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Which is better Sony Vegas Pro 10 or Final Cut Pro X
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[John Rofrano] “lol… are you sitting down?… Cuz’ now you know three… me! :-O
I bought an iPad 2 about a month ago and I was totally floored by its brilliant simplicity. I went to set up my email and it asked me for my userid and password and the next thing I saw was my email! (Imagine that!!!)”
I never would have guessed 🙂 On the other hand, if you’re a video pro who needs (needed?) access to FCP for work purposes, a Mac is the only PClone that does both FCP and Vegas. So that actually does make some sense.
Windows is a big mess, for sure. I believe some pieces of it are absolutely engineered to employ IT guys. I’ve worked with various versions of UNIX since 1975, I spend 11.5 years at Commodore working around an OS development team, and it’s hard to find another explanation. And of course, Microsoft with Outlook is trying to sell you their terribly complex and annoying email solution, rather than using a standard. So they have a vested interest in not making it easy.
Of course, I’m using “Becky!”, an email client I’ve been using since 1994, I think before Outlook existed, for my desktop mail, and it’s an easy set up. Ok, I did enter my email parameters, but then again, I am using my own hosted email server…. I’m not typical.
A better answer is Thunderbird, or Android. In both cases, I entered my email address, and the email client figured everything out. In fact, when I entered my GMail account on Android, it didn’t simply fetch my email, it synced up all my apps as well, over-the-air… something Apple’s going to get around to some day, I guess.
But in fact, both of the Mac-switch people I know are very non-technical people. So they probably get a big boost from Apple’s hand-holding, and don’t get annoyed that MacOS is pretty alien to anyone used to other OSs. The first GUI I used was in 1983, on an Apollo workstation with a four-button puck. Most UNIX GUIs used three buttons (and needed them) back in the day, AmigaOS, OS/2, and then Windows used two, and they both made perfect sense. When I’m down to Apple’s one, there’s trouble in there, like reaching over to chord with shift keys and things.
I can handle 24 buttons on my graphics tablet, I can handle six chorded strings on my guitar — I think any old human can do intelligent things with more than one mouse button without being totally confused. My mouse actually has about nine buttons and a scroll wheel… I’d probably get one of those jog shuttles full of buttons, if I didn’t already have a jog shuttle on my keyboard (Bella for Vegas… mixed reviews). Mice need to get more useful, not less. But I digress.. I could rant against Apple UI concepts all day. Like how I can run Windows, N versions of Linux or UNIX, even fire up BeOS/Haiku or AmigaOS (thanks to an emulator) and be fine, but none of that experience translates to MacOS. It’s fine if you’re Mac-only, and I’m sure they’ve designed the OS intentionally balkanized… they want it to be harder for Mac users to like Windows or some version of Linux.
And while I’m on the subject, I don’t like the direction Apple’s moving, or Ubuntu 11.x has already moved — making applications into Apps. I actually use windows all the time. Spread across my dual 1920×1200 monitors are 15 programs at the moment, including two instanced of Vegas 10, a couple of video conversion tools (re-muxing some weird MP4 I got with a new HD video capture card), Nero (BD backup burning), Evernote (song lyrics in progress), a couple of browsers, email client, Photoshop, Visio (some patent drawings for the day job), MorphMan (working on some animation, also for the day job), etc. I could not begin to be productive in an app-takes-whole-screen PC environment. It’s annoying enough on a tablet, but somewhat forgivable given the low resolution.
[John Rofrano] “Now to be fair, I wasn’t running Windows on my laptop before. I abandoned Windows long ago and I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for quite a while so I really switched from Linux to Mac OS X but after my experience with the iPad, I understood why Apple maintains strict control of both the hardware and the software. It’s the only way to guarantee the quality of the customer experience. The “swipe” gestures on the touchpad of the MacBook are simply brilliant. I don’t think I’ve clicked on a scroll bar in weeks (just a two finger swipe is all it takes to scroll).”
The mouse-wheel seems to have done the scroll thing for me for about a decade just dandy. So ok, Microsoft maybe got one thing right (Logitech mouse, but I do think MS added the wheel).
