Why would someone choose Vegas over say the Adobe suite…?

[Bob Peterson]

Why would someone choose their video editor based on GPU support? Why would someone choose their still photo editor based on GPU support? Have many people forgotten that there is such a thing as a CPU? I have never used GPU support because I do not need it. My CPU is more than fast enough to support my editing needs when it comes to video. Vegas offers me a far better ability to edit my videos than Adobe does. Adobe is excellent for editing still photos. Vegas is excellent for editing video and sound. That is why I choose Adobe for still photos, and Vegas for video and audio. However, let’s take that a step farther. Izotope is far better for editing audio when you need to repair defects in the audio. So….you use the tool that works best to accomplish the end purpose. GPU is a consideration, but a minor one.

Go with Adobe, and pay ransomeware forever. I have CS6, and do not plan to upgrade beyond that point. Perhaps, Adobe will someday understand that its customers do not wish to be held captive to their desire for a permanent flow of revenue. Or, perhaps someday photographers will see a better alternative to Adobe. Video and audio people already have a better alternative.

[Sonic 67]

[Bob Peterson] “Why would someone choose their video editor based on GPU support?”
Because time on Earth is the only thing that you cannot buy, therefore is the most important asset we have?

If you don’t care how you spend this time and like to look at a computer screen waiting for rendering bar to fill… more power to you!

[Bob Peterson]

I don’t spend my time doing nothing, but look at a computer screen. That would be dumb. While a render is running, there many other things to do. I can do many other things on the computer while the render is processing. I can take a walk. I can think and plan. I can read a book. I can talk to people. It was not that long ago that renders were left to run all night, and that was what they did. Now, mine typically take about two times the length of the video. So two hours for a one hour video. How much would that two hours be reduced by using a GPU?

I save far more time editing because SVP does what I want it to do without a lot of hassle. Premiere Pro does not. I gain a ton of advantages from SVP, and lose nothing to rendering time. If that is not your experience, perhaps a different editor would be a better choice for you. On top of that, I save a ton of money because I don’t pay a monthly fee to use the software.

[John Rofrano]

[Nick McMahon] “I’ve come to understand from several people here and others I’ve spoken to verbally that Vegas has not kept up with the newly developed GPU’s.”

This statement needs to be qualified. The MainConcept AVC encoder has not kept up with newer GPU since 2010. Vegas Pro itself will take advantage of the fastest most powerful OpenCL card that you can throw at it! Do not confused encoding with timeline playback. The bad part is that the most popular delivery format is AVC/H.264 so the MainConcept AVC encoder not supporting newer GPU’s becomes a problem for people. It works great on my Radeon HD 5870 😀

[Nick McMahon] “why would anyone choose to use it over and above another Windows based NLE like Adobe Premiere…?”

Because you can’t buy Adobe Premiere. You can only rent it and when you stop paying rent it stops working. That’s a non-starter for many people including me. I don’t rent software. More and more companies are moving to the subscription model and I don’t plan to subscribe to any of them so Adobe is simply not an option.

The only other option on Windows is Avid Media Composer and that is a very rigid workflow that most Vegas editors would balk at. Everything takes longer to do and you get to pay $1299 USD for the privilege of working the “Avid way”. You can also rent from Avid (which isn’t going to happen for me either) so it’s not really a good option either.

Then there’s… ??? well… there isn’t anything else. So where ya’ gonna go?

~jr

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

[Nick Mcmahon]

[John Rofrano] “Because you can’t buy Adobe Premiere. You can only rent it and when you stop paying rent it stops working.”

Holy creative cow Batman !!!…. You don’t own a copy… you have to rent it…? That’s not readily obvious when you look at the Adobe website so thanks for that John. Not sure I like that idea at all either.

And as you say apart from Avid, which is slow AND expensive, there is nothing else. Now it makes perfect sense why those who don’t want to use Apple product and FCP X and don’t want to rent their NLE really need to make the best of SVP.

Nick… BASE1268

3…2…1…C ya

[Nick Mcmahon]

[Bob Peterson] “My CPU is more than fast enough to support my editing needs when it comes to video”

Bob…. what is the CPU that works for you and means that the GPU is not a primary consideration…?

