice come what may and spruke its benefits to all and sundry.

i'm talking as an old fart who worked his way through almost every nle on the market over the last 20+ years. however, talking with my ex-students and other young aspiring editors i'm surprised how nle agnostic they've become. in fact they think nothing of jumping from mac to windows, resolve to vegas with ae in between.

so, yes you can edit with this software, but you can also edit with a lot of other software, and for all of them you can find endless good, and bad, youtube videos explaining how to do things.

so chris, i think your intentions are well founded, but likely to be superfluous to the new generation of editors, who never RTFM, and ask any questions they have on forums without even searching to see if they've already been answered.

yes, bit of a rant i know ;-)

[Phil Lee]

Hi

I'm looking to leave Vegas as well. Version 14 just seems to be bug fixes but they are charging for it so I'm still on 13. I'm fed up with spending hours troubleshooting issues. A current problem I have is end to end work flow with 0-255 MP4s and despite Vegas being in full range 32 bit mode, and the MP4s flagged as 'Full range', drop them on the timeline and a Studio to Computer level adjustment takes place and they are clipped at both ends. Surely Vegas, if I've selected full range video, and my clip is marked as full range, why the conversion! I know it is Vegas doing this and not the codec as I can add a Computer to Studio level filter on the clips (to cancel out the Vegas incorrectly applied one) and get all the clipped information back. I then can't render out as full range MP4 anyway. It's got all the flexibility to work with these files but still manages not to!

Sony obviously got rid of Vegas because it wasn't making any money, as you don't sell on a product if it makes you a profit do you, so the fact it is now owned by another company is sort of an indicator user numbers are falling.

Regards

Phil