OK. So, what’s Sony Vegas lacking?

[Kelly Griffin]

Sure beats the hell outta me. I’ve been editing on various systems for 25 years and I think it’s pretty amazing.

There are a few things that I would have conceived differently, but I don’t know what anyone’s talking about if they’re describing it as anything less than a frontline, professional, workhorse video toolkit.

–Kelly

[Steve Rhoden]

It aint lacking a thing Ron. And if one takes a good look, most of those
high end plugins available for After effects etc, are now likewise available
as a plugin for Sony Vegas.
Those that continue this nonsense rant, has no idea of the true capabilities
of Sony Vegas.

Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia

[John Rofrano]

[Ron Whitaker] “So, my question is: what is Vegas (supposedly) lacking that the “big boys” got?”

Well, I don’t know what those people thought was lacking but this would be my list of improvements:

• Media management is a big missing piece. When you’ve got hundreds of shots to select from, you need to be able to log and tag and annotate every piece of media so that you can find it later. Other NLE’s have a great system for tagging media and skimming media. I also like the whole Library concept from Final Cut Pro X. It makes it very easy to manage your media and move it across workstations or archive it.
• Collaboration: There is no notion of multiple editors working on a project in a LAN environment with the assets on a shared drive. Vegas Pro is primarily targeted at the lone editor. The fact that Vegas Pro requires write access to a drive to create it’s .slk and other files that it scatters all over prevents using it on a read-only drive on a LAN.
• Updated FX: Honestly, the Chroma Keyer is 12 years old!!!! Sony has done nothing to update the video FX after all those years and there is much better technology available today in other NLE’s.
• A good Titler. The last attempt to add a titler was ProType which looks like it came from outer space. I was convinced that Sony bought it from another company and just bolted it on because it looks so different from the rest of Vegas Pro but it was actually designed in house which shows that no one is leading the development team. IMHO, that should never have been released like that.
• Better support for Non-Sony cameras. Honestly, the GoPro is infinitely popular. You would think that Sony would make sure that Vegas Pro can ingest GoPro 4 Black footage without any problems but it cannot. It took 2 version releases before Vegas Pro could work well natively with DSLR footage. Being able to ingest camera footage should be a top priority for any NLE.
• External Audio Sync: Lots of people are working with DSLR’s and external Audio recorders. Other NLE’s like Final Cut Pro X can automatically sync video and external audio files. With Vegas Pro you need to buy a 3rd party app. BTW, when you sync audio in FCP X it behaves just like the original single clip, not as two separate clips.
• Background Rendering: Other NLE’s like FCP X will background render transitions and FX that slow down playback so that you always get full frame rates during editing. Vegas Pro doesn’t do this which causes people to complain about choppy playback when editing. That means other NLE’s have a smoother editing experience. Think of how nice it would be if Vegas Pro saved your RAM previews and re-used them! That’s what other NLE’s effectively do with background render.
• Compound Clips / Nested Sequences: Yes, I know Vegas Pro has nested projects but it’s not the same because they have their own media pools so you can’t easily take something from a project and nest it. Being able to take a collection of clips and make one compound clip out of them in the same project is a lot nicer implementation.
• Being able to have two FX windows open at the same time. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to take a snapshot of the screen and keep it on a second monitor so that I could open another FX window and set it to the same settings. Other NLE’s happily allow you to open more than one FX at a time and copy between them. This is especially critical when mastering audio and you want to see the compressor and EQ open at the same time. Vegas Pro can’t do this simple task but other NLE’s can.
• Content: Some NLE’s come with high quality lower thirds and backgrounds and other content that makes editing faster. Vegas Pro has nothing like this. Everything must be made from scratch or bought from a 3rd party.

That doesn’t take into account features like skimming or dynamic preview of FX, or magnetic storylines, or connected clips, etc. Like I said, I don’t know what others on that forum though was lacking but if you start using other NLE’s you’ll start making your own list. 😉

Don’t get me wrong. Vegas Pro has a lot of capabilities that other NLE’s don’t (like buses, sends, etc.) but you asked what was missing so I gave you my list.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Sonic 67]

My experience is not even close to John’s, but this is my take:

Basically Sony Vegas is still tied to it’s single user, audio editing oriented concepts.
It is fine for an one-man-band, but not so efficient for a company that requires collaboration and division of work.

DaVinci Resolve and Fusion are examples of software promoting collaboration inside a company.

You cannot really compare apples with oranges.

