Vegas HD vs. Grass Valley Edius Canopus HD

[Larry Brewer]

Vegas 8 can be installed on your PC without removing Vegas 7. It does not write over Vegas 7 during the install the way vegas 7 wrote over Vegas 6.

That being said, Vegas 8 should be better software for HD editing. So download the trial. Cost nothing and is full featured till it expires.

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/step2.asp?did=768

While you are there download the Vegas 8 manual pdf. It can answer some questions.

I have not used Vegas 8 with RAW HD video. I will defer to someone that has for the rest of your questions.

[Leslie Wand]

on a 6600 with 3gb ram i get realtime preview hd, and literally no problems.

download the trial – other than protype, it’s pretty much the same outwardly as 7.

8a is MUCH better for hd than 7

leslie

[Rob Mack]

First off, the way you describe it makes me think that the group is Edius-heavy and the test is designed to favor Edius. Maybe that’s not really the case but it’s how I’m interpreting it.

Ideally, you’d compare the two using identical systems, with two operators that are equally familiar with their tools, and using media that you’ve both agreed on because you both know that it’ll work well.

Not knowing Edius, I’d start be searching this forum, the DMN forum, the Sony Creative forum, and just search the web for comparisons. There are some. Vegas users have said good things about Edius, and they’ve also had complaints.

I’m going to guess that you can’t make a head-to head comparison. For Vegas, I’d look for things that are just plain easier, like adjusting parameters while a clip is looping, dragging different types of media from Windows explorer to the timeline or trimmer, things that can be done in fewer clicks.

Also, you might casually leave Vegas looping while you show something in an unrelated application. Some other NLEs stop playing when you do this. One thing I found impossible in PPro was to play a clip and then write down the dialog in Word. You can’t do it because PPro stops playing. You can do transcription with Vegas.

Real time… don’t count on it from Vegas. Edius is going to do some things better and you’ll be best off just accepting it.

Another thing you’ll run into is people’s habits. The Edius folks will most likely have work habits that you don’t have. Maybe they always use the trimmer. Maybe they religiously render things. They may look at what you’re doing and say “Yes, but you need to be able to do XYZ”

Probably the most impressive thing will be to just get through a routine faster.

Rob Mack

[Leslie Wand]

and another thought would be to ask, what they (the group) actually want out of the nle? i know having used almost every other nle (with the exception of edius), that vegas is extremely quick, and (as long as you’re fresh to nle) extremely intuitive to use / pick-up.

on the whole i think the idea of a comparison is pretty meaningless without a road map.

it’s rather like asking which is better; a ford suv or a toyota landcruiser? they’ll both get you from a to b, but without knowing what lies between a and b…….

i would suggest that the group set’s a series of tasks, and then assess the outcome…

and of course, as rob points out, the pc’s should be equally powered, and the operators equally knowledgeable about their software.

leslie

[Rob Mack]

This piqued my interest so I went to the Canopus site to see if you could download a demo.

You can, and maybe you should, if you have a non-critical system to put it on.

Rob Mack

[Ron Shook]

Russell,

[Russell Robertson] “Any hints, suggests or advice to best position Vegas for this comparison would be most appreciated!!!”

Perhaps I can add a little to this discussion, even though I use neither at the moment, but will be using Vegas in another month or two. I researched Edius very extensively up until 4 or 5 months ago when I passed on it and have a cohort, one of the most knowledgable in the business, who uses Vegas, FCP, Edius, PPro and Avid. I couldn’t do that, but he’s an expert in virtually all of them.

Edius has pretty much inarguably the best real-time software only engine in the business. It’s a speed editor but it’s not a craft editor, appropriate to news editing and simpler event editing, far more than complex feature editing. Feature editing can be done with Edius, and other compositing software, but there’s no integration except with Boris and not a lot even there, nothing even remotely comparable to the compositing power build into Vegas.

Assuming that you and the Edius editor have relatively comparable computers, he/she will likely have better preview output. It’s likely that you will be able to accomplish the tasks a bit faster and you’ll really shine if any complex compositing is part of the tasks and you can loop a section and perform compositing and filter adjustments in real-time while Vegas plays.

There’s probably no better titler/CG for getting the job done quickly than the Inscriber TitleMotion that plugs into Edius, so even if you go to V8 with the new titler, you’ll be at a speed disadvantage. As I understand it the new titler is closer to a competitor to the text capabilities of Apple Motion than to TitleMotion, i.e., built for flash and animation more than speedy CG.

I could be wrong on this, but there could be a huge reason for you to go to V8 for this demo, particularly if you are asked to print to tape or render to a finished file. Doesn’t version 8 have smart rendering for HDV, so that you can create a finished file without re-rendering any unaffected segments?

In any case, how this turns out will be to a large degree defined by the comparative computers, and the tasks you are asked to perform. If you can control to some degree the tasks you are asked to perform towards the more complex, you are liable to look that much better.

Ron Shook

[John Frey]

I finally gave up on Edius 4, a few months ago, after using it for several projects. It is very realtime and has some neat features, but it simply does not come close to the feature-set and ease-of-use of Vegas, currently at Ver. 8 for me. I agree with Ron re. Titlemotion. Too bad Sony didn’t hook up with Inscriber on that one.

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore