Comparing Vegas to Other NLEs

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Other tools have common tasks with Vegas.
The new FCX is essentially Vegas. All the “new tools” have been in Vegas for a decade.
Vegas’ weak points are lack of network sharing/simultaneous workflows, and film matchback. Insert editing was an issue if you didn’t know the “hidden” workarounds, but now that’s a non-issue as well.

By comparison, a lot of folks find Vegas ugly. My exwife was ugly, but damn…she could keep a clean house, kept my world in order, was a great friend, and could cook to make a skinny man fat…

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Nigel O’neill]

Carlton

Ugly ex-wives aside :-), one needs to consider the format/CODEC the NLE was designed to edit. FCP is a Mac tool for editing MOV and does it well, but is pretty hopeless in dealing with anything other than MOV/MP4 files. Vegas handles pretty much any format and ingests almost anything. Vegas runs on non-proprietary (inexpensive) hardware and multiple versions of Windows. FCP runs on Mac’s. Period.

I played with earlier versions of Avid and Premiere, but neither of them were stable (at the time). I think it was CS3 at the time.

I also looked at Grassvalley Edius, but could not come to terms with the interface and controls. What Vegas could do easily, Edius made very difficult, but there are some features in Edius I would like to see in Vegas. Edius 4 had an HD Storm card which not only allowed ingesting from a number of inputs, but offloaded the rendering to dedicated hardware. It is very expensive compared to SVP10!

Lastly, I found a great support forum called Creative Cow Sony Vegas ;-). Whilst not a technical reason per se, it was a significant deciding factor for me. I found this especially helpful as there are many experienced contributors who helped me through a number of sticky situations. So much so that I give back to the Creative Cow community whenever I can, drawing on my IT background. As I learned in my career so far, you can have the world’s best product, but without an effective support network, the product will fail.

Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Carlton Rahmani]

Thanks Douglas. . .and I’m a big fan of your work (I was just thinking, today, how I should bust into my Vegas Training DVD I got from you). Ironic, too, that you brought up how FCX is a lot like Vegas since one of the things that prompted me to start these threads are some of the negative remarks coming from an Adobe and FCP-certified trainer I recently encountered (we use Premiere at my job). FCX is so different from previous versions that she’s going to have to get recertified if she wants to teach. Nonetheless–and I really can’t say anything good about her otherwise–she talked crap about Vegas.
BUT, I wish you guys had answered in the original thread I gave the link to. I think a good way to find answers is to have a rigorous debate.

[Al Bergstein]

Carlton, the debate is too religious. It’s like asking what religion is best.I do try and avoid the FCP forums as much as possible. They are just not open to anything but a FCP love fest over there, despite the obvious issues that are raised. And don’t get me started about FCP ‘media management’ or the lack of it.

I try and remember these are all tools. They do very similar jobs, but are made for different purposes and requirements. We are now arriving at a point in time when all the major NLEs have ‘solved’ the problem (in marketing at this point to be clear) of just dragging your footage onto the timeline and editing without transcoding first. It’s better to transcode, no arguement there, but sometimes the client budget and job just don’t warrant it.

Why I continue to use Vegas is that it does the job for a sole practitioner like me. Not only that, but it does it fast. I save time and money using it. I don’t like some things like it’s color corrector (secondary) and it’s chroma key is pathetic. I have opted for buying Boris’ toolkit.

To be clear, FCP is a very powerful tool, I own it, and use it every week for some job or another. I do like it’s output, and it’s got a very modern feel to it’s built in titles, etc. (come on Vegas, give us more modern title graphics in the package!), yet it’s very temperamental in the way it works. For all the crashes I’ve gotten with Vegas (another one tonight after many days without one), it’s still something I rely on to get the job done quick and easy. Well, my render is about done. Back to work.

Alf

[Nigel O’neill]

Carlton

Here’s more food for thought:

https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-43842.html

Yes, it’s an old post, but many of the points raised by the authors are still relevant.

If you want a technical side by side comparison, try this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_editing_software

Lastly, the choice of NLE often comes down to personal preference and experience. I have had a number of issues with Pinnacle, Adobe CS3/4 and early Avid products (Liquid 6/7), to the point I could not produce the final product. Vegas has not failed me once.

Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Steve Rhoden]

Its like debating which religion is the right one….Gonna go nowhere.
In the past i have extensively used Avid and Premier, and FCP
for a little time.
When i tried Vegas, i just gravitated to it….it made editing so
easy and straight forward in every way(no complex transcoding or
bottle-neck with certain formats). Took in everything and spat it out
quickly and for most task i didnt even need to go into another
application for finishing.
Vegas is simply headache free.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Maker
Filmex Creative Media.
1-876-832-4956

[Carlton Rahmani]

While there risks being a ‘religious’ aspect to the ‘debate’ I nonetheless think it would be good to have the various NLEs–their strengths and weakness, compared–discussed by the people who use them, and have the knowledge and experience to back up their claims. I went and examined the links provided again–I’ve gone through them before–but they only say so much.
I’m somewhat reassured by what people put here, in addition to my own research and work. But keeping the matter in the Sony Vegas forum feels rather insular, which is counter-productive when what I’m looking for–what I think people would benefit from–is an actual comparison. Otherwise, it risks just being a self-validation which I’m not keen on because I WANT to learn Avid and FCP.
Or, to use the ‘religious’ analogy. . .it’s easy for people to feel comfortable about their righteousness when everyone else in the pews is chiming Halleluah! along with them; it’s another thing when they find themselves out in the world.
Personally, I would like to see some myths dispelled.