Vegas vs. Premiere Pro

[John Rofrano]

[Tony Connoly] “How does Vegas compare to Premiere Pro? Where can I start to find out about the differences? “

Since you came to the Vegas forum, you can expect people to tell you that Vegas is far superior to Premiere Pro which is why we use it. 😉 I own both (only because PPro came bundled with the CS5 suite and I wanted the other apps) but I’ve tried using it several times and I just don’t like the workflow.

You could always read the spec sheets on both products and see the differences but it all depends on what type of editing you do. I use the audio tools in Vegas extensively and can’t deal with minimal audio support in PPro. I also like the “organic” way in which you manipulate events directly on the timeline in Vegas that requires lots of menu selections in PPro. Vegas has 3D support (if you’re into that… I’m not)

At the end of the day it’s just a tool and productivity is what’s most important to me. I can do things in Vegas that I would have to use After Effects for in PPro and so staying in one applications makes it work for me. Your mileage may vary.

~jr

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

[Tony Connoly]

Thanks John. I realize that people here like Vegas. It’s the Why’s I’m interested in. The things I like about Premiere Pro: -comes with Photoshop and Illustrator bundle, being able to edit any format without conversion, the admittedly cheezy soundtracks that came with the now defunct Soundbooth. Dislikes: very steep learning curve, especially when you consider that you have to learn After Effects too; motion stabilization is VERY important to me, but I’d have to learn both AE and Mocha for that; there is no way to save a file back to the same format without re-compressing it in the process, projects are hard to manage, Metadata is powerful but cumbersome and does not work well with AVCHD, having to you Soundbooth was annoying (maybe this is better with Audition but I’m not willing to pay full freight for a midterm mini upgrade with CS5.5); having to buy specific nVidia cards to take advantage of acceleration.

I am basically a novice, but do not like dumbed down programs like the one that came with Windows Live, and I need state of the art stabilization and support for DSLRs.

[John Rofrano]

This is good feedback. let me try and give my views on this as a Vegas editor:

[Tony Connoly] “The things I like about Premiere Pro: -comes with Photoshop and Illustrator bundle, being able to edit any format without conversion, the admittedly cheezy soundtracks that came with the now defunct Soundbooth. “

Actually, it doesn’t come with anything. You only get all that if you buy the bundle which is $1,400. I actually bought CS5 despite Premiere Pro coming with it. But I get your point. 😉

[Tony Connoly] “Dislikes: very steep learning curve, especially when you consider that you have to learn After Effects too; motion stabilization is VERY important to me, but I’d have to learn both AE and Mocha for that;”

Agreed. Vegas can do a lot more without the need to go to After Effects. Now that you can get Boris Continuum Complete for Vegas Pro 10.0 I use After Effects very rarely if at all anymore. Vegas had very powerful compositing modes including 3D composites (i.e., not the kind you need funny glasses for).

Vegas also has a built-in stabilizer that is quite good and if you need a better one you can buy the full version of Mercalli that is built into Vegas.

[Tony Connoly] “there is no way to save a file back to the same format without re-compressing it in the process,”

Vegas does have the ability to “smart render” some formats but if you do any color correcting, it will need to be re-encoded. That is just the nature of video editing.

[Tony Connoly] ” projects are hard to manage, Metadata is powerful but cumbersome and does not work well with AVCHD”

I think this is more of a problem with AVCHD itself and not having timecode depending on the camera used. I haven’t had problems managing projects in Vegas.

[Tony Connoly] “having to you Soundbooth was annoying”

This is a strong point for Vegas. it’s audio editing capabilities are outstanding. It’s like having Pro Tools built into your NLE. It also integrates well with Sound Forge if you need to do surgical editing down to the individual sample.

[Tony Connoly] “(maybe this is better with Audition but I’m not willing to pay full freight for a midterm mini upgrade with CS5.5)”

I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. I saw CD5.5 and was waiting for a $99 upgrade price and when I saw it was full price I said, “what are they kidding me?” Who would pay full price for a few new features in a half dot release? Not me either. I passed on it too.

[Tony Connoly] ” having to buy specific nVidia cards to take advantage of acceleration. “

Yea, that sounds more like a “back office” deal with NVIDIA to buy overpriced cards. Why on earth would you limit the CUDA cards to some silly list that was hacked the first day? Vegas works with any NVIDIA CUDA enabled video card or any ATI OpenCL enabled video card.

Hopefully this helps answer some of your questions.

~jr

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