Rob Mack
Forum Replies Created
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First off, Veg files saved by Vegas Pro 8 will not be usable in Vegas 7. I’d recommend making copies of your existing veg files and saving them somewhere as backups in case you want to reinstall V7. V7 and VP8 should coexist on the same system just fine, but you can’t easily take a project back to V7.
As for files being offline, usually that is a result of a file path change or a file name change. For Vista, you might also have a problem with folder ownership or permissions.
VP8 is supposed to be Vista compatible, meaning that SCS will eventually answer a support call about VP8 on Vista. If it were V7 they might just say “we don’t support V7 on Vista”.
Rob Mack
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MP3 is an audio format. There shouldn’t be any video in those files.
Rob Mack
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Maybe the key point you need to know is that to get multiple renders going you need to open vegas multiple times. Then each one can be rendering while you edit in yet another instance of Vegas.
Rob Mack
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There’s no setting. In some cases it’s appropriate for fades to black to go that low, otherwise the workaround is to place generated media on a track below everything else and set the black of that media at 16.
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This piqued my interest so I went to the Canopus site to see if you could download a demo.
You can, and maybe you should, if you have a non-critical system to put it on.
Rob Mack
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First off, the way you describe it makes me think that the group is Edius-heavy and the test is designed to favor Edius. Maybe that’s not really the case but it’s how I’m interpreting it.
Ideally, you’d compare the two using identical systems, with two operators that are equally familiar with their tools, and using media that you’ve both agreed on because you both know that it’ll work well.
Not knowing Edius, I’d start be searching this forum, the DMN forum, the Sony Creative forum, and just search the web for comparisons. There are some. Vegas users have said good things about Edius, and they’ve also had complaints.
I’m going to guess that you can’t make a head-to head comparison. For Vegas, I’d look for things that are just plain easier, like adjusting parameters while a clip is looping, dragging different types of media from Windows explorer to the timeline or trimmer, things that can be done in fewer clicks.
Also, you might casually leave Vegas looping while you show something in an unrelated application. Some other NLEs stop playing when you do this. One thing I found impossible in PPro was to play a clip and then write down the dialog in Word. You can’t do it because PPro stops playing. You can do transcription with Vegas.
Real time… don’t count on it from Vegas. Edius is going to do some things better and you’ll be best off just accepting it.
Another thing you’ll run into is people’s habits. The Edius folks will most likely have work habits that you don’t have. Maybe they always use the trimmer. Maybe they religiously render things. They may look at what you’re doing and say “Yes, but you need to be able to do XYZ”
Probably the most impressive thing will be to just get through a routine faster.
Rob Mack
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I think I just wouldn’t start editing a feature with Vegas unless I had some experience. I do think it could be done, and even if I was using something with more of a track record I know I’d have to test everything before I started. You could really get yourself onto the wrong track with any of them.
We had all sorts of trouble just getting projects from media100 to 844x and back… and 844x was a media100 product!
Rob
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I can sympathize with your situation. My employers completed a feature length documentary on Media100 and 844x about 2 years ago. Our office has an open floor plan so I heard a lot of the rants. We had a very long relationship with the media100 company and were able to get replacement hardware shipped to us when we needed it.
Towards the end of the process we installed a 16 disk array to work with the 844 system. We had lots of troubles with it and went through a few arrays before getting something that could deliver the data rates that the products promised.
There are a couple of ways of looking at a Vegas system to edit a feature. First of all, these are usually very stable on a wide range of systems, so I wouldn’t really expect a lot of trouble, at least not the sort that a rental house could solve. However, if you were to rent or lease a system I’d think you’d be getting the storage, the I/O card (Xena, probably), and any of the other stuff you need like decks. These are the things that will most likely give you trouble.
If you are planning on relying on a rental house or a system integrator then you’re going to have to use what they support. And if you really want to use Vegas you’ll have to make sure they’ll support that.
It’s my opinion, based on what I saw being done with Media100, that you could edit a feature with Vegas. I know people on the forums have said they’ve done it, or are currently doing it. However, I don’t know that Vegas is specifically tailored to the job and so you’d need to test and plan your course before getting too far down the path, and plan some exit strategies. Really, you should do all this anyway, but I think that Vegas may require you to be a little smarter and more organized the the average FCP user.
If it were me, I’d want to be using a hardware combination that I’d already run through it’s paces with smaller jobs. In fact this is just what we’ve done over the last year with PPro/Axio systems and we’ve come to the conclusion that we actually can’t cut a feature with this hardware combination. Given the level of ranting that goes along with a new edit system where I work, I wouldn’t recommend Vegas to them – because I know it’s not a good match, and I want then to call the integrator when there are problems, not me.
One last thing about integrators and rental houses. If you are buying or renting a big fat array, fiber, and fiber cards, you should make sure they really have replacements available. The rental house is more likely than the integrator/retailer. We found that even the manufacturer didn’t have replacement units standing by. These are just too expensive for most people to have them lying around as spares.
Soooo…I guess I’m not encouraging you to go with Vegas. If you’ve got a known working setup and you’ve ironed out all of the questionable parts, then go for it. Otherwise, rent an FCP or Avid system. At least you’ll have someone to plead with.
Rob Mack
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What about OMF? Seems like that’s what protools people always want you to provide.
Rob Mack
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I fully agree that an image sequence renderer would be a great thing to have, whether included in Vegas or installable like Satish’s frameserver. (In fact, I think Sony should license the frame server and include it in the product, and if he wrote an image sequence exporter they should license that too).
If the preview window is set up right (and the stars align) it’s the exact same thing as 8-bit uncompressed, so I’d have no worries about mixed PAR media and things like that. These aren’t problems. More likely you’ll see a black frame here or there, this is a known problem with projects using long GOP media like HDV, and it appears in renders too, so it’s not specific to the preview window. The big problem with pulling stills from the frame buffer is that Vegas wants to correct the PAR, and that’s a no-no for most purposes.
Network rendering of image sequences is an interesting idea. You’d have to try it out to see if it’s actually a good thing…it could conceivably be slower than just doing it locally just because the processing might be faster than the network transit.
Rob