I have Windows 7 64, 4GB of DRAM, 1.2TB of HDD, dual Intel Core2 CPU, and a 1680×1050 screen on my laptop… and it’s fairly annoying for any real work (video or CAD). When I used it for Work, I had several different versions of Linux on tap via VirtualBox, but kept Windows native — I need the graphics performance for video or CAD, you lose at least some of that in a VM (just how much depends on the VM).
Today, I mostly use it for the occasional big field recording thing (anything that’s too big for the Zoom H4n), like a whole band recording session. I’m pretty happy with the tablet for basic stuff: reading email, light web surfing (if I’m not jugging more than 10 or so web pages), etc. It also does the eBook thing pretty well, but I have one of the only tablets that’s readable in bright sunlight (Notion Ink Adam with a Pixel Qi display)
[John Rofrano] ” I do believe we are living in the dawn of the “post-pc” era, where smart devices are the norm and laptops and desktops will only be used for special purposes. Only time will tell.”
We may be entering a “post-PC” era (do keep in mind, a Mac IS a PC), but not a post-pc era. While not IBM-compatibles like my PC and your Mac, our phones and tablets are very certainly personal computers, and will remain so. Yeah, they’re taking a different approach to an extent, but only so much. I can still fire up a bash shell on my tablet if I like — works better when I plug in a USB keyboard, of course… same as with any long typing session. Touch without tacticle feedback is never as good as with… keyboards live because they’re very good at what they do. But I’m willing to make them optional in return for a book-sized computer that runs all day (ok, your iPad2 is more a modern magazine, my Adam … well, maybe “Vogue”, or a copy of BYTE from the 80s, far as the thickness goes).
The key here is simple: computers have really outpaced people. The average computer of 2000 didn’t make all us video folks happy, I needed more for CAD, more for photography, more for music once we started replacing whole racks of gear with plug-ins. Hardcore gamers, too, only want more. But the average web browsing, text editing, simple-game-playing user was pretty happy with an AD2000 PC. And this year’s crop of tablets, nominally an ARM Cortex A9 dual core at 1GHz, 512MB of DRAM, and at least 8-16GB of “disc” space, completely out-specs the average PC of 2000, if it’s technically just barely a match for the average PC Netbook today in raw performance. Make the OS more efficient — and this means more efficient than Windows, and you’re there. After all, most of the tablet/phone OSs, Android, iOS, and even WebOS, are running on top of some version of UNIX… the same thing powering servers, supercomputers, TiVos and DTV boxes around the world. While not born on the personal computer, the PC was the main engine of evolution for UNIX, and particularly Linux, in recent times. So basically, we’re even running PC OSs on these things. Still computers, even more personal.
And Apple’s catching up to this idea — that maybe these are stand alone, rather than needing a tether to some PC somewhere. Android did that right from the start. But I won’t be editing video on either, any time soon…
-Dave
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[Dave Haynie] ” I am using my own hosted email server…. I’m not typical. “
Well… if you look closely at the screen capture of my desktop, I’m probably the only Mac use that has Terminal in their doc. (i can’t live without a bash shell) lol
[Dave Haynie] “Mice need to get more useful, not less. But I digress.. “
Actually, I’m beginning to think they are not needed at all for most daily use (although I’m not ready to edit video without one). I have a mouse with 7 buttons and I have never used more than 2 + the scroll wheel. The other buttons that flip pages, etc. seem awkward to use. By contrast, the gestures on the Mac’s touchpad (two finger swipe up/down to scroll, three finger swipe left/right to page forward / back) seem totally natural and the by the end of the first day I was using them without thinking. So 5 years of not using a 7 button mouse compared to one day of becoming instantly more productive with a Mac touchpad has convinced me that the engineers at Apple are on to something. (OMG, I’m starting to sound like “fanboy”) lol
[Dave Haynie] ” It’s fine if you’re Mac-only, and I’m sure they’ve designed the OS intentionally balkanized… they want it to be harder for Mac users to like Windows or some version of Linux. “
After using it every day now, I’m not convinced of that. I think they just had a better idea. Now that I’ve used a Mac for a few weeks, Windows seems very clunky going back to it to edit on Vegas (and I use Windows 7 every day because I edit video almost every day).
