New Here Looking for Advice On Picking a Editing Program

Outer Limit Graphics
Member

Hi.. New Here.. Been reading up through the post and just wanted to get the Pro's and Con's of Avid Liquid - Sony Vegas (full) - and Adobe editing software. I curentlly use Studio 10 and started with Studio 8 in making videos. I'm in the process of looking to upgrade my software to be able to do better graphics, better sound countrol, and a little quicker rendering .. Thanks for the help in advance..

Rich
Outer Limit Graphics

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

I just finished reading a review on Vegas 6 in Digital Video Magazine, March issue (yeah, I know - it's the wedding video season, and I'm behind on my reading) and I don't think the little bit you save is worth all the stuff you miss - go with Avid or Premiere Pro 2.0

PS - I'm a former Pinnacle user also, and I have the scars to prove it! :)

Posted 5 years ago #
Outer Limit Graphics
Member

Yeah the Liquid does look inticing.. Especially at the upgrade Price.. Plus Avid said they'll give me 10% off the upgrade for the trouble I had installing version 10.. What a diasaster that was.. Funny thing is once it was installed "RIGHT" with all the updates and such it isn't a bad program.. I just have to remember to let it catch up on rendering sometimes or it crashes..

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

I would have dissagree. I went with vegas after using both pinnacle studio 10+ ( what a waste of money that was ) and premiere 6.5. Vegas has not crashed once!! and it dose more then liqued. The interface is a little diffrent but it works for me. Befor you decide try all three demos to see what works for you.

Posted 5 years ago #
kkmac
Member

Premiere Pro 2 is quite a bit different than version 6.5.

Posted 5 years ago #
Video-maniac
Member

My man "Chapman" gave the best possible advice one could give in regards to what software solution to use for editing. Download the trial versions and see for yourself. Just about all of the companies offer this feature. This way you can test drive it and make a solid decision on your own versus being stuck with biased opinions from everybody.

RAM

Posted 5 years ago #
tpainter
Member

[quote="Chapman Photography"]I would have dissagree. I went with vegas after using both pinnacle studio 10+ ( what a waste of money that was ) and premiere 6.5. Vegas has not crashed once!! and it dose more then liqued. The interface is a little diffrent but it works for me. Befor you decide try all three demos to see what works for you.[/quote]

I have the exact same experience. I did try PPRo 2 and it was like learning a whole new program. Vegas is a great program!

Posted 5 years ago #
videolab
Member

I would say that it depends on what you want to do. If you want to go pro and get a job editing someday then you should learn either and Avid system or Premiere (Premiere is not used professionally as much as Avid or Final Cut but Premiere is a good stepping stone because it operates just like Final Cut. If you know premiere you can learn FCP in a day or two easy) If you dont intend to go pro then download some demos and try them all out. See which one you like. If you are just doing it as a hobby then you should use what ever works best for you editing style. If you plan to get a job doing editing I would stick with the big A's Apple, Avid and Adobe. If you really want to improve your graphics I would go with the Adobe bundle. It includes After Effects which is the industry standard in motion graphics creation.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

[quote="videolab"]I would say that it depends on what you want to do. If you want to go pro and get a job editing someday then you should learn either and Avid system or Premiere (Premiere is not used professionally as much as Avid or Final Cut but Premiere is a good stepping stone because it operates just like Final Cut. If you know premiere you can learn FCP in a day or two easy) If you dont intend to go pro then download some demos and try them all out. See which one you like. If you are just doing it as a hobby then you should use what ever works best for you editing style. If you plan to get a job doing editing I would stick with the big A's Apple, Avid and Adobe. If you really want to improve your graphics I would go with the Adobe bundle. It includes After Effects which is the industry standard in motion graphics creation.[/quote]

More and more pros are using Vegas+ DVD, yes Avid and apple have the biggest percentage of pro users but vegas is catching up. Adobe is "nice" but not even close to what vegas can do.

http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?CategoryID=62&ArticleID=10771

Posted 5 years ago #
videolab
Member

Chapman, While I do agree with you that Vegas is a great piece of software, and it has some interesting features. However two things that it does not have that the other bundles do have is a real compositing component like After Effects. This is the one of two things that Premiere has over vegas bar none. With after effects you can produce graphics and effects that would not at all be possible with any editing software. Also Premiere's interface is very similar to Final Cuts so if you know the Premiere interface moving to FCP is not hard at all. Vegas' biggest problem and greatest feature is the interface. It is great because it is innovative and shows that they are not afraid to move away from a more conventional interface. This is also Vegas' hinderance because it makes the transition to a different piece of software longer. Also professional hardware support like Black Magic cards and AJA is limited (if there is any at all)which will turn away any pro.

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

And I haven't seen a version of Vegas yet that natively handles multi-cam editing. Premiere Pro 2.0 takes up to four cameras and gives you four simultanious monitors for easy multi-cam editing.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

Vegas and Deck Link HD Pro work hand in hand, I don't know if this was added it a newer release. As far as After Effects thats a stand alone program that you can use with vegas or any other program that can use its file format. Premiere and liqued are graet for broadcast tv. I think that as the video business progresses vegas will get more of the market.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

[quote="compusolver"]And I haven't seen a version of Vegas yet that natively handles multi-cam editing. Premiere Pro 2.0 takes up to four cameras and gives you four simultanious monitors for easy multi-cam editing.[/quote]

You can have unlimited video tracks in vegas. If your talking live switching then yes premiere and liqued do this better, but that really is best for broadcast tv or editing on site. You'll be better off with a hardware switcher for that anyway.

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

Chapman -

No, not talking about multiple tracks - nearly every NLE today does that.

Not talking about "Live switching" - you need to have cameras connected to the switcher/computer to do that.

I'm talking about taking four tapes from four different cameras, synching them up, then "playing" while watching four monitors and using your mouse pointer to "switch" between cameras, just like "live" switching, only done in post.

You end up with a new, edited sequence. It saves so much time! Sure, you may need to go back and tweak some of the cuts, add a transition or two, etc.

Posted 5 years ago #
tpainter
Member

I have Premiere 6.5 -- I decided I was going to upgrade this year and looked at both PP 2 and Vegas.

To address the learning curve question - Switching from Premiere to Vegas was not nearly as difficult as I expected. PP 2 is so much different than 6.5, that I would have had just as much trouble upgrading as I would have switching to a new NLE altogether. (Not that I found either one difficult anyway, just that there is really no issue with a "learning curve")

Adobe has an advantage with the integration of all their other products, but I didn't see that as a deal breaker. But as chapman noted, it is a separate purchase and works fine stand alone.

Vegas wins hands down in the audio department. That was one of the reasons I switched.
I had a lot of problems with stability on Adobe. Vegas has been much more stable.

But one of the main reasons I switched is that I found so many more available resources, free plugins and scripts, and user community than I did with Premiere. In fact, there is a plugin available that will let you do multi-cam editing.

Either way, I think that if you are going to go "pro" then it will pay well to be familiar with all different types of programs.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

[quote="tpainter"]I have Premiere 6.5 -- I decided I was going to upgrade this year and looked at both PP 2 and Vegas.

To address the learning curve question - Switching from Premiere to Vegas was not nearly as difficult as I expected. PP 2 is so much different than 6.5, that I would have had just as much trouble upgrading as I would have switching to a new NLE altogether. (Not that I found either one difficult anyway, just that there is really no issue with a "learning curve")

Adobe has an advantage with the integration of all their other products, but I didn't see that as a deal breaker. But as chapman noted, it is a separate purchase and works fine stand alone.

Vegas wins hands down in the audio department. That was one of the reasons I switched.
I had a lot of problems with stability on Adobe. Vegas has been much more stable.

But one of the main reasons I switched is that I found so many more available resources, free plugins and scripts, and user community than I did with Premiere. In fact, there is a plugin available that will let you do multi-cam editing.

Either way, I think that if you are going to go "pro" then it will pay well to be familiar with all different types of programs.[/quote]

The excaliber plug in dose multicam. The guy that wrote the program runs jetdv.com a vegas community forum. Thats a good point about the Audio be a selling point.

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

PP 2 is so much different than 6.5, that I would have had just as much trouble upgrading

I guess its a matter of opinion. My copy of 6.5 was nearly the same as 2.0 except for the multi cam stuff and I can't pull all my windows this way and that anymore. No learning curve at all.

As for audio - Audition is part of the Adobe suite and what we use to tweak audio. It's a super program with plenty of tools for fixing noise, adding filters, splitting channels, adding effects, etc.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

I agree Audition is a great program I have 1.5, but then again thats a stand alone program that you can use with any NLE. Vegas has one built in and if you need more you can get acid or sound forge.

I dont disagree, Premiere pro is a good product. I just think that with the things that vegas is doing will start to get more of the market share and more people will choose vegas over others. here in the pacific northwest alot of comercials are being done with vegas as well as local news channels, KOMO 4, KIRO 7 both use vegas/excaliber.

Posted 5 years ago #
jimbodeanny
Member

as far as the multicam pro you give for Premiere Pro, it's not difficult (and quiet easy) to work with multicams in Vegas. You can just line up all your cams on different video tracks, lock them, and use the mute buttons to switch between them (and view each of them) very quickly. This is what I do and it works very nicely. I'll have to check out that excalibur plugin.

I do use After Effects and agree it's a great program to have in the arsenal

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

as for jimbodeanny's post (directly above), yes, that is how I used to edit multi-cam shoots, but weddings that used to take three days to edit, now take just a single day. I'm telling you, this is better - much better!!