[John Rofrano]

[Sorin Nicu] “It is fine for an one-man-band, but not so efficient for a company that requires collaboration and division of work.”

Yea, it’s important to note that if you are a lone editor, shooting single day events, using a Sony camera, Vegas Pro lacks nothing. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Dave Turnidge]

“if you are a lone editor, shooting single day events, using a Sony camera, Vegas Pro lacks nothing”

Actually, I guess ignorance is bliss. I am a lone editor, shoot single day events, using a Canon camera – OOOooooppps… – Well, I’m still able to do everything I need.

OTOH, I know that I don’t know a lot, and I don’t know what I don’t know…so I will be grateful and continue in my ignorance – and look for that “bliss” thing… 🙂

Thank you ALL for the questions that are asked and for those who take their valuable time to answer. I wish you all a wonderful New Year, filled with the blessings of God!

[John Rofrano]

[Dave Turnidge] “Actually, I guess ignorance is bliss. I am a lone editor, shoot single day events, using a Canon camera – OOOooooppps… – Well, I’m still able to do everything I need.”

Actually for the most part, I fit into that category myself. I was shooting concert performances with my Sony Z1U HDV camera because my clients only wanted DVD’s so I never had a need for any of this “DSLR / 60p / 4K” stuff that is hanging everyone up in Vegas Pro.

Ron mentioned the “big boys” in his post and I take that to mean “large productions” and “latest equipment” so I pointed out why other NLE’s might be a better choice for collaborative large productions using the latest gear. I assume most of the Vegas Pro customer base are single independent editors like ourselves.

It’s probably also important to point out that the “big boys” are primarily using Mac’s and exchanging ProRes files and Vegas Pro is the only NLE that requires a PC (Premiere Pro, Avid, and Final Cut Pro X all run on Mac OS X) so that’s also probably s large part of why it doesn’t have greater penetration with the “big boys”. The cost of switching platforms is prohibitive so Vegas Pro isn’t even considered.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[David Shirey]

I guess the fact that it doesn’t come bundled with Adobe AfterEffects is a drawback in the industry? For my money what it’s lacking is consistency across PC’s. I have so many installations of different versions of Vegas on different computers/laptops that have completely different hang-ups from each other. At least in our office the Adobe Premiere installs are consistent in their crashing and render problems 😛

As people have always said on these boards, it’s the artist, not the tools, so I’ll stick with Vegas because I love the interface and the way it lets my editing flow, but it sure would be nice if they could put the kind of resources into software development that Adobe does, although I’ll be damned if I pay a subscription for software. Did you guys happen to see the Sony commercial on tv a couple months ago, where it was all about a guy writing a script that gets bought by sony pictures, shot on sony cameras, released in theaters on sony projectors, yadda yadda yadda until some lady sees the movie in a store while shopping for a Sony TV? Sort of a soup to nuts ad about how Sony can do it all. Well the one step they conveniently left out was editing on Sony software and I thought gee wouldn’t it be nice if they took enough pride in that division to make it ad-worthy.

[Steve Rhoden]

Still in the end, its developers needs to take Vegas a lot more serious.

Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia

[Norman Black]

[John Rofrano] “Updated FX: Honestly, the Chroma Keyer is 12 years old!!!!”

Yes, certain core functions should be worked on to make them as good as they can be. General grading functions mostly. One can leave the remainder to the aftermarket. Bright, contrast, curves, levels, color, white balance, sharpening and yes, chroma key.

[John Rofrano] “A good Titler. The last attempt to add a titler was ProType which looks like it came from outer space.”

Protype actually has a ton of power, especially in keyframing, but is very clunky, and of course no 3D. It seems Sony is leaving the “power” titler to the aftermarket since the most recent thing, Titles&Text, is really targeting the basic quick and dirty text. Sadly, Sony has been ignoring the fonts bugs in T&T.

My power titler of choice is NewBlue Titler Pro.
For quick and dirty I use Legacy text due to the font bugs in Titles and Text.

[John Rofrano] “Background Rendering:”

Sony probably thinks they have this covered with the Vegas selective prerender feature. But that is clunky and leaves droppings behind on your HD. We also have to manually re-prerender with edit changes.

[John Rofrano] “Compound Clips / Nested Sequences”

Again, Sony sits on their arse since they probably think nested projects have them covered.

[John Rofrano] “Better support for Non-Sony cameras. Honestly, the GoPro is infinitely popular.”

Don’t get me started on the GoPro thing…