Subject:RE: What to do...?

Posted by: robwood

Date:9/20/2011 1:36:29 PM

i use Vegas for editing and Premiere/AE to handle anything Vegas has problems with. i'm aware of other editors who use Premiere as their main NLE and Vegas/AE for problem-solving.

sucks to spend $$$ on more gear but i've never been able to do everything on one NLE anyway... still use AVISynth/VirtualDub for scaling/deinterlacing.

if you can afford it, i'd run both; get better on Premiere, then decide which you prefer for main edits and which for problem-solving.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: Terje

Date:9/20/2011 3:28:05 PM

2nd.

I am a huge Vegas fan, but for me there a few things it can not do (well) that I want it to do. For those I use CS5, Premiere or AE depending on what I need and Encore for anything that needs to go on DVD or Blu-Ray where DVDA is now far too long-in-the-tooth. A combo is good. Vegas is unbeatable for what it does well.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: John_Cline

Date:9/20/2011 11:19:48 PM

I spend the majority of my time and make the majority of my income in Vegas, I will be online and purchasing Vegas v11 the nanosecond it is released. That said, I also have Avid Media Composer and the entire Adobe Production Suite CS5.5 Production bundle. I use Photoshop, After Effects pretty regularly and I use Encore for 95% of my DVD and Blu-ray authoring. For me though, it isn't really an either/or situation, it's a both/and. You can never have too many quality tools in the toolbox.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: UlfLaursen

Date:9/20/2011 11:34:33 PM

For me though, it isn't really an either/or situation, it's a both/and. You can never have too many quality tools in the toolbox.


Me too. I also use different tools for different tasks, but still in love with Vegas :)

/Ulf

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: DGates

Date:9/21/2011 3:10:02 AM

3rd.

I didn't know folks were contemplating the same things I am.

As others have said, there isn't just one right choice. I'm SO used to editing in Vegas, that I can't see switching my NLE. But all the stuff that comes with Abode's Production Suite is really hard to pass up. I'm THIS close to getting it. Who knows, I might play around with Premiere and end up liking it.

But for fast, no-hassle editing, Vegas is hard to beat.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: rmack350

Date:9/21/2011 10:45:20 AM

More "me too".

I use about six Adobe apps on a regular basis and that excludes PPro and Aefx. For your kid's purposes I think some form of adobe suite would be useful.

You can always upgrade Vegas at a later date, although you might have to wait a bit for another good upgrade deal. But none of these things need an upgrade for each new version.

Rob Mack

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: TheHappyFriar

Date:9/21/2011 1:06:04 PM

I'm not understanding what any editor has to do with stop-motion movies. That's a capturing the media thing, not an editing tool thing. The FX I can understand though but Avid & Premiere can't do any more FX then Vegas can.

I guess my question is "What do they want to do that they can't do in Vegas or with some cheap/free app?"

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: GregFlowers

Date:9/21/2011 5:23:43 PM

The Boris series is similar to After Effects and can be used directly inside of Vegas. Using an Academic discount, Boris FX can be had for under $200 and Boris Continuum for under $300. This will give you some very powerful tools without leaving Vegas or spending a fortune.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: risce1

Date:9/21/2011 6:06:57 PM

if its either or, its a no brainer... use the vegas you have now and learn some new very powerful apps.AE alone is better than an update of vegas,, I am still waiting for my last update to work V10.
Use the version that works for you and learn some stuff

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: TheHappyFriar

Date:9/21/2011 8:59:34 PM

The problem is that any software that integrates with Vegas cost more than buying a suite of Adobe software that will do the same and more, and with tighter integration.

I can understand that but you'll need to relearn everything. Assume 6 months of doing nothing but technical manuals, tutorials & "how do i..." posts. :)

Do I stick with Vegas and risk wasting my cash on plugins from companies that are not committed to Vegas, or do I buy a suite of software that is more widely supported.

You buy a plugin for Vegas, it will always work with the copy you bought it for (people who bought Magic Bullet for Vegas 6 still can use it). Just like Adobe, if you buy something for this version of Premiere (for example) there's no guarantee it will work for the next one, or two, or three, etc.

