Thanks for the feedback. This thing is, I don't really want to "edit" in Premiere Pro at all. If I need to add a dissolve or a simple video effect then so be it, but my primary reason for wanting to bring the individual scenes into Premiere Pro is so I can export individual clips within those scenes to After Effects for keying and compositing work.

Because of the amount of time required to fine-tune animation and rendering in After Effects, I don't want to add the effects to raw footage, then bring it in to Vegas to cut it. (And I realize that is not the correct workflow.)

Cross-cutting dialogue exchanges and fine tuning action sequences would be MUCH easier in Vegas because of its superior interface.

And I wouldn't necessarily need to bring an entire feature into Premiere Pro, only individual scenes. I can easily edit blocks/sequences within PP for the final edit, but I would really like to be able to go through my raw footage and piece the scenes together in Vegas.

Maybe I just have to say goodbye to Vegas and do everything within the Adobe family, but that would suck, because let's face it, Vegas is the better NLE.

because let's face it, Vegas is the better NLE.

only if you can do it ALL within vegas. brilliant for a complete project, a nightmare for collaboration....

I trialed Premeire out of frustrations I'm having with Vegas. It is hard to get used to. But I am not understanding why you need it to be the middle man? I go back and forth between Vegas and AE. The hardest part was finding a friendly import format for Vegas.

I don't really understand the angst over Ppro.
I first used it over a decade ago and compared to Avid's offerings of the day a doodle to live with. Coming from P6 to Vegas many things frustrated me as much as delighted me. Niether is perfect for everything and for a feature I'd recommend just about any NLE except Vegas. Feature editing is (dare I say this) a largely mechanical process. One can, should, spend a lot of time just managing things such as assets and Vegas not only doesn't help much with this and it really tempts one into ignoring it. I find Vegas's strengths are also its weaknesses. Like any task there's the right tool for the job and the wrong tool.

In this particular case where there's going to be a lot of work done in AE being able to directly bounce between the NLE and the compositing application would be a godsend. With a feature I found that the meaning of "locked picture" to be rather rubbery. Being able to go effortlessly between Ppro and AE would be very attractive.My understanding (I haven't tried it myself) is that this can be done without any rendering, all that can be put off until the whole movie or reel is rendered out.

Bob.

While it's conceivably possible to go back and forth from Vegas Pro and After Effects, the only way I can figure is by region rendering out of Vegas, importing the footage into AE, rendering it out, then bringing it back into Vegas. This is an awful lot of render time (not to mention disk space for all of the intermediate files), which is why I want to use Premiere Pro as the "middle man".

If Premiere Pro had a scene detection option that would automatically split the clip whenever there's a cut, I could easy edit in Vegas, render the clip, and have Premiere Pro split it up so I can then use Dynamic Link to work on individual clips. But as far as I can tell, the only way to do this is manually, and unlike Vegas, you can't split/slice a clip with a keystroke in Premiere Pro. You have to select the Razor tool and physically click on the clip, which isn't frame-by-frame accurate unless you're zoomed in a lot.

Ugh. I guess I'll figure something out, whether it's clunking my way through Premiere Pro to do the edit, or finding some sort of manual workaround within Premiere Pro to split up clips and then go into AE from there.

I was just hoping that I could create an EDL from Vegas that could be read by Premiere Pro, but apparently that's a no-go.

streckfus, here's a script that may be of some use to you.
It allows you to import into Adobe After Effects a Sony Vegas project saved as “EDL Text File.”
I've had a few folks tell me that it worked great for them.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20488019/ImportSonyVegasEDL.zip

Mike

Testimonials kind of:
Subject: RE: free script to export Vegas EDL to AE
Date: 2/15/2012 2:19:03 PM
Vegas > AE > Premiere ...had to try it.

TEST
1) took a short edit using an IMAGE-SEQUENCE
2) saved off the EDL, exited Vegas
3) opened AE
4) used your script in AE
it brought the project in cuts-only with each cut on a separate track.

5) then went File > Export > Adobe Premiere Pro Project (cuz i move between NLE's sometimes)
it brought the project in cuts-only with each cut now on the same track.

NOTE
in After Effects, the image-sequence came in as a single-frame. I had to go Replace Footage > File in the project window and change the still-frame back to an image-sequence. But once I'd done that, all the frames fell into their right place... not really a problem, just a minor adjust once the script has done it's thing.


So I'm not sure when/if this script will get used by me, but it's great to interact more easily with post-production software. Utility-based tools are often overlooked for lack-of-sexiness but I love these kinda things even if I don't use 'em much. Definitely keeping this one in my EDITORS_TOOLBOX
Message last edited on 2/15/2012 2:51:32 PM, by robwood.
NOTES:
I use Chainick's Import Sony Vegas EDL script to move projects from Vegas > AE > Premiere as well.
(From there, I'm fairly sure I could also export a OMF, AAF, or XML for use in other NLE's as well)

Although I have to redo my FADES/transitions at some point, the timing of the cuts/clips is perfect. (I'm not sure what more could be done with this script, but I look forward to future updates or similar scripts)

This is definitely a step in the right direction for getting Vegas to play nicely with others.

This...worked...PERFECTLY.

Cut together a quick sequence in Vegas, exported it as a .txt EDL file. Used the provided script to bring it into AE, then exported it as a Premiere Pro project.

