Question for video guys

I like Vegas better then Premiere. Vegas also supports the Mackie Control.

Vegas is actually the more powerful of the two. It has most of its stuff hidden in how it works with multi tracks and FX. It can do a lot with color for example in ways Premier can't. You will need to work with them both to see how they stack up.

But Final cut will only work on a Mac right?

ORIGINAL: mike_mccue

I use Premiere at my house because my cousin works at Adobe and I'm allowed an official family discount.

Premiere is almost a real video editing program... and additionally Encore seems to be the only current consumer/small business priced app capable of authoring a feature rich Blu-Ray disk. I do really like how the Adobe suite is sorta integrated... it's easy to drag a layered .psd into Premiere and After Effects etc.


If I was buying a new video editing system at retail... Final Cut Pro.

It's a no brainer... I work with people who own Avid, Discreet, and old Media 100 video systems (yes they are still making money on Media 100) and everyone has a Final Cut system as well.

Final Cut isn't panacea but I do think it's a no brainer.

best regards,
mike

ORIGINAL: tazman

i'm trying to decide whether to get Adobe Premier or Sony Vegas. Any suggestions? I was also looking at Avid, but it won't run on Vista.

Thank you

Sony Vegas... no contest. Looks and works just like Sonar for the most part even some of the quick keys are the same. You''ll love it. Adobe products are mostly hype.. even the business stuff.

Is Vegas prosumer or capable of professional editing (if that makes any sense)?

Go for vegas easy to work with.

The use will be for music videos and film production.
Scott - when you say "unless you are doing full feature film...". Why is vegas at the bottom for this category?

Thanks,

when you say "unless you are doing full feature film...". Why is vegas at the bottom for this category?

Because it has to compete with a bit more than only Premiere. Production Studio also has AfterEffects, and even Photoshop is used sometimes on video files, plus ofcourse Audition/Soundbooth. All that stuff is pretty integrated, and ultimately blows anything that Vegas can offer away. And you could still *expand* immensely on that, even. That's pretty serious software.

Vegas is definitely the best bang for the buck. However, I use Premier. Though you could probably create a similar looking project in either, Premier's tools are far superior IMO. I've also had a decent amount of exposure to Final Cut while taking classes at a university. Final Cut and Premier seem to be set up fairly similar. Vegas is definitely different, not that that's bad. Since Final Cut only works on a Mac, I won't mention it. As far as Avid is concerned, it has a great reputation, but I don't have any personal experience using Avid. So I'll just talk about Vegas and Premier.

It's been a while since I used Vegas so I could be wrong about some of these features...

In a Premier project a timeline is an object, you can have as many timelines as you want in a project and nest them. Therefore, you can easily break up a project into specific parts, each on their own timeline and just nest each of these parts into a final timeline, all in one project. This makes for a professional and easy workflow. All the timelines are available in tabs in the same project. I believe Vegas supports nesting of projects now, but the implementation to me seems very lacking in comparison. It means you have to work on each piece of the larger project using many smaller projects.

Both Vegas and Premier support key frames for manipulating parameter automation. However, Vegas's implementation totally blows in my opinion. They are difficult to work with and are totally unorganized.

Premier’s tool set is very organized and easy to use. For instance if you want to stretch a piece of video to fit into a specific time slot, just click the tool and drag the end of the clip into place. Done. It's very difficult to do some simple things like this in Vegas. By default clip looping is turned on in Vegas, which can make working with clips a pain, so in this instance you would have to create a subclip and guess at changing the playback speed to fit the clip. Almost impossible do as I mentioned with Premier.

I could go on about the list of tool comparisons but I don't want to try and think of all of them off the top of my head and I think you get the idea. It took me a while to come to these conclusions. It wasn't like I spent an hour using each program and determined I like Premier better. It was over years of using them.

Again, this is just my opinion and like I said, it's been a while since using Vegas so things may have changed considerably. Vegas is definitely a good program, and like I said the best bang for the buck. I personally like the tools in Premier. Also Premiers integration with the other Adobe products is very good, like in Adobe Creative Suite. However, it is very expensive and may not be necessary for what you need.

I have all 3.

My choice to work in is PREMIER.

VEGAS is easy and cheaper, but PREMIER gives me more of the pro results I need with certain post tasks, and integration to A.E. and Soundbooth, and ENCORE etc.. so I end up using PREMIER when I have a choice.

Final Cut Pro is very similar to PREMIER as some of the same people were involved in their creation...BUT F.C.P. does not automatically remove pulldown on import of 24P material, so I choose AGAIN to start with PREMIER.

Final Cut Studio Pro Bundle is VERY full featured and absolutely professional, the only drawback being the need for a MAC, and then having to go back and forth between two computers.

AS FOR PREMIER BEING COMPLICATED:
Man, honestly I think SONAR is way more complex than PREMIER...so if you can learn SONAR, PREMIER should be no problem.

one other point about Vegas - it works like an audio product. Because it is a audio multi-tracker. And video works the same way. Complex video effects, etc. are hard to do, but is you need to do editing, fades, stretching, etc. it is very easy to learn and quick to do. The effects are all there, but I'll bow out to those that do more video work. But for my purposes, it does all I need to w/o me needing to learn to re-invent the wheel.

Also, I've always found adobe stuff unintuitive, having to grab a new tool for the simplest things. I've used it enough now so that it isn't like having two left thumbs, but my curing quotent always goes up because it doesn't operate like a DAW/audio program or even, in a lot of cases, like a windows program. I'm sure it is just what you are used to, but for me it is a big pain.

@

Any SONY camera will work great with VEGAS. VEGAS will pick up the camera when you plug it in and DL your files.

Which ever way you go, try to qualify for an 'academic' discount from www.academicsuperstore.com.
I've been getting most of my stuff there and saved tons of money. Premier and Vegas are both there.

Thanks everyone. As far as premier. i have the Adobe Web CS3 (it includes Photoshop, etc). If I were to look at premier, which package would I want to look at? They have a few.,

Yeah, they keep changing those suites with every new version it seems. I'd get the one with Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects and Flash, minimally.

Maybe check out a few (free) AfterEffects tutorials on videocopilot.net (Andrew Kramer). Then you see that the days of using Premiere (or Vegas for that matter) as a kind of glorified Windows Moviemaker, are behind us.

You really need some more skills, these days, and that's were programs as After Effects come in, totally blowing programs like Vegas out of the water. At least with Premiere, you won't have to start all over again, it's more of a natural extension.

It's a bigger investment, but on the longer run the wiser choice, I think - assuming you are also someone who essentially wants to be able to do as much as possible himself, like me.

If you want to set up a small studio, doing animation/greenscreen stuff, it's even the only affordable way to go, at the moment.

[edit for missing words]

I don't want to derail the thread, since it's originally a comparison between 2 video sequencers, but maybe check this discussion on Creative Cow:

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/917320#917435

also check some of those showcase videos done in AE. I nearly fell off my chair watching those only 6 months back. Now here's me, having tons of fun with it. Gah.