FCP vs. Sony Vegas….you’ve got to be kidding.

[Tom Wolsky]

Eh? WTF’s your problem.

[Shawn Hare]

“You really can’t just grab an application and start just using it…not without LEARNING about it”

Actually you can with Sony Vegas Pro. It’s very intuitive.
I have both Mac and PC, and have been using Vegas for years.
I was able to basically use it immediately, and get very amateurish results, but that was because I was just playing with it, so see how it acted. I learned how to really use it by reading the manual — Final Cut not so much. In fact, I was sitting there, just attempting to play with it, the same as I did with Vegas, and got nothing but frustration.

I have the same frustrations as Brody. What is supposed to be software for THE intuitive and easy-to-use computer turns out to be a pain in the butt.

And what exactly is it that Vegas can’t do that FC can? Everyone keeps saying that it’s so, but haven’t explained what the something is.

It is my intention to take classes at New England Institute of Technology in Video and Audio Production, and in that class I’ll be learning FC and Pro Tools. So in the meantime, I’m trying to wean myself off of Vegas and onto at least a good understanding of Final Cut Express, since it appears that FC is industry standard.

It’s too bad that the ease of use of Vegas cannot be combined with the (supposed) power of Mac.

[Shane Ross]

[Shawn Hare] “And what exactly is it that Vegas can’t do that FC can?”

Be recognized by producers and clients as professional software. Perception is a big thing. But really, since I don’t know Vegas, I have no clue what it can or cannot do. Closed Caption export?

[Shawn Hare] “in the meantime, I’m trying to wean myself off of Vegas and onto at least a good understanding of Final Cut Express, since it appears that FC is industry standard.”

Uh…that will end. With the death of FCP 7 and Final Cut express (both are End of Life…no longer available) you will find more and more places transition away from FCP and to another app. Avid…Premiere…depends on their needs. It won’t be FCX…at least not for a long while…unless it shapes up.

FCP is a dead end. It works now, but won’t be an industry standard for long.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Shawn Hare]

Oops! I said FCX when I meant to say FCP.
It’s just that the majority of the folks in this forum (or so it seems) are suggesting that FCP is presently the industry standard, so I’ve got to get in somewhere, and I can’t afford the pro versions of either FC or Avid or anything else for that matter. I’ve been able to upgrade to Vegas Pro at a huge discount. But anyway, the New England Institute of Technology trains on FCP and Pro Tools, so I’ve little choice … except not to attend, which might be what happens anyhow since I’m laid off and not poor enough to get grants, and currently can only get a small portion of the tuition paid with loans, which doesn’t include fees, books, travel expenses, etc. Sorry for rambling. I’m 48 and trying to make a complete change in life career, and it’s a strange place to be right now.

But quickly, and more on topic — I’d read some stuff a while back that many people were sorely disappointed in the newest version of FCP, and were leaving for Avid. In fact, when I was getting a tour of NEIT, one of the instructors intimated his preference for Avid. Does that seem to be the trend, and do you think that Avid will become the industry standard?

[Samuel De loenen]

Some interesting posts here.

I’ve been fiddling around with Avid MC and FCP for small private assignments in a non-professional context, trying to get the basics down.

Started with Avid (got it cheap), since this was recommended to me as industry standard, but had some gripes with that. The AMA system and the architecture of the whole NLE seemed to be quite complex and eating away a lot of processing power. I’m on a mac mini with footage on a usb connected external drive. Once, I fired up Avid with the drive still turned off which got me into serious troubles that eventually a friend of mine who works in the industry managed to guide me out of. Also the way you need to import images and the steps necessary to adjust them felt cumbersome, I got annoyed with dialog boxes appearing after certain actions, adding titles in marquee felt overly complex compared to FCP, basically the whole interface felt more sluggish and cumbersome in comparison to FCP. Also migrating a project from express to MC you need to follow a whole series of exact steps and even deleting a project is complex; if you don’t follow guidelines and just try intuitively you’ll end up deleting the project but not all of the media files. Again something that seems to be organized more simply in FCP, with the capture scratch and other folders.

I actually decided to give FCP a shot because the people I’d meet who were doing something with video, were all working with it, so I felt isolated and got the impression that Avid probably is used mainly by big industry (TV, film) and people who have worked in the industry for a longer period of time, while FCP is newer and more for small companies, freelancers, hobbyists, artists etc. (though I saw a list of Hollywood films that have been edited in FCP a while back).So I gave it a shot and liked the interface a lot better (the way the bin/sequence window can be organized for example), but didn’t like the fact that it needed more rendering in the timeline, especially with any text you add on to your video track. There’s also some good instructional dvds and books (Larry Jordan) that you can easily find on the internet, to get up to speed with this NLE fast.

Now what I read in this thread about Sony Vegas being able to handle many different formats, I find quite interesting. With so many codecs and formats out there, it seems quite nice just to be able to drop it into your timeline, not worry about it and let your NLE do the work. FCP7 is indeed quite limited in the types of media it accepts, but then again compressor works great and apparently you can create a virtual cluster of your processing cores (if you’re on a multi core machine) to speed up the transcoding process (haven’t sat down to figure this out and implement it yet, but I stumbled onto it on the internet). Also with audio, you can decide not to transcode it and render it in the timeline instead, since that doesn’t take much time. Still, going through compressor is an extra step and worry and requires a more systematic approach.