Once in Premiere Pro, I could do additional tweaking with the edit, then go back and forth between Premiere Pro and AE using dynamic link.

Granted, it was only a three-clip sequence with two edit points, but I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work with entire scenes as long as I make sure that I keep all cuts on a single video track and compensate clip length for transitions & effects, which are easy enough to accomplish in Premiere Pro.

Thank you SO much for the help. I am very pleased that I can continue to use Vegas as my NLE to do all preliminary editing and take advantage of its speed and efficiency, then easily bring the assembled cut into the Adobe suite to do post-production work without having to waste time and disk space creating intermediate renders.

This truly is the best of both worlds. Thanks again for the help. It is much appreciated.

streckfus, I'm very glad to hear that this utility worked so well for you.
Happy editing!!

Mike

"But as far as I can tell, the only way to do this is manually, and unlike Vegas, you can't split/slice a clip with a keystroke in Premiere Pro. You have to select the Razor tool and physically click on the clip, which isn't frame-by-frame accurate unless you're zoomed in a lot. "

Interestingly the lack of the razor tool was and continues to be, one of the shortcomings of Vegas for me. The Razor and "S" are not the same tools and are not really intechangeable. Vegas's "S" will split every track unless you're carefull.

Our mistake is trying to work with two different tools in the same way. Ppro / MC / FCP is very trimmer centric. Vegas is very timeline centric.

Bob.

Bob said it pretty well but I will throw in my 10 cents here as well.

As much as I want to "love" Vegas for actual long form editing I simply don't. I was getting to that point in SoFo days, I still think 4 was so much closer to it than it is now (Comparatively speaking in terms of new versions)

I wanted to prove that Vegas could be taken very seriously in the feature film world so, with Version 4, I cut a feature with it . but only after asking and re-asking the production company to assure me 100% they never needed to go to another NLE with it, or ever do any sort of online or neg confirm. Andy effects were done in After Effects but the entire edit, and mix, were done within Vegas 4. Of course after I turned it all in, and Lions Gate picked up domestic rights for it, they asked me for EDL's. Of course I never used Vegas again for editing anything such as a feature.

Spot asked me a long time ago if I wanted to beta test some software that would allow interchangeable EDL's but I declined at the time as I was busy. But it was also based on audio more than video, so the video portion seemd to be an after thought to see if it would work.

What I am saying is that out in the world things need to play nice with each other and the phrase the really has applied to Vegas since Sony took over is "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." This has been talked about for years now. Somewhere buried in the archives is an epic conversation we had about EDL's and basically that nobody really used them anymore for anything because the concept of offline/online was dead. Not too many people really got the concept that an EDL is used for other things - not just machine control.

Having said all of that - Vegas does have very basic EDL support built in. Cuts only somewhat work out fine. But here is another very important item that I have asked various programmers to look into: Premiere captures it's timecode information and stores it in a different place than where Vegas does. A Premiere EDL will work with many other companies software whereas a Vegas one will not - again, What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas - due to this. In laymans terms Vegas will not read Premiere timecode, Premiere will not read Vegas time code. Both will read SMPTE - but that is not the root issue, it is how software reads the file and where it looks for the code..

I used to frame serve with Satish's Vegas frame server and back for many things but in the long run it was just too much work because Sony took over and never really built on those things - playing nice with others that is.

I love Vegas (at least I did before it started getting too buggy), but it doesn't play well with other editors (I guess most editors don't play well with each other). I've tried to do a round trip grade from Vegas to Davinci Resolve and back into Vegas and it has been a nightmare. EDLs are on old format that most software doesn't support properly, so even if the 'Generate EDL' script in Vegas is producing a good EDL, Davinci didn't read it well. The guy doing the grade for us in Davinci had to do the following:
1) export an EDL in Vegas
2) import the EDL in Premiere and export an XML v4
3) import the XML v4 in Final Cut, and export an XML v5
4) and finally DaVinci could import this XML v5

Needless to say he was cursing my use of Vegas as an editor.

And now I can't even read the HQ ProRes clips he outputting from Davinci into Vegas. I've asked on this forum for help but no-one seems to know why Vegas can't read these ProRes files (I have the ProRes codec installed on my computer and have loaded ProRes files into Vegas before).

If you can stay in the Adobe suite, do it. You will save yourself a lot of pain. I know Premiere feels clunky compared to the elegance of certain aspects of Vegas..... but I'm realizing that as an editor, I can't cling to one software editor, especially when it doesn't output XMLs that other software could ingest.

Needless to say he was cursing my use of Vegas as an editor.

This is a very funny read, since the very first post 'Told You So.'

I'm really glad there are other people out there that are experiencing the pains of Premiere. The way you described Premiere Pro is exactly the way I felt when using it. After two days, I said screw this and cut my music videos through Sony Vegas. I love the user-friendly interface, color correction, and the ability to easily apply letterboxes. Professional or not, I believe this is one of the better systems out there. I would also like import my sequences into Adobe After Effects. Currently I'm using Adobe CC but haven't found an efficient workflow either... Thanks for your post!

Is there a chance you could send me the same script (doesnt apear to be on dropbox anymore??) I'm trying to do the same thing. Thanks!!