Video Vegas or Acid? Are they very similar?

Yojimbo wrote on 12/17/2001, 8:15 AM
A friend has requested that I produce a series of audio tapes for him: bible story narratives with narration, character voices, sound effects, and some background music.

I'm familiar with Acid from my job, where we have several SF products, and Video Vegas from trying out the demo a year ago when I was looking for a video editing package. I'm interested in having the ability to work with audio as my friend has outlined his needs, and with video since that's my hobby and interest. I know Acid would serve... but could I do that same kind of work in Video Vegas?

Going through the specs for each, I cannot make a determination whether Video Vegas shares the same audio editing capabilities of Acid. It appears to on the surface, but I'd like to get a deeper understanding of how they truly differ. If VV is *not* suited to what I need to do, then I'd like to know!

If you have experience with both, please lend me your opinions. I'd like to know what I should look for to make the decision clearer.

Thanks

Jim

Comments

earthrisers wrote on 12/17/2001, 10:27 AM
If you want to do loop-based music construction, ACID is the package. But it's not optimum for multitrack audio recording, and obviously not for video work.
Vegas is great for multitrack audio recording and editing, and for video work. But not for loop-based music construction.
If you actually "play" your music, and don't just paste prerecorded loops together, Vegas is the clear choice.
Yojimbo wrote on 12/18/2001, 7:22 AM
Mostly I loop sound effects pieces to set up background environment beds. I can easily do that in SoundForge and bring them into VV3. I truly don't "need" Acid for that job.

I've done one tape in Acid at work. I like how I can import the entire narrative track, remove sections almost instantly where there's vocal coach dialog or coughs or other unwanted pieces, and slide dialog around quickly. In Sound Forge this is very time-consuming, since it's a long track (and the undo function must save everything before performing the change).

But in Acid it's near instant. "Painting in" sound effects is also simple, and they are easy to move around and setup audio envelopes for. But with no ability to hide audio tracks, or bounce tracks down to fewer slots, I end up having to do a lot of screen rearranging to keep the current dialog and effects "in view" to make the editing easier.

Any chance this is just as easy in VV3? Easier, perhaps? I'm pretty strongly leaning that way. I'm just not certain... I guess the question is, are it editing features as powerful and feature-filled as Acid's (not necessarily its looping, which we know is handy but not required)?

Thanks again,

Jim

Chienworks wrote on 12/18/2001, 9:16 AM
Yes! Splitting a track and removing unwanted portions is even easier in
Vegas than in Acid. Vegas is a "non-destructive" editor, which means
that your timeline simply contains a description of which pieces of which
files should be played back at which time. So making edits doesn't
actually alter the files, and therefore happens nearly instantaneously,
and undoing the edits is as simple as dragging the edges of the clips
back out again.

SoundForge on the other hand is a destructive editor. Edits made to the
project force the file to be changed and rewritten, and this can be very
time consuming. Of course SoundForge has many strengths in other
areas, so it is still a very useful program on it's own and certainly isn't
replaced by Vegas.

See also my reply to you in the Acid forum.