Also important to note that Ubuntu 10 was a LOT like Mac OS X. Ubuntu 11 even more so to OS X Lion. It was a very simple transition for me. The only thing that really spooked me is the Mac keyboard. There is no Home/End keys and I use these all day long to quickly get back to the beginning or end of a document so I really, really, really, miss these keys on a daily basis. That, and the fact that there is no Delete key! (the key labelled “delete” is actually backspace on a PC) You have to press Fn+Delete to actually delete. That’s just silly.
[Dave Haynie] “do keep in mind, a Mac IS a PC”
Oh yea, that was my point. I meant personal computer in the most generic sense. It’s a bit of a misnomer because tablets are computers and they are personal but people tend to think of personal computer as that thing with a display and a keyboard and a mouse. We tend to refer to tablets as “devices”. But you get what I mean.
I gave a lecture to an engineering class at NYU-Polytech last Thursday night and almost every one of the 50 or so students attending had a laptop open on their desk. Not one of them had a tablet. I think this is going to start changing. It won’t be long before bringing a laptop to class will be replaced with bringing your tablet to class and how much better it will be with tablets on the desk instead of juggling some bulky clam-shell laptop.
My son said that some students at his college were starting to use iPads. I was actually going to bring my iPad instead of my MacBook Pro to give the lecture because there was really no need to have a laptop just to show PowerPoint slides. I guess I’m not that comfortable yet. Maybe when I go back in October I’ll bring both (just in case) and use the iPad to present. It’s really a liberating device.
Oh and Dave, as a musician you’ll love this… I bought GarageBand for my iPad and I was totally blown away with the functionality and ease of use. I started writing music again which have haven’t had time to do it quite a while. It’s so liberating to get an idea, simply open the iPad lid and immediately start recording. I use an iRig to plug my guitar in. You should check it out. (I think you might convert too) lol 😉
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I am in the middle of exactly this bake-off myself. My son talked me into buying a huge MAC Pro with FCP 7. Today for example I tried to get a simple project started but the UI is too opaque for an occasional user like me.
To me, most apple users are just too arrogant in their anti-Microsoft out look to understand that the market needs a user friendly interface with dive down ability for power users. The 3 button mouse brought up earlier is a perfect example. Jobs hated the 3 button mouse, so now Mac users have to get carpal tunnel searching around for the right menu to descend, rather than a simple right click for a drop down menu. It’s stupid and wasteful.
I have arrived at this bake-off because I use a lot of Sony equipment and have a dual core PC so I am drawn to Vegas. I have, however, a lot of horse power for rendering in this super Mac 12 core so I am drawn to FCP. Regarding FCP I am considering FCP X for the easier UI as being better for occasional use. Vegas looks like an easier direction now for a PC laptop with small files to render and no restrictions to Quad Core.
Maybe the higher art favors the power user approach but the profit to keep the SW writers alive is in the mass market.
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Since you already have a Mac Pro you might want to try FCP X. It should be a lot easier to use than FCP 7 since it’s target audience seems to be mass market people who’ve never edited video before. You could always use bootcamp with Windows 7 on the Mac Pro and run Vegas if you’d rather use that. You really have the best of both worlds that way.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
[William Beazley] “To me, most apple users are just too arrogant in their anti-Microsoft out look to understand that the market needs a user friendly interface with dive down ability for power users. The 3 button mouse brought up earlier is a perfect example. Jobs hated the 3 button mouse, so now Mac users have to get carpal tunnel searching around for the right menu to descend, rather than a simple right click for a drop down menu. It’s stupid and wasteful.
“I completely agree there. I lean a bit toward what John said… I’m not sure anyone made really good use of buttons beyond three. And there’s the potential of adding touch sensitivity to a mouse — also not there yet, but both Apple and Microsoft are playing with it.
