I use Vegas along with the CS4 versions of Adobe After Effects (video compositing) and Adobe Encore (DVD/Blu-ray authoring) all the time with no problems.

goshep
I like you, am looking for a similar workflow, yet even more complicated. I use this combination, Vegas for cutting, After effects to prepare the footage, compositing and add animated effects, photoshop and live type in the final cut suite. and my macbook I use to sync my ipod. Imo Final Cut and premire are clones of Avid. Powerful collaboration tools I agree. but for me they are not fast agile versatile like Vegas for the non colabrative work I do. Please dont start a flame war folks...please just share your muli brand workflow suggestions with us. Also opinions if I should say with 8c or upgrade and will my 3rd party plugins work with 64 bit vegas. Thanks. Happy New Year. again pleaze stay on topic.
Thanks
Steven

Premiere CS4 is a decent NLE, but it's pretty simple compared to Vegas Pro. There are tons of things that you can do in Vegas for which you can even avoid After Effects. And there's no way to work in the timeline as fast and easy in Premiere as you can with Vegas.

The only problem with Vegas is stability. Some people don't have any problems with it but many others have. It depends a lot on the format you use as the source it seems. But as far as the "one stop shopping" you mention, it's not a big deal, I use Photoshop CS4 all the time with Vegas and it works just fine. Vegas reads PSDs with no problem.

I used to use PP (cs3 and 4) a fair bit but as I got into avchd work I found that PP just wasn't up to task. It plays back reasonably well on the time line but the rendering and final output is a disaster area. I rarely use PP anymore as a result. I was really never wildly in love with the workflow in the first place. As Sebaz states, it's a slower, clunkier workflow as compared to Vegas... and interestingly enough.... I don't think I have ever heard ANYBODY come forth claiming to be in love with the workflow. People who work with PP for the most part seem to simply accept its clunky feel as a natural part of the nle and move on to do their work.

My editing (which was pretty much split between PP and Vegas) is now done almost all in Vegas and I still rely on AE pretty heavily to do some of the heavier effects.

I find DVDa better than encore at most things and therefore tend to use dvda the most. DVDa does however tend to be a lot more compress happy so you need to know exactly what files should and should not be input. The only time I really use encore anymore is when I need to burn blu ray at relatively high bit rates (Encore seems to accept higher bitrate files with less fuss).

What has always had me astounded with the cs packages though is the sad lack of a pro dolby encoder. This I just don't get for the price you pay.

Bottom line... I still use CS for some of my processing (and probably always will), but bang for the buck... even with CS's integration and other whistles... vegas is by far the better deal

You can let your boss know that Vegas is routinely used for broad cast and that it was just used to edit a #1 movie that just grossed $100,000,000

As for workflow tips, what kind of work do you do and what would you use the Adobe Suite for? Working with Vegas + CS4 lacks the integration that the Adobe + CS4 offers, but you don't lose that much time. Let's look at what Adobe offers.

Photoshop and Illustrator---it doesn't take that long to save a file in photoshop or illustrator and then import into Vegas. If you need to edit a file that doesn't take long either

Soundbooth-- Vegas is a better audio mixer, so you won't even use Audition. If you need to finegrain audio work, Sound Forge is a better tool and the interface is just like Vegas, so it would be familiar to you.

After Effects--This is one area where you definitely need to render before taking a file into Vegas from AE or into AE from Vegas. You may want to ask what the best workflow for this is. The Vegas workflow allows you to save time on this sometimes, since Vegas allows you to open two instances of Vegas simultaneously, you can render a clip in one instance while still editing in another. Nested Projects can help here too.

Encore--Since you need to render your video anyway, you probably don't lose much time if you use Encore as your DVD package.

Some photoshop tips here:
[LINK=http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=599526]

And a REALLY cool script from Giles that opens a pic on the timeline in photoshop (or another program of your choice)
[LINK=http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=624583]

kairosmatt

Thanks all for the feedback.

The AE to Vegas work flow is my biggest concern. To what format are you rendering when going between them? From my brief experience with Premier, it seemed as finicky with media as my daughter is with dinner. I was concerned AE wouldn't play nicely with Vegas but it sounds like you guys are having no issues.

I hadn't really thought about DVD creation. I guess I'm just as fond of DVDa as I am Vegas.

Thanks again.

> The AE to Vegas work flow is my biggest concern. To what format are you rendering when going between them?

I use Vegas, After Effects CS4, and Photoshop CS4, all the time and I use CineForm NeoScene to render all of my HD out to before working in After Effects and then render back to CineForm coming out of After Effects unless I need the alpha channel preserved in which case I render to Quicktime Animation codec. Vegas and After Effects CS4 work great together using this workflow.

I find it best to work in square pixels in After Effects. So even if I'm working with HDV 1440x1080 PAR 1.3333 I will render to 1920x1080 PAR 1.0. It just makes everything easier going both ways. This was the primary reason I bought CineForm NeoScene. It's a great intermediary for going back and forth across multiple applications.

~jr

Thanks JohnnyRoy,

I've been following the latest Cineform thread with great interest as well. Given what I've read in that thread and what you've stated here, I think it will fit nicely in my toolbox.

> Does anyone here use Vegas for editing within a CS4 work flow?
Yes, I do.
> can I use Vegas in place of Premier with relative ease
I guess so!
I render to Lagarith AVI, or to plain PNG Sequences for AE to import. PNG Sequences seem to be some sort of a "Rosetta Stone", since any application out there will accept it:
* Photoshop
* Synt Eyes
* Mocha
* After Effects
etc etc
Ingvar

Well, i would tell you to use Paint.NET in place of Photoshop for one. Its not the industry standard, and ignorance tend to kill free software in the shadow of Adobe and the likes. But skilled users are very productive with it, and able to do just about everything needed.

Dreamweaver is largely useless in practice, and could VERY easily be replaced by free alternatives, such as eclipse or notepad++, likely that goes for much in the CS4 suite, can't really comment on the rest though. Illustrator? Don't need it.

Besides, no software is worth what adobe charge, as a rule of thumb.

One of the only things i find useful is Flash Professional, though its still way overpriced for my taste.

BlueBoden,

I had originally assembled a suite of Freeware alternatives to CS4. I reluctantly demoed them thinking I was doing the right thing by exploring every avenue. I opened the Illustrator equivalent and attempted a live trace which caused the entire computer to lock up. The looks I received spoke volumes. Yes CS4 is expensive but you get what you pay for (usually).

I'm not sure I understand the "largely useless" Dreamweaver comment. Do you have experience with Dreamweaver and could you elaborate?

Thanks