Vegas weaknesses

[Zen]

It makes sense if you used TM before. Otherwise you won’t know what you’re missing.

[Timothy Duncan]

Vegas is always a great addition to anyone’s tool box. Vegas has perfectly clean sub-pixel rendering that FCP-5 simply can’t do. While Apple has improved the rendering in the new version of FC5, it now takes much longer to render for not a very good quality improvement. Final Cut is actually very limited in native FX. You have to leave FC to do most of the work that I can accomplish directly inside Vegas.

Vegas is very weak at chroma key. It’s the worst of any software NLE I’ve used. So if you’re going to do a lot of chroma key work, make sure and pickup something else, such as . FC has superior chroma keying and so does Avid and Premiere. Perhaps some newer version of Vegas will address this in the future.

While the Vegas titler is very unique and I use it on a regular basis, it needs an overhaul. I have to say it is a weak area, especially when you compare it to the titler built into PremierePro. PPro’s titler was written by the same engineer who wrote Inscriber CG and Title Motion. I have tried many angles to get TM support for Vegas, even introducing the product managers from Sony and Inscriber to each other. If enough people write to Inscriber asking for TM support, then maybe we will see some action. I love using TM and there’s no better integratino of it that with Canopus Edius. This is what I’d love to see in Vegas.

Motion Tracker — Vegas lacks this key ability in all it’s amazing compositing power. I would like to see Vegas add a tracker as least as good as in the high end Avid|DS system. (A tracker allows you to select pixels on the screen and automatically ‘track’ them as they move. This allows you to replace a sign, for example by drawing a mask and having it ‘track’ over the existing footage). While at it, they should have a multipoint tracker. 🙂

Color Matching — Vegas has absolutely incredible color correction. It is the easiest to use of any NLE I currently run (with price ranges from $500 to $150,000). But, it lacks the ability to automatically “match” between scenes. Other NLE softwares allow you to pick the flesh tone, for example between two shots and have the color corretor “match” the scene for you. PremierePro with the Axio plugins and hardware will do a three point match (high, mid and low) with ease.

Timeline and Trimmer IN, OUT, and A/V designation — This is an area of frustration for editors coming from any other NLE. Vegas doesn’t have the traditional use of these functions. Vegas does have them, but there aren’t “standard” buttons you click on to use them. Vegas uses “selections” to do all this, and even to the everyday Vegas editor, these are not always clearly visible. I am constantly adding audio or video in addition to my edits to the timeline in error when I forget to “select” the selection from the trimmer, and then hit “tab” to get either the video only, or audio only, to send to the timeline via keystroke. There should be a way to target the source tracks, and the destination tracks, instead of having to drop them onto the timeline and them move them. (You can designate one, but not both the Video and Audio simultaneously).

Replace — Vegas doesn’t have buttons to do a “replace” edit that most other NLEs have. What Vegas does is even BETTER, by allowing “TAKES” but this requires right mouse clicking. No buttons exist. This makes learing Vegas a bit harder for the more advanced editing, but much simpler for the very basics. “TAKES” are one of the most powerful features of Vegas. So perhaps it’s better to say their shoudl be a “take” button.

NDF support: This one can really burn you if you are doing offline work for conforming and you have any source footage that is NDF timecode. For the average DV user, this isn’t an issue.

Video Preview on VGA and External — Vegas cannot display video playback on both the VGA screen and on the output (Decklink or 1394) while the video is playing (only during while parked or scrubbing). This is especially annoying when having clients sit over your shoulder who are used to seeing the video both places. Vegas is the only NLE that I know of that cannot do this. As a result, I lay out my Vegas GUI to hide the Video Preview most of the time. If you dock the preview window into another window, you can effective hide the VGA preview while using external monitor.

Directly Playback of Timeline to tape — Vegas cannot give sustained perfect playback of the timeline allowing you to simply record the output to tape. You have to choose “print to tape” and go through the sub-menus and extra audio rendering in order to get output. Other NLEs allow you to pre-render the timeline and simply play it out real-time.

Nesting — Vegas has nested projects in Version 6 and this is a great new feature, but it needs to go to the next level. You should be able to select any clips on the timeline and then choose to “nest” those clips into it’s own collapsed layer. Then you should be able to step into (or un-collapes) the nested layer at will to make tweaks/changes.

