using sony Vegas to edit a feature

[Rosh Kadri]

no OMF support yet, and i dont believe the edl is a standard cmx format.

you can use AAF or use something like cui bono soft edl convert which can go from .VEG to OMF etc.

good luck

[Dr.dropout]

Vegas can export an industry standard CMX 3600 EDL as well as AAF.

Please test the complete workflow with the other systems (specifically how well these data formats, as well as the project media formats work in the other systems) before you take the job.

Assume nothing related to project interchange will work flawlessly until you’ve tested the pipeline yourself, under this project’s conditions.

The best project interchange experience with Vegas is with Premiere CS, using AAF. Both directions work well if the media formats you use are common to both apps.

[Rob Mack]

What about OMF? Seems like that’s what protools people always want you to provide.

Rob Mack

[Rwm1710]

Yes, most sound houses I have worked with use Protools.

But my biggest concern is support. If I rent a Final Cut or Avid and I have a problem the rental house is there to replace or fix the problem right away. I can’t be down for a week waiting for Sony tech support on the phone.

I heard that they were cutting some features at Sony using Vegas but don’t know if that is true. Does anyone know of any movies that were cut on Vegas?

[Rob Mack]

I can sympathize with your situation. My employers completed a feature length documentary on Media100 and 844x about 2 years ago. Our office has an open floor plan so I heard a lot of the rants. We had a very long relationship with the media100 company and were able to get replacement hardware shipped to us when we needed it.

Towards the end of the process we installed a 16 disk array to work with the 844 system. We had lots of troubles with it and went through a few arrays before getting something that could deliver the data rates that the products promised.

There are a couple of ways of looking at a Vegas system to edit a feature. First of all, these are usually very stable on a wide range of systems, so I wouldn’t really expect a lot of trouble, at least not the sort that a rental house could solve. However, if you were to rent or lease a system I’d think you’d be getting the storage, the I/O card (Xena, probably), and any of the other stuff you need like decks. These are the things that will most likely give you trouble.

If you are planning on relying on a rental house or a system integrator then you’re going to have to use what they support. And if you really want to use Vegas you’ll have to make sure they’ll support that.

It’s my opinion, based on what I saw being done with Media100, that you could edit a feature with Vegas. I know people on the forums have said they’ve done it, or are currently doing it. However, I don’t know that Vegas is specifically tailored to the job and so you’d need to test and plan your course before getting too far down the path, and plan some exit strategies. Really, you should do all this anyway, but I think that Vegas may require you to be a little smarter and more organized the the average FCP user.

If it were me, I’d want to be using a hardware combination that I’d already run through it’s paces with smaller jobs. In fact this is just what we’ve done over the last year with PPro/Axio systems and we’ve come to the conclusion that we actually can’t cut a feature with this hardware combination. Given the level of ranting that goes along with a new edit system where I work, I wouldn’t recommend Vegas to them – because I know it’s not a good match, and I want then to call the integrator when there are problems, not me.

One last thing about integrators and rental houses. If you are buying or renting a big fat array, fiber, and fiber cards, you should make sure they really have replacements available. The rental house is more likely than the integrator/retailer. We found that even the manufacturer didn’t have replacement units standing by. These are just too expensive for most people to have them lying around as spares.

Soooo…I guess I’m not encouraging you to go with Vegas. If you’ve got a known working setup and you’ve ironed out all of the questionable parts, then go for it. Otherwise, rent an FCP or Avid system. At least you’ll have someone to plead with.

Rob Mack

[Rwm1710]

Thank you Rob, that was very helpful.

[Rob Mack]

I think I just wouldn’t start editing a feature with Vegas unless I had some experience. I do think it could be done, and even if I was using something with more of a track record I know I’d have to test everything before I started. You could really get yourself onto the wrong track with any of them.

We had all sorts of trouble just getting projects from media100 to 844x and back… and 844x was a media100 product!

Rob