Vegas: Much more intuitive interface; shallow learning curve; superior audio support.

Here's one simple test to show you the real in-n-out difference between Vegas and Premiere -- just do a simple cross fade in each...

I prefer Vegas over AVID because it is easier to use, far cheaper and it works seamlessly with Sound Forge. Many of the new producers underestimate the importance of good sound, devoting most of their efforts to the images. Premiere is a good enough program, I guess, but it is a poor tool for audio editing. Also it is clunky. AVID is okay but its stock audio tools are very basic. Our AVID guys always do their final audio editing with Sound Forge and Vegas, which says a lot for two programs with a combined price that is less than half what AVID wants for their software only solution (I think it is called AVID Express DV ir something similar).

Peter

First thing that impressed me with the demo was the amount of effects I could preview on pentium 4 1.4ghz. I tried the glow filter and could not believe I didn't have to render.

I tried Avid, watch collegue use Pinnacle Liquid Chrome (Pinnacle's Pro stuff) and ever since I donwloaded the Vegas demo I was amazed at how quickly I could do anything I wanted!
Almost anything I had in mind could be created within minutes (chroma keys, keyframing effects transitions, importing media etc etc).
Without EVER reading manual or help files!
First thing I edited mainly as a practice thing was broadcast on national tv!!

So, easy, fast, it all speaks fot itself.

I watched the Premiere Pro- demo at IBC this year. My collegues all went 'Wow, that's a cool feature! And this as well... ' All I could think: Vegas has had it all the time...

Which magazine are you writng for?
I am looking for such a publication.

//Garo

I was using Premiere to create simple slideshow videos. But using Premiere was far from simple. Nothing about it seemed intuitive to me, and I've been programming slideshows since the days of punched paper tape. Video editing should have been a no-brainer.

I used the V3 demo and was immediately hooked. Here was an NLE workflow that paralleled the way I thought, at least for 95% of the editing I'd be doing. That only left learning how to work with some of the Track FX for the other 5% of my workflow, which has been easy.

Some people take to Premiere like a duck to water. Ditto for Vegas and other editors. Doesn't mean one is better than the other, they're just better suited to different people. I'm a Vegas people (not to be confused with Vegans and Venusians).

I cut my teeth on Pinnacle Studio 1.06, 7, and 8 - but had issues with all of them, 8 being the least stable. Going to Vegas has been a learning curve, but overall not very frustrating - more like, I know I can do X in Studio, how do I do it in Vegas - and the help on this forum is amazing, btw - so much so that I usually find that someone has already done these things and has a better workflow that I can apply. And for me, anyway, Vegas NEVER crashes - not once, not ever, in the last 5 months that I've been using it.

Vegas never crashes and supports MicroMV files --ie *.MMV.

I messed with both MediaStudio Pro (decent) and Premiere (ugh) before discovering Vegas. Main reasons I switched:

-Audio tools are so much better (crucial for someone who started with music before editing video). Allowed me to use DirectX plugins.

-hardware-independent: Premiere and my Pinnacle card wouldn't let me preview out to TV

- I had used CD Architect and liked it.

Since switching I have of course discovered many others ways in which Vegas excels and surpasses Brand X, Y, and Z.

G

I came to VV from the audio side where I had used N-track, Cubase, Pro Tools, and Creamware. Vegas fit all my needs for ease of use. I've cranked out mutiple full CD projects from start to finish in Vegas (with MIDI and looping when necessary in Acid and editing in SoundForge). Then when I started editing video, it was just as easy and intuitive. My brother is a Mac head and uses FCP and my other brother uses Premiere so I've sat by their side and laughed as they tried to do transitions, see what they've done without renders, very clunky. I spend the whole time editing with them telling them how much easier THAT and THAT and THAT is in Vegas. Now that I've completed numerous documentaries and videos for my classes at college, I think I'll stick with Vegas!

I started with Pinnacle 7 and went to 8 WOW "very unstable product"! I downloaded a trial of VV and it looked great ease of use is great. The audio is wonderful. The transitions and effects you can get with VV is great. For me VV is easy to learn, comes at a good price, and is very stable. I love it! You are limited only by your imagination.

I'm probably considered a novice coming from Studio 8 but switch to Vegas after completing an in depth research for a NLE program that wouldn't continuously crash as Studio did. At first I was a little concerned about the learning curve, but found Vegas very easy to learn. Im' sure it helped having 'Douglas Spotted Eagle's' tutorials.

>>>Why did you switch? What wre you using before? What do you like in particular about features or workflow in Vegas? What features do you miss from other NLEs?<<<

have not switched and probably won't for a while.

better wording for me is "What other NLE's do you use along with VV and why?"

I use premiere 6.5. I use VV 4.0.

What do I miss/wish VV had? better EDL support and hardware support to beging with. Better "insert' functions. Obviously there is the whole black frame/gap issue with VV as well.

What do I like abot VV and workflow? For short form projects - music videos and promos - VV is great. Just drag and drop, push this over there, auto dissolves if needed. it is great and fast. I love being able to output to 24p. As far a workflow compared to premiere on long form - sorry, but for me VV slows me down and wastes too much time because I have to check for those "black frames/gaps" and deal with little quirks about "inserting" accurately.

Audio mixing - well that is another issue. But you are doing something on NLE's not DAW's.

Vegas was my first NLE, I tried other NLEs and here is what I like in Vegas :

-Most of the editing work is done on the timeline (Fades, trimming etc.)
-No rendering
-Audio is strong, no need to use another app.
-Intuitive

What I dislike :
Media managment, I'd like to see some subclips and nested timeline features like in fcp and premiere...