But the three button mouse with scroll wheel is extremely useful. And it is ultimately GUI driven. Apple’s GUI was written for a single button mouse, so they’re not using multiple buttons that well. Windows copied the OS/2 idea of one button for “select”, the other for “object menu” (well, it was a real object on OS/2), and the third button evolved very nicely to deal with scrolling.
[William Beazley] “I have arrived at this bake-off because I use a lot of Sony equipment and have a dual core PC so I am drawn to Vegas. I have, however, a lot of horse power for rendering in this super Mac 12 core so I am drawn to FCP. Regarding FCP I am considering FCP X for the easier UI as being better for occasional use. Vegas looks like an easier direction now for a PC laptop with small files to render and no restrictions to Quad Core.
“Well, I’d not be happy with either of your systems as-is. The 2-core PC is not fast enough for HD video editing. Ok, technically you could … I have such a laptop, and it can be done. But I’m much happier editing on my six core desktop.
FCP7 certainly has a following, but I suspect some of that is simply that same Apple arrogance — the average FCP user may not be not aware of much else. It’s still a 32-bit program, and behind the times on many things. My daughter run it on her MacBook (a loner for kids in the Communications Academy at her HS), and I was actually quite floored on how poorly it handled native video editing. She used a couple of my camcorders on a project, and I handed her the video files… AVCCAM/AVCHD files from Panasonics. They loaded, but the speed (it’s like a dual-core 2GHz-ish i5 MacBook Pro… should be at least as fast as my 5-year-old HP) of editing made this completely useless. So I made her a set at qHD AVC.. still not enough horsepower for editing. Finally I tried qHD AVC-Intra, and we were good.
It was only later I found out that the standard practice at school for importing digital video from her camcorder (also an AVCHD-based Panny) was to feed video out at SD to a Canon XL-something-or-other, which converted it to DV for import. Oh well… anyway… very, very.
While that’s probably solved on a 12-core system, I don’t imagine a 32-bit program really has enough memory resources to make much use of a 12-core system. But that would totally rock with Vegas. FCP X certainly costs less than FCP7 (if you don’t already own FCP7), though they’ve removed features. Some are pro features you may not care about, but others… no real DVD authoring anymore, for example. But at least it’s a 64-bit program; that really does make a difference once you’re doing large HD projects, anyway.
There’s now a 30-day trial of FCP-X (you have to get it from Apple’s web site, not the Mac iTunes Store where you buy the paid version), always has been with Vegas. Sometimes the best tool is simply the one that fits your brain the best.
-Dave
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Dave,
We had a lot of trouble working with AVCHD as well. FCP 7 did not prepare for this well. Sony’s advice on using it is posted here:
https://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/files/micro/nxcam/manuals/25697_NXCAM_FCP_FR.pdf
The 32 bit software explains why FCP is not responding to the extra memory upgrade I bought for another 1300. In fact, I got a “can’t find an codec” message when I added a motion title followed by an “out of memory” error. I’m working with a 3 minute talking head video.
I work mainly with voice over power point on Camtasia and could stay put if I didn’t need a good chroma key capability. I’ve spent one and one half days fighting FCP 7 bells and whistles, just so I could add a nice background. Beware of chasing the hype about the MAC without considering the learning curve. Fortunately, there are enough helpful users (read non-high-priests) who post tutorials. To these folks, I am grateful.
Vegas could take a lot of cycles on my laptop to render while I take a potty break or watch the news. I do 3 minute blurbs not Avatar. Home movies with better cameras. Nothing special.
So, like you say, buy what fits your brain.
Bill
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Yeah… thinking about it, I believe I remuxed my AVCHD prior to moving it to the Mac. The video files did load, just way too slow to consider using. I’m sure I could have loaded DNxHD or persuaded the Mac to trans code to ProRes or whatever, but ultimately the downrezed AVC-Intra was good enough. I wouldn’t have chosen to do extensive AVCHD editing on Vegas on my laptop either, but it is at least possible.
-Dave
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