Why Vegas over Premiere?

[Stephen Eastwood]

Curious of the pros and cons of vegas over other editing on a PC. I am using a new Vista system, so far have dual core 5000 amd, 4 gigs of ram, two dvi 256 meg ram on an nvidia 8700 and will add a second card to run two dvi one off this and one off the 8700, and on the 8700 I will also run a 42inch 1080 lcd as a means to view direct on a TV instead of monitor only.

I will be editing HDV from a Canon XHA1 and possibly a HV20 as the backup, but mainly the XHA1. And mainly 24p/f but possibly 60i as well.

Should I get a matrox card? does it make a difference? if so how much on board memory is enough? Matrox said they have card that have 128 that would be better than one nvidia at 512? any recommendations?

Anything else I should get up and running? have several drives in a raid, all sata and some firewire externals, plus at the moment have a second firewire card in the system so I can run the camera an drives seperately if needed. I will also be using a firestore most often for download instead of direct capture if that matters.

Thanks for any help, I am coming from a still background and just getting started in this and looking for as much info as I can get.

Stephen Eastwood
http://www.StephenEastwood.com

[Michael Vaden]

Well I own both Adobe Premiere Pro and Vegas 7.0e. I'm still learning Adobe Premiere Pro 2, but I'll do what I can.

To me Vegas is more user friendly, and it's easier to edit on it than Adobe Premiere. I normally upload my footage and edit in Vegas, then I go to Adobe Premiere to work out the rest.

Vegas doesn't use as much memory as Premiere. I used Vegas on a Pentium III laptop with 128 MB! I still have this laptop.

Adobe is great because I can view two windows, before and after.

That's all I can get into for now. I love both the programs. Once again, I'm still learning Premiere Pro 2. Hope this helps...

[Steven Bills]

To me, Vegas had a much easier learning curve than Premiere did. Working in Vegas is faster as well. For example, it took more work in Premiere to add a fade to the end of a clip than it did in Vegas. I had to go look for the effect in its bin, and that could take a while to find. In Vegas, however, you just grab the top right corner of the clip and drag it to however long of a fade you want. Simple.

SB

[Glenn Chan]

1- Vegas doesn't do GPU acceleration, so it doesn't benefit from a powerful graphics card. Premiere doesn't do GPU acceleration either, but can use hardware acceleration cards like the Axio and something else. Some people find they have stability problems with Premiere (esp. when the hardware acceleration card is incompatible)??

For Vegas, it may be the only reason to get a Matrox card is if you need three monitors attached to that card.

2- I'm not sure if Vegas is compatible with Vista; the Sony Creative Software forum may have more info. There'a a forum specifically for Vegas/Vista.

3- I tried Premiere Pro briefly and didn't like its interface at all. The interface is tweaked so its Adobe-like... so that it's analogous to other Adobe programs (photoshop, AE, etc.). But IMO it's a stupid design that's not the most efficient way of doing things... you do a little more button pushing than necessary.

What I like about Vegas is that you can get everything done inside the program, without the hassle of moving between programs (like you would with the Adobe suite). The audio tools built into Vegas are excellent... it's like Audition built into the NLE.

Where I would consider the Adobe suite is if I needed AE Pro or Photoshop... the suite is a good value if you need those programs. And Vegas' compositing is basic, whereas After Effects does advanced compositing, special effects stuff, and broadcast design work.

4- For bread and butter editing (e.g. cuts and dissolves, simple titles, mix your audio), Vegas will do the job fast. And it's pretty good value (check out videoguys and B&H's bundles).

If you really need AE or Photoshop, then I'd strongly consider the Adobe suite. A lot of it really depends on what you do... and part of it is what clicks with your brain. You could try out the demos. Vegas (and even the light version of it... Vegas Movie Studio) are probably appropriate if you're getting started.

[Cary Lee]

I personally tried premiere 1.5 before switching to vegas 5.0. The time you save in editing is amazing after I switched. Not to mention the Premiere was very slow in the workflow and tend to lockup at times. I'm sure the new 2.0 version is much better but now that I am on Vegas 7.0e there is no need to switch back. I would rather be shooting new footage rather than spending my time editing. Not to mention VAAST has a lot of supplimental programs that is beneficial. As for sound..I use the vegas and acid as my DAW. Even though I have Protools M-powered, I prefer using Vegas.

[Buba Kastorski]

Vegas is faster, less resources intensive, more user friendly and it runs on Vista OK, I say OK because you get some warning messages about MS Framework, but nothing major, so far stable and fast as it is on XP SP2,
The only thing I miss in Vegas compare to Adobe, is when I need motion faster than 300%, not as easy to do in Vegas

[Edward Troxel]

You can get 1200% easy in Vegas

Velocity Envelope up to 300%
Playback Rate (CTRL-Resize) up to 400%

Combined is 1200%

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Steven Bills

it took more work in Premiere to add a fade to the end of a clip than it did in Vegas. I had to go look for the effect in its bin, and that could take a while to find. In Vegas, however, you just grab the top right corner of the clip and drag it to however long of a fade you want. Simple.
SB

I can do this in premiere with just one key stroke as you can assign a crossfade to any key.

Originally Posted by Carey lee

I personally tried premiere 1.5 before switching to vegas 5.0. The time you save in editing is amazing after I switched. Not to mention the Premiere was very slow in the workflow and tend to lockup at times.SB

In allmost 3 years of editing (As a full time wedding videographer) premiere 1.5 has crashed 2 times on me and even then it gave me the option to save the last changes I made and I didn"t loose anything.
Premiere uses sequences which I regard a better workflow solution then how vegas is handling this.