Posted 5 years ago #
jimbodeanny
Member

I'll check out that plugin, but I'm not going back to Premiere just for that lol. I like Vegas way too much more to give it up for that. I'll check out that excalibur plugin instead. And it DOESN'T take me very long to edit a wedding using the method I stated, but I can understand your reasoning

Posted 5 years ago #
tpainter
Member

There are 2 3rd party plugins that offer multi-cam support in Vegas that I am aware of that have been received favorably: Excalibur by JetDV and the Ultimate S plugin from VASST.

Let me say up front that I have no experience doing multi-cam yet, so I have not used either one. I won't begin to claim it is superior in anyway to PP and don't want to seem like I am arguing against PPro here. Just throwing it out for informational purposes.

I happened to come across this article today -- http://digitalcontentproducer.com/workflow/multicam_roundup_part/
and the author discusses how the VASST plugin works and compares it with PPro a little bit. It is the first part of a series, I guess, so it is not complete.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

[quote="jimbodeanny"]as far as the multicam pro you give for Premiere Pro, it's not difficult (and quiet easy) to work with multicams in Vegas. You can just line up all your cams on different video tracks, lock them, and use the mute buttons to switch between them (and view each of them) very quickly. This is what I do and it works very nicely. I'll have to check out that excalibur plugin.

I do use After Effects and agree it's a great program to have in the arsenal[/quote]

Thats how I do it and it works great. It only takes me a day to do a wedding vid with vegas, and thats with menus, Scene selection and photo comp. You can get the demo for excaliber at jetdv.com. If you need help just post your question on the forums.

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

If you're doing three and four camera coverage of weddings - doing preps, ceremony, photo sessions and reception - and you're editing in a single day, we must be doing something quite different!

I didn't start doing single day editing until PP2.0 came out with its multi-cam functionality.

Posted 5 years ago #
videolab
Member

I am with compusolver. The live switching introduced in Avid a few years back and is now in most every professional editing app has revolutionized multicam editing. Once you get the clips synced you can edit the entire program in real time if you wanted to. You will never edit multicam the old way again.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

We are!! I use Vegas 8-O PP can't do anything vegas can't even if you can do live switching big deal. look at the adobe forums and you'll see people complain, it crashes, why can't I do this, why can't I do that you don't see that on the vegas forums. Why, vegas dose not crash as often. Good luck with pp. or Avid I'm sticking with a winner!

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

I think its great that you like your NLE, and there's nothing wrong with software loyalty - but let's not leave things so uneven..

First, I've done tons of stuff with PP2.0 and never experienced a crash. As far as that goes, 6.0 and everything in between was stable also. People who mix chipsets; video cards; etc. that don't play well together, will experience crashes when they run software that puts their system through its paces.

You're using generalities when you say Vegas does more than PP2.0 In the March 2006 issue of DV Magazine, they say the opposite, and that you have to buy several third party plugins to approach the functionality of the Adobe software.

I won't get into that because I don't run Vegas, so I can't do an honest comparison. But I can say that the only non-Adobe software tool I use is Ultra (for greenscreening) and some animation tools. Adobe has all the bases covered for NLE video and audio editing and effects and DVD production for most professional videographers.

Posted 5 years ago #
Chapman Photography
Member

And I agree, but all I'm saying that the way vegas is now, and the way they keep inproving it it will make a dent in adobes sales, I like adobe products I have photoshop cs2, illustrator cs, after effects 6.0 and premiere 6.5. So I do no adobes capabilities and faults. I never had any luck with there tech support. So don't get me wrong, I think both are capable programs i just think vegas is a little more flexable. Stop by jetdv and see what some of the guys are doing.

Posted 5 years ago #
Furball
Member

First of all... I think all of you who do weddings are nuts! Dealing with crazed brides to be? EEeek sounds like a nightmare; more power to ya!

Anyways, regarding the software; personally I started with Premiere Pro, worked my way up to Pro 2.0. I like the software, but it's a little overwealming at first to learn all the different interfaces, and I still haven't made good use of what they call Dynamic Linking.

Price does come into play with the Adobe products, fortunately I have an I.T. Dept. behind me for the $$$.

Bottom line is, whatever YOU feel comfortable using! Mac., P.C. ... doesn't make a bit of difference! the END RESULT is VIDEO. Doesn't really matter how you get there. My opinion at least, I'm sure there are tons more out there.

Good luck with your chioce. :)

Posted 5 years ago #
compusolver
Member

Actually, the brides are great to work with! So is everyone else involved (except, occasionally the photogs are a problem). I think its because its such a happy occasion, even with the stress.

The real reward for us wedding videographers is when the couple or parents call or write to thank us, so happy about the video that they're nearly in tears. That's the real "payoff"!

Posted 5 years ago #

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