My Reason: Vegas doesn't crash. (Coming from Pinnacle products...)

PInnacle got their product out the door fast, but lost a customer for life...

Yes Sir!!

No comparations, no doubts, no fears..USE VEGAS 4.0 :)

the last week, I used Premiere Pro and the first impresion was: Premiere's power is very heavy to work in real time, no render to MPEG files (a fatal error for Premiere's repurtation), and others bad features.

Vegas is more creative, more flexible, more simple in his interfaz, more precise, more detailed and is a love to work with him.... ;)

Vegas is for me the best NLE, maybe only competed by Final Cut Pro 4.2 (I never used Final, because only run on MAC.)

I hope and would like that the next Vegas version (Vegas 5.0) have really new features how has it Vegas 4.0.

Well, Gary...

This was my comment about Vegas 4.0, many words is not good but few words and true is very good !!!

luck in your magazine article about Vegas !!!!

I wait to have helped you whit my comment.

Juan.

from Lima - Peru

:)

>>>the last week, I used Premiere Pro and the first impresion was: Premiere's power is very heavy to work in real time, no render to MPEG files (a fatal error for Premiere's repurtation), and others bad features.<<<

I use Premiere 6.5, have not tried PPro yet but have heard many good things about it (From VV users as well), and it does have MPEG export built in. Maybe you tried out the demo version? As for the 'real time' part - VV has a lower overhead that Premiere does but I wouldn't call that a bad thing, just a thing. VV does not have hardware interaction the way Premiere does so perhaps you tried to do things that would normally require hardware support? Or your system is bare minimum for what is required? Or you want 'real time' to be real 'real time' which even VV does not do all the time. I don't fault any NLE at a software level for not being real 'real time' because it always depends on your own system first and formost.

Just kicked a client out the door who uses Final Cut Pro himself.

"Wow... fast...."
on MTV next week (in Holland that is)

grtz

I demoed a version of Premiere 6 and was totally blind. Nothing I tried worked and it didn't make sense. Tried the demo for Vegas 4 - WOW. Everything I tried worked and built into better results. Vegas is Intuitive. You can learn easily with it, and the unlimited undos is great!! You don't feel like if applying something may result in disaster for the project. If it doesn't work, you just undo! I especially like the preview window. No render time to see how your effect works!
The only time I got Vegas to crash was when I was using the scrub feature while trying to do something else. Result was I got back into Vegas and it had saved an automatic backup of my work! ! Fantastic!
Audio- As some people stress, great audio is a must and Vegas works great with it. And the timeline is so easy to work with

Sorry about the long post here, but it's all good for Vegas! I'm hooked, I'm a permanent Vegas user. Vegas beats anything else that I've tried.

Rogue One

I'm not a professional editor or even in the video or music industry. I'm simply a serious hobbyist who enjoys digital photograpy and videography with a simple (so I thought) goal - I wanted to be able to edit home movies and burn them to DVD. I tried several products from Ulead, Pinnacle and Roxio. When they weren't crashing, I just didn't seem to be able to get these tools to deliver even modest results. At first I thought it was me but after visiting online user forums for these various tools, I quickly discovered I was not alone. It was so frustrating that I finally gave up about a year ago and decided to let the market/products mature. I didn't even know Vegas existed until I stumbled upon a review quite by accident. I did some more research and decided to give Vegas a try. The learning curve was shorter than I expected - heck, in no time I was able to reproduce simple effects "just like in the movies." Now I was hooked (and dangerous...). For me, Vegas is very, very intuitive. It let's me do what I want to do without getting in my way. It's predictable. It's rock solid - it's never crashed on me. I've successfully edited several of my home movies and authored DVD's (DVD-A). While my editing/DVD's may never win any awards and I'm probably just scratching Vegas' capabilities, friends/family are amazed at the results. But the best part is I'll be able to pass these DVD's on some day to my kids and maybe they'll pass them along to their kids. Thank you Sonic Foundry / Sony and members of this forum for making this possible.

In the process of chasing a whole list of unaswered questions on the forum of my last NLE, some kind soul said, "You need to go look at this." The lead took me to SF, and I suspiciously downloaded a demo. Holy Smokes! It was like being let loose in Fantasyland with a book of unlimited E-tickets.

Vegas is so much fun, so stable, so easily creative, and has the single best forum population and Support I've ever encountered in any catagory.

DGrob

I had been frustrated by Premiere at work, no time to learn it. I bought a home system with Studio 7. It was OK but I was trying to make videos of my daughter's viola recitals. Creating a multicamera video and keeping it in sync was nigh impossible. I tried going back to Premiere and even bought "Classroom in a Book Tutorial" I then downloaded the trial version of Vegas. The thing that made it for me was when I found that I could open a wmv file in Vegas and nowhere else. So I bought Vegas + DVD and am thrilled that I can easily do multicam work (Yes, I am using Excalibur) and have much better audio as well. I record a seperate audio signal onto HD at 24 bit 48 KHz and then save to CD as AIFF. I bring it into Vegas, sync my three cameras to the audio and the choose the video. Vegas allows me to work much faster and doesn't crash. I also produce CD's through Vegas, an unexpected benefit. I really appreciate that Vegas lets me forget about formats and easily converts them all to the project format. Another thing I don't need to worry about.

There is lot to be said for the forums that I have found to help me learn Vegas. The community is very supportive and mostly positive.