Now don't get me wrong here, the reason why I contradict some statements here is that it is my feeling that a lot of non premiere user underestimate the product because they don't know it's strength. Their actually a lot like me, I have tried Vegas several times now on a project and it allmost drove me nuts. What I did without thinking, and very fast in premiere, took me ages to do in Vegas. I am sure though there is a way to do thing much easier and faster in Vegas but I"m not used to it and did'nt digg deep enough.

It's the same way for a many people who come from Vegas and try premiere for a while, both NLE's are like night and day when it comes to the way it has been designed and both have their strengths and weaknesses.

[Chris Barcellos]

I have both Premiere 2.0 and Vegas 7. I cut my first films on Pinnacle Studio, then went to Premiere in a Pinnacle editing board package, so it was a progression from me. Premiere has become second nature in terms of GUI, and 2.0 only required a little bit of change in process as an upgrade. I especially like the ability to prepare a sequence, then drag all of the sequences to a common time line to finalize the edit. I also think the titler is superior to the Vegas Titler.

I began using Vegas 7.0 defensively, because I felt I needed to learn it to know what others are talking about with it. It was difficult for me to understand its interface, just the same way Vegas users have a problem with the Adobe interface. After having it for six months, though, I have to say I have become more enamoured with it. I think one of the problems I could not overcome is the VideoFX and the way transitions are handled. Premiere seems more repeatable and accessable there, but then again, I am sure I have a lot to learn about Vegas yet, and I keep learning new tricks as I go along. I'm sure taking a VAAST course would help,,,, but then I learned Premiere by trial and error, mostly... so .......

I just completed an edit with Cineforms NeoHDV in Vegas, and the resulting HD file was spectacular, and it wasn't that hard to work with... so I think I am sold...

[Emre Safak]

I tend to find Adobe's programs bloated. I use Vegas for cutting and various other programs, such as After Effects, to finish off the job.

[Marco Wagner]

I like PPRO 2.0 better personally, I can assign so many keystrokes to otherwise timely "click-flows". I love the integration with Photoshop, AE, and the whole CS suites. I'm using hardware accel. on a 7900GT, it's got to be doing something because I hear the dang cooler fan spin up like mad.

[John Miller]

I dislike Premiere Pro 1.5.1. It's unintuitive, the documentation is dreadful and there are things you can't do that you could in Premiere 4.0! I recently "remastered" a video that I did with Premiere 4.0 back in 1995 on a 486DX100 Win3.1 PC. Many of the transitions like "spin away" no longer exist, so I had to create the same effect using very complicated (i.e., time consuming to create) motion settings. You can't save the settings for repeat use in other projects as far as I can tell (the documentation sucks and I even have Studio Techniques book/DVD by Jacob Rosenberg).

Adobe claim that PPro was a complete rewrite of the code - the places it crashes demonstrate that's not true.

Type 1 DV-AVI files are not correctly supported but you wouldn't know it. I kept getting crashes (not always) until I used Type 2. (I use our own program to capture DV). I stumbled across the solution and ended up with more than 2 hrs of Type 1 files to convert to Type 2. Some Type 1 ones would import, others would crash. If imported, the audio wouldn't get rendered. And only for NTSC. I tried PAL, too. Type 1 PAL imported just fine and the audio got rendered.

AFAIK, PPro does not have any scripting capability. May be 3.0 does(?). Vegas does.

PPro 1.5.1's DVD creation is a pain - you can't create DVD images to test it. You have to burn to DVD. Lots of coaster-making opportunity. I installed Virtual CD to help with that. No menu creation capability. Again, PPro 3.0 may be different.

I have no need/desire for After Effects and Photoshop, so the integration is irrelevant.

Vegas is significantly less expensive. I'm seriously considering it.

As a programmer, from what I can gather based on studying them, PPro has a better Software Development Kit than Vegas.

So, I'm at the point where I need to decide Vegas vs. PPro upgrade. I'm leaning heavily towards Vegas.

[Mike Tesh]

Wow I love the fact that even though this is a Vegas forum, we're getting a good amount of points from both sides.

That being said, editing with Premiere is like breathing with a corset on. You can do it, but why?

I started using Premiere 5 in the late 90's and cut a few shorts film on it. But it crashed constantly. Then I switched to Vegas Video 3 and haven't turned back... until now.

The only reason I'm looking into Premiere again is because I got a job at a web design house that runs adobe creative suite. I do their audio/video. So it makes sense for them to buy one package that does print, web and audio/video. I was kind of forced into learning Premiere Pro, which I'm still doing. I admit certain parts of Premiere are nice and I do want to learn it for my own benefit. Especially since I love Photoshop and After Effects. I just wish they would build Premiere to be a little more fluid, like Vegas.

From my current perspective, if you've never done any editing before and don't own any software you're probably better off buying into Premiere. Not only will you get the integration with other adobe apps but as far as I understand Premiere is used in more places. Plus from what I hear Premiere is similar to Final Cut Pro. This also comes from my current distrust with Sony as well, pushing to turn Vegas into a proprietary edit suite for Sony formats. I don't know that, but I get that feeling.

As much as I love Vegas and dislike the stiff Premiere interface, I think you're safer with Premiere in the long run.

[Marco Wagner]

Originally Posted by John F Miller

I dislike Premiere Pro 1.5.1. Many of the transitions like "spin away" no longer exist, so I had to create the same effect using very complicated (i.e., time consuming to create) motion settings.

I think spin away came back in PPRO2.0, i don't remember it ever leaving, but I'll need to check.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Gang, this is becoming dangerously close to being a "bash Premiere" thread; we'd like to avoid that direction, please.