Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (
More info?)
On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:31:58 -0400, joe@nospam.com wrote:
>
>Ok I'm going to try this... Being very dissappointed with Premiere Pro
>1.0, rather than upgrade to 1.5, I wish to try Vegas Video.
>Features I need that premiere has, I don't know if Vegas has?
> -Gradient Wipes (using custom maps)
Not sure about that one per se. I've basically done thing like that,
though, simply by keyframing motion on a mask with a fuzzy edge. And
in the new Vegas 5 (bought it a few weeks ago, barely scratched the
surface after one project with it), there's now an animated vector
masking feature, which is essentially building in a super-deluxe
version of what you could do, a bit more awkwardly, with bitmaps and
motion (and yet, I've done several animated pieces this way, which
included multiple video streams moving around on-screen together with
other bits, for titles and, in one case, a sort of music video).
> -Good titler
The standard "Text" function (one of a general class of media
generator plug-ins) is basic but fairly useful. Beyond that, Vegas 5
is now shipping with Boris Graffitti Ltd 3.0, which looks capable of
doing practically anything (it's a fairly cheap upgrade to their full
version, too, if you're a real crazy titling nut). I've played with
this a bit, and it's BIG. The only annoying bit here is that the
"freebie" isn't integrated into Vegas... a bit like the old ULead
titling stand-alone included in Media Studio Pro (the only piece of
that suite I ever found stable enough for actual use), only way more
powerful.
> -Able to apply transitions on multiply video channels. not just 1 like in
>AP 6.5 A/B editing. I prefer single-track.
Every track in Vegas can be used as a stand-alone or A/B pair, and you
can have any number of such tracks. Any transition can be used to
bring a single track in or out... of course, the effect you get
depends on what you're doing with the other tracks at the time (eg, it
could be dramatically more complex than a simple A/B transition, or
basically the same).
>Does Vegas have;
>-Autosave? Is it like Premieres? or Edition?
You mean, in that it crashes all the time? No, Vegas is remarkably
stable; I haven't had it crash on me since Version 3. Not a one. It
doesn't do a specific auto-save, which is smart ... what if you wanted
to back out? Rather, it unobtrusively tracks you work, and will offer
a backup file if, say, your PC somehow dies in mid-stride (this I did
have; the modem on my main PC used to crash the machine, maybe once in
one hundred dial-ups). Wordperfect does it this way too... I have no
taste for "what everyone else uses", I always try to find the best
there is instead (not that "best for me" == "best for you", but it
might).
>-Learning curve? I'm a good premiere guy... I think I've used premiere
>very well from doing precise time-code editing for music videos to wedding
>stuff... I last week looked at Edition 5.5 and found it totally
>different... I'd need to start from the bottom, and don't think I got the
>time. How hard is vegas to pickup?
It's really easy to get started with Vegas. Well, it was for me,
anyway. I actually did run with Premiere 5.something SE for about a
year, and was horribly frustrated with it -- nothing it did made any
sense. Now sure, Premiere is an old program, and it probably did back
in the days of PCs that really couldn't do video. But I mean, why
"pre-render" a whole project that's already perfectly good, in DV, on
the hard drive. So I rejected Premiere for Media Studio Pro 6.0 (paid
in full), and discovered that it was little more than a Premiere clone
(in the video editor, anyway), but even buggier, and run by a company
that simply didn't fix their bugs.
Curiously, I was already using Sound Forge at the time, and had been
comped copies of both Vegas Pro (audio-only) and Acid by a friend at
Sonic Foundry (hi, Peter!). I had used 'em both, found the user
interface so simple and intuitive, I really didn't need to RTFM other
than the track down more esoteric details of this or that. I had been
a Cakewalk guy since 3.0 (and still own Sonar 3.1), having resigned to
the PC for music after Commodore went down and Blue Ribbon Soundworks
ceased to be (eaten by Microsoft). I had done fairly serious analog
A/B editing on the Amiga using Scala's MM300/MM400 and EE100 IR/LANC
controller... somewhat obscure stuff.
So naturally, it was only AFTER deciding MSP6.0 was totally useless
that I discovered there was a video-capable upgrade for Vegas. I
bought that, and was able to finish the project I had started under
MSP6.0, in practically no time. You may need to shake of
preconceptions, as you will changing from any program to any other.
Use enough stuff, and it's second nature. I've used at least 10
different wordprocessor/text editors on computers, I've written code
in over 40 computer languages, etc. But then again, I taught myself
programming when I was 12 and personal computers didn't yet exit; I'm
not suggesting everyone will find it as easy to jump from app to app.
But in the big picture, you couldn't find a better landing place than
Vegas.
>Does vegas offer 3rd plugin's? like steadycam?
Well, by the very nature, 3rd party plug-ins aren't offered by
Sony/Vegas, but by someone else. Vegas uses the Windows
DirectX/DirectShow standards for video, audio, and rendering plug-ins,
where they exist.
The standard for pretty much all Windows programs in audio plug-ins is
the DirectX plug-in (the only widely supported alternative is the VST
format, now something of a standard, originally Steinberg's
proprietary plug-in format), so pretty much anything you can do in
audio FX will plug into Vegas. There are also DirectX to VST bridge
plug-ins, though they don't necessarily support all features.
The video plug-ins aren't as common as for Premiere. But they do
exist. Some include Boris Red, Boris Graffiti, the Adorage series,
several from Red Giant, etc.
There are some excellent freeware plug-ins for Vegas here:
http://www.debugmode.com. Written by Satish Kumar, these include the
famous 3D Lite Edition plugin, Winmorph (image morphing), Wax (3D &
Compositing), Framesever plugin, and the VirtualDub bridge plugin
(lets you, for example, run any of the 5,238 VHS noise filters for
VirtualDub directly on the Vegas timeline, etc).
There's a Vegas resource page here:
http://www.creativecow.net/articles/vegasvideo.html
You will find support for special hardware rendering devices (like the
Matrox accelerator boards) non-existent for Vegas (or, generally,
anything but either Premiere or Canopus editors, depending on whether
the hardware was made by Canopus or someone else). You'll have to
judge the need for that -- in some cases, you may need it. For most
purposes, you're better off in general spending the extra money on a
fast computer than a slower computer plus rendering board.
Sony offers some plug-ins directly, or in a bundle. As well as a whole
slew of basic audio and video FX, you get color analysis and
correction, the 2-pass MPEG-2 encoder, and the AC-3 encoder as well
with Vegas+DVD. Vegas is one of the few NLEs that does full fledged
surround-sound mixing, and the more flexible audio bus architecture in
Vegas 5 is very cool. Maybe someday a DTS plug-in would be nice, but
if you're not capable of surround mixing and AC-3 encoding, you're not
capable of making full featured DVDs (which is kind of my thing).
Dave Haynie | Chief Toady, Frog Pond Media Consulting
dhaynie@jersey.net| Take Back Freedom! Bush no more in 2004!
"Deathbed Vigil" now on DVD! See
http://www.frogpondmedia.com
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