Nick… BASE1268

3…2…1…C ya

[John Rofrano]

[Bob Peterson] “I have never used GPU support because I do not need it. “

I agree that some people don’t need it but you would if you were doing a lot of compositing. You might want to test with my Vegas Pro 12.0 GPU Render Test Project. The project is 15 seconds long. It has two tracks:. The lower track contains a Generated Media NTSC Color Bars that rotates 360 degrees in 15 seconds. The upper track had Generated Media Noise Texture with the Progress animated so that it would move. I added Sony Bump Map and Sony Glow (both GPU accelerated FX) to the noise texture and the composite level of the event was dropped to 60% so that the rotating colors bars would show through. Compositing random movement ensures that ever frame would need to be rendered during the test. This project requires Vegas Pro 12.0 to open.

Let us know what your frame rate is when playing this back on Best Full. I do a lot of compositing and I wouldn’t want to work without a GPU when doing it. Having said that, I don’t need a GPU when editing rock concerts because it’s mostly one track with minimal color grading. So depending on the type of work that you do, a GPU can be necessary or unneeded.

[Bob Peterson] “Or, perhaps someday photographers will see a better alternative to Adobe.”

Competitors are working on this and their advertising includes the tag line, “no subscriptions“. Affinity is one such competitor. They already have Affinity Designer which competes with Illustrator and they are just introducing Affinity Photo to complete with Photoshop. I learned about these here at the COW in a discussion on finding alternatives to Adobe so people don’t like their new model and they are finding alternatives and software developers and filling the void.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Nick McMahon] “…you have to rent it…? That’s not readily obvious when you look at the Adobe website”

And don’t let the monthly price fool you. You can’t buy it for a month! That’s a “bate and switch” scam. You need to read the fine print “annual contract billed monthly“. So you can only buy it for a year at a time which cost $600 a year, billed at $49.99 a month.

~jr

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

[Russ Froze]

[Nick McMahon] “Why would someone choose Vegas over say the Adobe suite…?”

Well that is a fair question.To put simply it’s a matter of choice.
For my business, clients do not want a workstation that is online so it’s a security issue. I also do not like software reaching out to the web whenever it feels like it. It is none of anybodies business what is on my machine.

Although the subscription model used by Adobe is a manageable payment per month, should your business run into a negative situation be it due to a billing issue or perhaps an investment in new gear due to theft or accident or perhaps you are bankrolling your pet project that’s been in the works for years, if you don’t pay the monthly ransom, your software is all locked up.

Then there is the gpu debate. Frankly when it comes to soft shadows or gradients, the gpu calculations are poor at best especially in 3D software. Colors are not as true compared to software render and blending modes can have some undesirable results.

As to rendering speed, yes it’s true some codec choices do not utilise the gpu very well in Vegas but my cuda cores do just fine with main concept and even avchd. Frankly having done rendering comparisons, Adobe is not really all that much quicker and quite often it lags by hours compared to other systems. But then that’s probably just my setup.

Now lets move on to the audio section. I like the virtual mixer in Vegas. Sure two or thee tracks of camera audio are manageable on an edit timeline. But what happens when using dedicated audio recorders per camera. Suddenly 3 audio tracks turn into 6 tracks that need to be synchronized. Now add 16 tracks of music, and effect send and returns. Create sub groups and all the audio stuff. Where would one use such method? Well say a live band performance or a short for a film festival and yes even a feature production could use such a workflow.

The lack of importance given to the audio section baffles me. If audio is just something to fill the silence, why did the silent moving picture show fade away sooo quickly. If all that is being done is show images of something interesting, then there is no need at all to invest in an NLE. There are plenty of scripts that will stitch together a video for you. Should scripting not be your flavor, there are a handful of free GUI NLE. And if speed is all so important, simply download Davinci Resolve and fusion and your all set. No other product can render as fast as Resolve, and Fusion is a state of the art compositor with few rivals.Throw in free PRO Tools for audio and you have a screaming fast NLE with some of the best high end tools for free. So the question should be “Why would someone choose to pay when the best stuff is free”?

Finally although after effects is a competent compositor, I find getting the look I favor seems to be unattainable for me. I have much better success with Fusion or Nuke (on Mac). And that brings us to the point of using a dedicated app for compositing. Again I can not achieve the look of a good composite in an NLE and yes I have all the plugs to aid in that endeavour.

So you see it’s all subjective a personal choice and that’s a good thing.
Russ Froze

[Sonic 67]

[John Rofrano] “You might want to test with my Vegas Pro 12.0 GPU Render Test Project.”
I was curious. “Render as” with MainConcept AVC 720P profile, because is the only one that finds my GPU. Sony AVC profile cannot even find this new GPU.

With my 6 core Xeon X5650 it took 24 seconds.
With CUDA enabled (on GTX960) it took 10 seconds – however I know that h264 encoding part will not be accelerated by this card, only the effects.