Vegas Video (1 Viewer)

[Lawrence Lin]

Anyone has experience with Sonic Foundary's Vegas Video 3 program? I'm thinking about buying it and woulk like to hear some opinions.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Lawrence,

1) Welcome to the Forum.

2) Please make sure to read the forum descriptions. Although the "SOFTWARE" forum has software in the name- it is not about computer programs. Please, in the future, read the forum descriptions.

3) I use vegas pretty extensively as an excellent audio application. Vegas is so good for audio, it can stand alone as a multitrack recording platform IMHO- which mean it is head and shoulder above most video editing software for audio ability. Both Premiere and Final Cut Pro have laughable audio interfaces and tools (last time I used premiere it could only move audio in 1/30th of a second increments, same as the video frames!!).

I have not had much experience using it for video- but the inferface is very very smooth overall- so if video performance is up to par with premiere, I would say I absolutely prefer it. I don't think Vegas gets much respect in the video world as of now, but like I said- it has the absolute best audio abilities of any video editor in that price range-- I've used vegas exclusively to mix at least 30 demo recordings in the past year- and really don't think I could live without it.

-Vince

 

[Lawrence Lin]

Thanks for your input, and moving the contents into the right forum category. Yes, I know it's a wonderful tool for audio. I was looking for someone's opinions on its video functionality. Anyone who has the experience in this regard?

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Reviews I've read have been good

Basically if you're screwing around with Home movies, or doing simple edits it's great

Anything bigger, Premiere is your man

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Jeff,

Do you have any specific reason that is true? The reason I ask is, although I haven't done any video in Vegas- I cannot imagine the interface would be any more clumsy than Premiere. As you know I've dealt pretty extensively with Premiere on both the Mac and PC platforms (mostly PC however)-- and have found it to be the most bug ridden piece of software I've ever used.

Vegas seems to be very quick- and extremely intuitive (Sonic Foundry has a real knack for placing options and settings exactly where you'd look for them)-- so I wonder if any reviews you've seen have given the real "cons" of the system as a video editor. If Premiere is closer to "Pro" (which is kind of a joke, since I think anyone making their living with video would find Premiere to be waaaay to clumsy)-- I wonder what specifically Premiere does better than Vegas.

I have been cutting a lot on FinalCut lately and really like the system-- much more fluid than Premiere (comparing both in their ideal Mac versions)... and with my very positive experiences in Vegas audio editing- I'm eager to eventually pop in a firewire card and see if I can get Vegas to do some video work for me as well.

Anyway- I was just curious what the specific faults were with the vegas system, or what the specific pro's were to using a system like premiere.

-V

 

[Jeff Kleist]

If you're using a good DV codec (aka NOT Apple's or MS') most of them are written to be taken full advantage of in Premiere. Also, there are a lot of plugins for Premiere which are really fantastic (cinelook etc)

It's true that Premiere has a bad habit of crashing, but I find it to be superior for video work

 

[Lawrence Lin]

Thanks for the info, Vince and Jeff. I've heard good things about Sonic Foundary. One thing lacking in their software is the support for surround sounds. I can't imagine that they are not working on it. However, their sale reps do not provide information on this possibility. Anyone has any information in this regard? I'm on the verge of purchasing their bundles. If I know that they will have the surround sound capability in the near future, I'll go for it.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Lawrence,

Ironically, one of the very first consumer DD encoders for PC was a Sonic Foundry product called Soft Encode. Oddly, they haven't incorporated the function into their editor (probably a licensing issue with dolby/dts).

But, Vegas can't export any formats which could be useful for surround, so I'm not sure the appeal right now. You could, however setup vegas with 6 busses and export the 6 channels from the timeline and have surround stems. I have already done two 5.1 film mixes in Vegas using this method.

Since Vegas can't export mpg2 or complete VOB files- you have to place them in another editor to get finished files for DVD anyway (and that would be the only real use of surround). I've taken Vegas 6 channel stems and dropped them into DVD studio pro at an authoring facility and done 5.1 without issue.

So while vegas doesn't support "surround" in terms of average Joe making surround sound mixes- you can work around by just creating a multichannel setup using buses- and then export your stems.

-V

 

[Jeff Kleist]

I'm working on a film right now that's going to havea 5.1 mix, and we're using exactly what Vince described
http://www.starwreck.com

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

You can even cheat those 6 channel stems into a prologic mix by abnd limiting the rear stems, summing them to mono, creating a stereo version with the right channel the out of phase copy of the left, dropping it by 3db and summing it into your l/r stems...

So there are tons of work arounds if you understand the concepts of what you're dealing with. Again, I would say that Vegas offering "surround sound" exporting is pointless until it can create DVD compatible video tracks- which, to the best of my knowledge, it cannot.


So, since you have to add another step to get DVD compatible masters anyway- you should be able to export stems and solve the problem...

-Vince

 

[Lawrence Lin]

Vince,

Wow! These are valuable information. One more thing, I suppose when I buy a DVD writer (RW, RW+ etc), it will come with an authoring software. Are those usually good enough or I need to buy a better one. If so, which authoring software will you suggest.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

I have no idea what is packaged with drives for DVD authoring these days-- chances are, whatever it is will be pretty low-end and would probably only accept properly formatted clips with audio attached (In other words, it won't be a multi-track layout app which will allow you to piece together 6 channel soundtracks- it will do 2 channel only).

All DVD releated projects I have done have been assembled using Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro on the Mac. Final Cut has the ability to export DVD formatted video files and audio with ac3 (or at least I think it does with some add ons)- and then you drop everything into DVD studio Pro for your layout of the disc structure.

Beyond that- maybe Jeff or Greg Staten can offer better insight on what tools are available for DVD creation (still somewhat of a mystery to me).

-Vince

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Ac3 compression in authoring software is veryvery expensive

I believe the cheapest is around $1000, but I'd have to check

 

[Lawrence Lin]

Vince,

Do I need a sound card with 6 in and 6 out for analog signals? If not, we must encode the 6 busses and stems into a ac3 digital signal. Do I need both the Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio pro to do the job?

I read in your reply in the other thread that you have the tools to create DD CDs (just like DTS cds, 5.1 audio written so it looks like a wav- but a CD player or DVD with digital output can feed to a receiver and get 5.1). I would very much appreciate receiving such tools.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Well... Soft Encode is a commercial program which is not open for distribution. Distributing it would be bootlegging (not to mention the fact that my serial could be all over the net in a day!). Since I now have an actual professional registered copy, I can't just give it away. I would say, if you look for it- you'll probably find it out there somewhere.