Vegas also only costs $150 to upgrade from any version to the next. I checked, if you wait 4 versions to upgrade your Adobe suite you're talking ~$1k. I think someone here said that they went from Vegas 2 to 10 for the $150. I just checked on Boris & the upgrade price is the same irregardless of the version you have, just what suite you're upgrading from ~$300 (Red to Red). Also don't forget that with Vegas, when you upgrade you can give your old copy to you son. Adobe won't allow you to do that with education software or software that was upgraded. Sony also allows you to install Vegas on as many computers as you own, Adobe is 1 desktop & 1 portable. Sony also allows multiple instances open so while you're rendering you can edit in another instance.

Plus, you already OWN Vegas. $0 investment in it needed. You (and your sons) already know how to use it.
I'd suggest reading their (adobe's) EULA. They have cheap software in price but you give away a lot of rights you have with the Sony software.

What cheap/free software will allow me to add motion effects to video directly on the Vegas timeline?

What effects are you looking for? Boris has most of their effects as separate packages. I determine "cheap" by how much I'll end up using it. I use Vegas for most things, anything I can't do in Vegas I use Blender for & just import the image sequence. If i don't like how it looks I just modify & reexport the image sequence, Vegas autoupdates the event on the TL..

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: farss

Date:9/22/2011 5:10:25 PM

"For £270 it's an absolute steal... "

Indeed.
I'm now using AE for just about every project that's being done in Vegas and DVDA.
Becoming moderately proficient in AE has taken the pain out of Vegas. Vegas for me is fun again and I have a lot of fun doing things in AE, many of which would be impossible and all of which would have been painful to do in Vegas.
Worth a mention that a lot of goodness from Boris ships with AE.
I just bought CS5.5 at the crossgrade price, cheaper than buying an upgrade and got the basic MB for free. Once I get CS5.5 bedded down I'll buy the Shapeshifter plugin for it, I see me having a lot of fun with that.

Bob.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: TheHappyFriar

Date:9/22/2011 7:54:02 PM

For AE & Photoshop I'd get it then. Just don't ever plan on upgrading cheap is all. :) If it were me that's all I'd install, I wouldn't care about the other stuff.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: AnthonyTower

Date:9/22/2011 8:16:54 PM

In your original post you mentioned:

"But now the children are growing up, they want to make (stop motion) films with special effects that Vegas just can't do easily."

In order to produce stop motion you will first need a program that does onion-skinning with live input, i.e: a program that gives you two active video "preview" windows, one showing you a live feed of what's in front of the camera, the other showing the last frame you grabbed overlaid by the live feed (with a control to adjust the amount), in order to compare the location of all the frame's elements.
As far as I know neither Vegas nor Premiere do this.
'Would be nice to see a future version of Vegas support such a simple feature like this one.
Cheers

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: TheHappyFriar

Date:9/23/2011 6:36:29 AM

All you need is a still camera, like has been done for decades. :)

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: PixelStuff

Date:9/23/2011 7:00:48 AM

There are a lot of stop motion animation software out there. None of those are made by Adobe or Sony. If your sons are into stop motion, then a dedicated program is going to be much more useful than Premiere Pro or After Effects.

After Effects and Photoshop are the two biggest complements to Vegas in my opinion, but not in relation to stop motion needs.

If your sons are wanting to add computer generated effects to their projects something like HitFilm Standard/Ultimate and PFhoe might be interesting for them to do camera tracking and insert particle effect matched to the camera moves. These are stand alone programs aimed at live action special effects on a budget.

Another thing to consider is that the Adobe educational licensing doesn't allow you to do professional work using it. Of course they don't police that, but you would be going against your own agreement with them and breaking the law if you use it professionally.

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: Baron Oz

Date:9/23/2011 8:43:48 AM

I agree with Bob and PixelStuff. AE and Photoshop are tremendous products that I also use on virtually every project. Some of the plugins from Red Giant such as Particular and Form just blow me away. If you are going to do stop motion, PixelStuff is right, onionskinning is of paramount importance - you just can't get any control over motion without it.

Matchmoving software such as Mocha or PFhoe is needed to do camera tracking solutions for inclusion of effects. Just getting close doesn't cut it - it's instantly obvious that something is wrong without a good solution. Very challenging to do, but very fullfilling when you pull it off.

Ted

Subject:RE: What to do...?

Reply by: jdw

Date:9/23/2011 11:18:33 AM

For stop-motion animation you might give Stop Motion Pro a look. They have a functional trial download if you'd like to try it out.