Track level vs. Event level FX: Pan/Crop should be able to be applied at Track Level. Track Motion should also be able to be applied at Event level (probably should be called Event Motion). This one causes many more vertical layers to my projects and extra nesting.

Bezier Splines — Vegas cannot do user controlled Bezier Splines to the motion (Track Motion and Pan/Crop). Vegas also cannot control keyframes separately for the separate motion parameters, such as X,Y,and Z rotation and Scaling.

Decklink support for compressed media — To use Decklink with Vegas, you have to have tons of disc space. Decklink works only in uncompressed mode, and only uses the Proprietary Sony YUV codec that CANNOT be accessed outside of Vegas or other Sony software (such as DVD Architect). This is extremely painful if you need to send anything to a 3rd party program. You have to render to Uncompressed, then take into the 3rd party program, then render out to uncompressed, then bring back into Vegas and render out yet again to the Sony YUV codec. (4 TIMES disc space is now required!) Hopefully, the Sony will some day allow the use of the Sony YUV codec outside of Vegas. Also — Decklink support for compressed media, saving much disc space without compromising visible quality will be a nice addition.

Lack of standard Plugin Architecture — The above scenario would not be an issue if I could bring After Effects plugins into Vegas. Because Vegas was written so far ahead of it’s time in regards to real-time playback, they had to develop their own plugin architecture to get the real-time preview results. This is good and bad. It’s good to get such great performance and to be able to adjust anything while Vegas is playing, but bad that it takes 3rd party companies too many resources to try and alter their plugins to work in Vegas. This is why there are so few plugins for Vegas.

So — these are the main weaknesses of Vegas as I see them now. But, even with these weaknesses, there is no other NLE that can acoomplish as much as fast, and at the incredible high quality that Vegas can. No matter what system I edit on, I always end up sending the project into Vegas. Every other NLE forces you to bounce out of them to do most of the compositing and FX work. Vegas can do 90% of what I need done right within the program without leaving. Plus, Vegas can render in the background.

So — Vegas is my #1 choice of NLEs at any price. Best built in FX. Best RT previews. Most comprehensive file format support. Best audio editing/sweetening with no one even approaching them.

Here’s how I see the NLEs:

#1 Best overall = Vegas

#1 Most over rated and hyped = Final Cut Pro

#1 Best marketed = Final Cut Pro

#1 Most under reated and under marketed = Vegas

#1 Most buggy = Avid

#1 in real-time FX output without rendering = Canopus Edius

#2 Overall = PPro

#1 Most stolen features = Liquid

My dream software would be a merge of the best of Vegas, with some nice features taken from FCP and Avid, but with the incredible real-time software render engine of Edius and with hardware support for Matrox Axio. That’s not asking for too much, is it?

td

[Timothy Duncan]

And one other HUGE weakness in Vegas I somehow forgot:

Snapping and the lack thereof — Vegas is the only NLE I have ever used that cannot snap to items on the timeline in one step, that are not on the same layer as the object you are moving. It always is a two step process. Other NLEs allow snapping even when dragging from a bin to the timeline. This is another area of frustation I see in editors moving to Vegas from other editing applications. (And a constant frustration for me as I don’t like taking thousands of extra steps per day while editing).

td

[Gary Kleiner]

Tim,

Thanks for the comprehensive post. It’s an educational read.

Gary Kleiner

[Sergio]

Going back to the “go to” function, what I ment was, when you’e far
from your in or out point, and you want to go to either one of them with one key stroke. All the tape machines have this, and also some other NLE’s.

[Edward Troxel]

Have you tried CTRL-ALT-Left/Right Arrow?

Edward Troxel

[Sergio]

Thank you Ed. I’ll try it when I get home.

[Adam Rose esq.]

thanks, all, for the feedback – most useful

Fuddam

[Stephen Mann]

Don’t forget that Vegas doesn’t care about timecode breaks and you can put practically any video or photo file on the timeline and Vegas will treat it just like any other file. Oh, I currently have eight instances of Vegas running on one computer to copy clips between projects.

[Jb]

Read your post its great but i have too question you on your view of pinnacle when you say “stolen” What you say about liquid can be said of any other since most of the apps came after avid/premier. where do you draw the line?

James B.