Stability and plugins are definitely wrong. Premiere has a PLETHORA of plugins available whereas Sony has a very few. Stability Vegas wins out the majority of the time but CS3 has seemed very stable thus far.

Integration is the biggest difference between the two. I no longer have to render to bring footage into After Effects or from AE back into Premiere. This will ALWAYS be a knock on Vegas especially since Sony will never be integrated with AE.

I love Vegas and will still continue to use it for obscure format edits. But if I was going to place my feature with one camp, Adobe brings a lot more to the table with Production Premium and all that it encompasses.

I will be actually writing a review on it here shortly within the next week. Ill let you know the final outcome.

Very curious how you rated these, as some of the points are highly debateable while others are spot-on. What were the criteria, how were they rated?

Ill play along and provide my ratings however some groups I will change as I feel it has more bearing than the original group and Ill give my reasons for so.

Rendering or exporting work finished (Ill add output options)
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 10
Vegas 7 >>> 8

Premiere has raised the bar in export output. Obviously the ability to author BD is huge and thus far, no other NLE has offered it. Add to it that Premiere can export Flash and H.264 AVC (presets for all of the various video-social sites i.e. Myspace, Yahoo, youtube, Google) it also supports the High profile for H.264 AVC codec. It is just plain sad that Vegas still has not offered any type of next gen authoring especially since they developed the format. It doesnt look good when your competitors beat you out the door with your own invention.

Workspaces
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 10
Vegas 7 >>> 10

This is a push. Vegas was better until CS3 was released. Adobe's integration and panel control throughout all apps brought it up to par.

Audio and video FXs (Ill add plugins)
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 10
Vegas >>> 9

Vegas' lack of thrid party plugs have always been a killer. Just about any plug out there plugs into AE, Premiere, PS. Vasst, JetDV, and the like write really useful plugins for Vegas but I feel if it werent for them, Vegas would have VERY little plugins at all. Vegas outshines Premiere when it comes to audio hands down.

Tools
Premiere Pro CS3 >>>
Vegas 7 >>>

Its a push. It doesnt matter how you get it done as long as you get it done. An NLE is an NLE. A cut is a cut. Adobe's titler puts Vegas to complete shame. Vegas seems easier to maneuver around.

Help
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 9
Vegas >>> 10

Vegas has the edge but nowhere near the amount you claim. The integrated help in Premiere has improved dramatically with this release. Vegas' greatest help is right here on the forum with guys like Spot and the like.

Importing audio and video files
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 9
Vegas 7 >>> 9.5

Vegas is very format agnostic. Premiere closes the gap with the ability to import H.264 AVC files to the timeline as well.

Plug-Ins
Premiere Pro CS3 >>>10
Vegas 7 >>> 7

I answered this above. Vegas is on the short end of plugins. No argument available.


Integration with other applications
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 10
Vegas 7 >>> 5

Ill give Vegas a bit more credit here as it wasnt designed to integrate with other apps. However, integration is very important these days as more and more of us are becoming one man shows with regards to shooting, editing, compositing, and authoring. Adobe's integration is tight now among all of its apps.

Flexibility
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 8
Vegas 7 >>> 10

Ill take this as you mean scalability. Vegas just works on just about anything. No major hardware required. Inclusion of Cineform codec for HDV and support for XDCam gives Vegas a bigger edge of Premiere whereas codecs to ingest various formats (no cineform or AVCHD) will only lead to more costs for Premiere users.


Stability
Premiere Pro CS3 >>>
Vegas 7 >>> 10

Cant comment on stability as CS3 is too new. Vegas 7 has been rock solid. Compared to previous versions of Premiere, Vegas has crashed for me maybe once for every 10 times Premiere has crashed. Thus far, CS3 has not crashed on me so perhaps they have tightened the bolts as well.

Time to load a big files (AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.4Ghz and 2.1 Ghz Ram)
Premiere Pro CS3 >>> 8 (more quick)
Vegas 7 >>> 6 (less quick)

I am assuming you are referring to audio conforming. CS3 seems quicker than PP2 but Vegas still seems to read audio peaks quicker but not by much.

"What were the criteria, how were they rated?"

heehee
indeed...

OK, the tests was did WITHOUT plug-ing from other companies, ONLY the own plug-ins wich each application has.

And the criterias was did with the experience I have since 2001, when Vegas 2 and Premiere 5.5 runed on that years

The first version of Vegas wich it impresioned me was 4.

We hope what Vegas 8 comes strong and rocks the scene
Now DVD Architect 5 is sure what it comes with authoria for Blu Ray or HD DVD, because Adobe Encore CS3 cans make Blu Ray DVDs.

You think, if all the apps from Sony Creative Software could be adquired by a big enterprise like Adobe, Autodesk, Steinberg or Magix then all the apps adquired WILL BE more stables, more robust and more powerfull? and if that apps WOULD run on MAC and LINUXS then that apps will be the "DIVINE APPS" for audio and video NLE.

Juan

Stability is one issue, one that I can live with while whining about.

Reliability is an absolute showstopper for my business and of late all the SCS products that I use have failed me (and others) very badly. Sony are aware of all these bugs and yet have not only failed to address them but even failed to indicate that they'll even bother to fix them prior to the next major release, which based on the last round will introduce a whole new set of issues.

Bob.