Ditto what Spot says, although I don't have his extensive experience with Premiere. However, compared to the other video editing apps I have used, Vegas wins, with nothing else even close.

You might was well add the enormous resource hunger of PP2.

100GB of swap space several GB of RAM to do any serious work, etc.

But I don't think that in slow motion, Premiere Pro simply repeats frames rather than using interpolation to smooth the movement. I recall seeing "optical flow" on the Adobe tour, where for slow motion, additional frames are synthesized (better than simple interpolation).

We could also give PP credit for having more of the Photoshop style image manipulation tool, I'm sure there are many here who would like to have those in Vegas.

I love Spot's comment on PP being a front end for AE!

It reminds me that Sony (and SF before them) never did much to explain to the world how Vegas is different. They are just saying "it's a better NLE," instead of "an NLE with strong compositing and multi-track..." that's faster to work with than the Adobe Suite's famous "no-rendering integration," and much easier to learn too.

It reminds me that Sony (and SF before them) never did much to explain to the world how Vegas is different. They are just saying "it's a better NLE," instead of "an NLE with strong compositing and multi-track..."

Actually, that's not quite so. If you look at the early Vegas ads, they listed that it was a:
Multitrack recorder
Web Encoder
Compositing Tool
NLE
All rolled into one. And that was part of the presentation that Sonic Foundry had me giving at the original Vegas launch at NAB 2000, and for about 2 years following. They set the standard for multi-use tools, and now everyone else has followed.
Aside from that, there is one feature that Sonic Foundry pioneered LONG before anyone else had it, now everyone does.
Anyone know what that one, very important feature might be? :-)

I am absolutely not defecting to Premiere!

I do have a copy, thanks to the student edition of Production Studio Premium (which also gives me After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Encore DVD), but I am really only interested in After Effects and Photoshop. Encore DVD I will also take a close look at.

@Coursedesign, the book I am reading says in at least two places that Premiere repeats frames. However, After Effects appears to have something akin to the velocity envelope, if I have understood the promotional pdf I have.

Vegas works the way I want to work rather than following arcane practices from the past. And it is so easy to use, of course. As Spot says, the stability is incredible, and I think I've suffered just one freeze in all the time I've used it.

So I'm sticking with Sony.

Worley

Anyone know what that one, very important feature might be? :-)

Markers?
Looping?
Regions?
Noise reduction?

Mike

None of the above.
First person to figure it out/post it wins a VASST DVD of my choosing... :-)

undo/redo?

Mike

"Anyone know what that one, very important feature might be? "

Video scopes...?

It was the first to be format agnostic i.e. you could drop NTSC, PAL and using different codecs onto the one T/L.

From what I hear that still sells more copies of Vegas than anything else. Well VMS actually.

Bob.

oooooo -- good answer!

One of the important features was preview to camera (and to TV/Monitor through it) through FireWire.
Although at the time I wished to have preview to TV connected to video card: easier on the CPU and most video cards had TV out. I believe Ulead did this first in one of Media Studio Pro versions.

I think your question is the wrong way around, assuming you're happy with what Vegas has to offer.
Is there any compelling reason to switch to PPro?
There can be compelling reasons to switch to a number of different NLEs, you choose the tool that best fits the task.

Video and audio together on the same timeline?

When I started using Vegas 1.0 as an audio sweetening tool, it was great to be able to see my video at the same time.

Mike

Truth be told, I've never been that content with Premiere's interface. Vegas lept out and has by far been the easiest NLE for me to use. Coupled with the audio tools, scripting and compositing options, I find myself using only Motion outside of Vegas anymore for some text work. Not as much as I thought I would though.

I've got a friend who's got a $50k Axio system. I'm not blaming Premiere but that thing is down more than it's working so I'd have to say that price + performance and stability makes Vegas a winner hands down

It's gotta be one of:
- external preview without any form of acceleration hardware;
- native 24p editing;
- integrated 5.1 surround mixing;
- 24-bit/192 kHz audio support;
- ASIO driver support.

Mark

Spot,

Could it be that Vegas is totally pc processor based, as opposed to to utilizing external hardware?

Pan/Crop?

Ability to cut HD? (Although they didn't really know it at the time...)

The ability to automatically resize the pixel aspect ratio from square to rectangle...or vice versa, I forget now which is which.

Ah heck you know what I mean

Guess Spot's missing feature:

Realtime HD (typ. HDV) preview via firewire HDV standard. Not necessarily in a recordable way that you'd ever layback to - DV fashion.


-oops - now this feature is what would keep you using Vegas.... ! ;-)

If you look at the early Vegas ads, they listed that it was a:

Yes. And that was the problem.

Did they take over the world with that sales pitch? Umm, no.

Why not? You have to put yourself in the reader's mind, "You mean instead of buying a masterful NLE, I could buy this jack-of-all-trades. Hmmm, sounds interesting, gotta look at this someday, if I ever get the time."

Sony would be much more successful if they focused on explaining how Vegas is the best NLE because of its unique built-in capabilities that allow editors to work faster. Don't even say it's a compositor, because it will never compete with After Effects, etc., and selling it as a web encoder, well, no comment...

Just sell it as a great NLE, and explain WHY it is a great NLE, because it is FASTER to work with, and DO SHOW WHY rather than just show a box!

Don't sell a Swiss Army Knife, because that will appeal only to interns and noobs who like cheap value.

I would agree with Bob that the mixed timeline is what you are referring to. I'm not sure SF was #1 of all time (in fact I recall it being somebody else), but they were certainly early.

Magic Feature, Guess # 2 - the ability to edit down to or be at Sample Accuracy