I’m also a bit curious about Edius 6. I was at a small exhibition for industry ppl a while ago and it was the only NLE present there and being promoted. Apparently its architecture is designed to take advantage of multiple cores and therefore performs very well with HD footage (here’s a video of an fcp-edius comparison, handling multiple tracks of HD footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcrbHB3q0DI), and for that it’s getting increasingly popular, hence the sales rep of the store that organized the exhibition. From what I’ve read FCP7 doesn’t take advantage of multiple cores. Since Edius runs on Win7, I told the sales rep about the troubles I had with WinXP when I was still running Avid Express and how mac had made my life a lot easier, but he said that since windows 7 has been pretty stable and that he actually gets mac people in his store with more bizarre problems than the windows ones, so go figure.

A windows user myself, I went through the effort of switching to mac which cost me some time and sweat. But I managed to adapt to it and found out about totalfinder, which addressed my frustrations with finder. I’m actually hesitant now to go back to PC, since I had codec/driver problems with that and many other unpleasant surprises that kept popping up. With mac it’s all been working out of the box, no viruses, worries, etc. Still don’t like the fact that if I double click on window it actually disappears instead blows up full screen, but hell, you can’t have it all.

I think for now I will stick to FCP 7 since I’m starting to get this program down and don’t feel like switching yet again. One of the nice things about FCP is that the suite is quite complete. You can color correct, edit sound, transcode, create dvds (dvd studio pro is not that hard to work with and gives you lots of options). Now I heard that FCX is getting bad reviews (though it remains to be seen how the FCX story evolves) and FCP7 is in a dead end street. Panasonic’s cameras for example now record in ACVHD, which needs to be converted to prores under FCP7 and who knows if native support will ever come if Apple’s focus is on X now. Some people are saying it’ll all go back to avid, but the sales rep at the exhibition said that we are definitely now in a situation of multiple NLE’s co-existing and that this will most likely continue in the future.

One more thing regarding Avid and FCP just to make things clear: those are just my personal experiences and opinions. In no way have i gone through the trouble of mastering these programs the way industry professionals do, nor do I have the same needs. I guess what’s important for me is that an NLE feels intuitive, easy to learn and keeps things simple without getting shallow. It’s not about having the supposedly best, most expensive or recognized piece of software. it’s all about what your needs are and which tool fits them best. Cause that’s all NLE’s are really, just a tool to make something you want/need to make. And sometimes it’s best to keep things simple.

Greets
Sam

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[Chris Hiles]

This is a fascinating thread, but I, like a few other posters am surprised at the animosity!
I think the analogy of the hammer and the screwdriver suits this issue very well.
If I knew that a new program was coming out that had all the functions of say Adobe Premiere, FCP and Vegas Pro, I would drop Sony Vegas like a shot. I simply want the most efficient tool to do the job.
My problem is it seems that most people just generalise too much. I would love to know some specific, real-world differences that people have experienced.
I am an experienced Vegas user, now on 11 on a pc. I am searching for info on the efficiency of running Vegas under Bootcamp, because I just love my Macbook Pro (bought my 1st Mac last year after being a committed pc user)
This week I had to render a short film, and my laptop pc decided it didn´t want to play. I imported the footage into Adobe Premiere on my Mac and got down to some urgent “learning by doing”. It didn´t take me long to achieve what I needed by using help files and lots of Youtube tutorials, but I can safely say, it was in no way as intuitive and instant as Vegas.
Real world example:
I can simply drag the end of a clip with my mouse and it will add a fade automatically.
With Adobe Prem, you have to add the fade as a transition. (I know this is about FCP, which I would love to use if it can do what I need, but maybe there are some similarities?)
Real world example number 2:
Placing a clip (audio or video) over the end of another clip adds an automatic fade. That is such a time-saving function and works flawlessly. You can then easily (with one click) decided the type of fade and obviously move it around until it “fits”.
Can FCP do simple things like this?
Also, I don´t just take it for granted that FCP “may have some functions that Vegas does´t have”. Can anyone give me some real examples? I have already read that collaborating with others is easier because FCP seems to be “industry standard” (whatever that means) but this is not really important to me.
Thanks for any input.

[Marcos Schreiber]

You’re right, Vegas is better …
I’m a user of FCP and Vegas and unfortunately there is nothing that FCP do not make the best in Vegas.
I can make a list if you want…
These other comments show that Apple could become a religion …

[Marcos Schreiber]

As I said before, this spirited comments arise because Apple has become a religion for them, leaving them blind to this topic and many others …

[Ivan Stephen nagy]

It is all about artistic freedom, not religion not technology.
I have tried all NLEs and Vegas has won my heart, because it gives me the freedom to create, fast, transfer my ideas into reality.
Of course I am a rebel, do not succumb myself to any corporate airhead, religion or fad.
My 3 cents.
:-)))

[Brody Dolyniuk]

Well, hello everyone. It’s been a long time since I started this thread (and quite a thread it turned out to be), and much has changed, so I thought I’d better chime back in with an update.

While it was difficult accepting/adjusting the shock moving from Vegas to FCP 7, I’m happy to say I’m now a full Mac enthusiast and am loving FCP X. Although it was flogged during the first few months by long-time FCP users, for me, this is the program I’ve been waiting for.

Gone are the days of waiting for a file to render before playback, there are more formats which can be dropped in and edited immediately, I love the magnetic timeline (now that I’ve gotten used to it), and FCP X comes with a host of very usable transitions, effects, sound FX and more. I consider myself a “Pro-sumer” and FCP X really is a very easy to use, logical software that yields high quality results. I also love the graphic workspace/layout. Since they added the multicam feature and automatic synchronization it really speeds up the workflow.

Other built-in features like being able to choose popular formats for export, like YouTube streaming make it easy to get your finished projects online quickly with high quality.

I do apologize for my initial comments…I was shocked/venting in frustration and I upset off some of the long-time FCP users here. I’m happy to say that those days are behind me, and while if I was still on a PC I’d probably still be using Vegas, I’m very a happy Mac user with the new FCP X and Logic Pro programs.