Vegas to Adobe Premiere Pro

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It’s personal preference. If you feel like Vegas gets the job done with a minimal amount of headache, then great.

With Premiere, you have the extended toolset of After Effects and Audition which you can push edits to with minimal effort. Vegas seems a bit more all encompassing which could hurt it in some regards.

Another reason to at least look at Premiere, is that it is slowly becoming more of a player in short form editing; filling the hole that FCP7 left. It may be worth learning if that is the case.

Regardless, it’s the difference between a BMW and a Mercedes, both can drive you to the grocery store.

Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire – Digital Production Services
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services.

[Patti Arrigo]

One more question how does Photoshop fit in with this.
Wouldn’t that be good for color correcting etc.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It doesn’t really.

Photoshop Extended (the slightly more expensive version with video and 3d features) can take in video. You create a video layer then change it into a smart object, this allows you access to more than the first frame.

The issue with color correction is that it has to be done in context. Shot B has to be corrected in terms of Shot A and Photoshop correction is kind of all or nothing.

That isn’t to say that you could never use it, but in practical terms I think it works best for effects like overall sharpening or the addition of grain.

Dedicated tools like Speedgrade, Davinci Resolve Lite (free for footage up to 1080 in resolution, Mac only I believe), or even plugins like Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Colorista and Looks are all better suited for the task.

Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire – Digital Production Services
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services.

[Alex Gerulaitis]

2nd Angelo’s words: whatever tool works for you, use it.

That said, the latest version of Vegas Pro (v.11, 64-bit, with GPU acceleration enabled) has been a headache for a couple of my clients: instability, no appreciable GPU acceleration, lack of support from Sony. While Premiere Pro has its own share of issues, its stability is generally good, and so are community support options; GPU acceleration is awesome.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Integrator
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Al Bergstein]

I use both. Pr is much more stable. But some features are harder to use. I prefer adobe’s titling, but dislike it’s layout. Still, Pr has a much better integration of all the adobe suite, as it should be. Support is much better than Sony’s. It feels like the difference between a small product in the world of a giant corp, vs Adobe’s focus on pros.

I think you’ll like it, once you are over the learning curve.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Just to be clear, I find that Vegas, if editing a very simple, *short* doc style 2 camera shoot, with virtually no FX or much grading, is faster and easier to get the job done. Very streamlined, and I’m not meaning that it’s because of my newness to Pr (I’ve been using it about 6 months for a couple of full days a week). But the stability has been a never ending battle with Sony. I still go back to it for a quick and dirty job. Sony’s multicam is much easier to use, really a very elegant workflow, but again, I don’t worry about losing an hour’s work due to a crash. All the rest of my longer form documentary work is now being done on Adobe. It’s got a lot more capability, with Warp to stabilize, much better controls for color grading, etc. I won’t be upgrading Vegas anymore.

Al

[Patti Arrigo]

Thank you Al This really helps.

[Patti Arrigo]

I am getting tired of all the crashes and problems.
What is it like to color correct with Pr. I edit
a two hour lecture every week with three cameras so I do
like Sony multi cam….that is easy. There are times
when Sony takes over and does what it wants so many bugs.
That is why I wanted to switch and try something new.
Thank you for your help I really appreciate COW and the
help you guys give.

[Al Bergstein]

Patti, what’s your setup?

Al