Thinking of jumping ship from FCP to Vegas.

[Richard J. Johnson]

I Have been using FCP on a PowerPc G5 for a few years now and was thinking of going back to PC and running Vegas. Good Idea, Bad Idea? I have never used vegas, but I can build my own monster PC for much less money. And I have FCP academic and can't upgrade. PC is looking real good right now. :dankk2:

[David Jimerson]

With a DVX, it's probably the best choice you could make. You'll see.

[Richard J. Johnson]

With a DVX, it's probably the best choice you could make. You'll see.

Thanks. I am buying the HPX170 in a few weeks. Would Vegas still be the best choice?

[David Jimerson]

For DV, DVCPRO, and DVCPRO 50, sure. For P2HD stuff, it's fine, it's workable, it'll play. But best choices are Edius Broadcast and Premiere Pro CS3.

Vegas needs Raylight, of course.

[BRinyo]

I used Dual G5 1,8 with FCP5 when I has my old VX2000. Then I bought an FX1. When I moved from SD to HD, the FCP became a nightmare on G5. So, I decide to move. I changed my G5 to an iMac. It was also slow, with FCP. Then I tried Vegas7 first. It was fast enough.
Some of old progs are missing, like motion. I'm using Vegas8 actually, and I satisfied with it. 2-3times faster the render, than FCP. The editing is less complicated, no need to pre-cut in viewer. You can do this on timeline.
I'm working on 3 videoclips actually. The only thing what's missing, the motion. I can't found simular and cheap solution to solve it. I also use a Vista 64b HomePremium with Vegas. The system is going choppy, when the render goes. It isn't very bad, but You can't work on any other projects. The price could be a half to compare to the Mac&FCP solution.
I never used Edius, but I had experience with Premiere. The Vegas8 is my ultimate choice...
(excuse for my poor english)

[David Jimerson]

The system is going choppy, when the render goes.

You can adjust the preview quality to help with that.


but You can't work on any other projects.

You can have multiple instances of Vegas open at the same time, each with a different project.

[doumm]

I've been thinking of jumping to FCP,

I'm sick and tired of Vegas instability, I have it on my 'Sony' vaio 2.2Ghz laptop with 2Gb Ram, and I've got it on my quadcore desktop, and everytime you open something over about 600mb in trimmer it stalls and more often and not does nothing, forget right clicking on the file, under the explorer tab.
I keep on saying it'll be ok, just got to hold on until 8.0c to fix it. And here I am about to launch a TV series and I'm thinking, there's just no way I can use this on a series project. Beyond DVDs under an hour, because over that it falls over as well, which I accept now that its prob because 2Gb of RAM is not enough. And also how it can't handle simple jpgs without a ram leak as well. And then you have basic titling, and I haven't forked out another $60 for a training DVD to use it yet I must admit, but it's far from user friendly and crashes all the time.
Ok i'll get back in my corner now

sorry

[Taras]

For what its worth I went the other way. Had high spec. home build PC with Vegas (and others) running with the HVX.
Moved over to mac with quad core Mac Pro and FCP. Sure it takes a while to learn and get around some of the odd interfaces but I find it is extremely stable (has not crashed yet!) and for the money you pay for FCP you get a system that can provide just about everything you need. Invested quite a lot of time with Color and this program alone makes the whole deal worthwhile - you can go from great footage to amazing footage with this system. Can't think of anything close on the PC for that money.
OK hardware upgrade is not cheap, but I recon from my experience you recover the cost delta very quickly. You have also invested your time in learning a slightly more industrial norm with much wider support and flexibility.

[John Cline]

For what it's worth, Vegas Pro v8.0b has been absolutely stable on my Intel QX6700 Quad-core running an Intel motherboard. I use Vegas each and every day for primarily HD projects, some for network broadcast. No problems whatsoever.

[David Jimerson]

I've been thinking of jumping to FCP,

I'm sick and tired of Vegas instability, I have it on my 'Sony' vaio 2.2Ghz laptop with 2Gb Ram, and I've got it on my quadcore desktop, and everytime you open something over about 600mb in trimmer it stalls and more often and not does nothing, forget right clicking on the file, under the explorer tab.
I keep on saying it'll be ok, just got to hold on until 8.0c to fix it. And here I am about to launch a TV series and I'm thinking, there's just no way I can use this on a series project. Beyond DVDs under an hour, because over that it falls over as well, which I accept now that its prob because 2Gb of RAM is not enough. And also how it can't handle simple jpgs without a ram leak as well. And then you have basic titling, and I haven't forked out another $60 for a training DVD to use it yet I must admit, but it's far from user friendly and crashes all the time.
Ok i'll get back in my corner now

sorry

I'd look into hardware problems -- you're describing behavior I've never seen out of Vegas, on many different machines, all with under 2 GB of RAM. It should be rock-solid stable.

[brianluce]

It should be rock-solid stable.

Yeah this must be the first time I've heard Vegas bashed for instability. That's usually considered a forte.

[BRinyo]

Yeah this must be the first time I've heard Vegas bashed for instability. That's usually considered a forte.
I felt some problems with vegas7, but those are eliminated in vegas8. For example:
I captured some HDV footage, the program had a crash while importing files (after pressing stop capture). I restarted the program, it won't read some of the files. Clip must be re-captured. When I moved to vegas8, I never taste it afterwards.

[doumm]

Out of curiosity is anybody using XP SP3? I'm wondering how much instability is due to this, also Net Frame 3.5?
I spent about 15hours on a project that crashed 12 to 15 times in the last 6hours, and then on top of that, when I render crashes to desktop, and this project is a career making one that I was upto 3am this morning trying to make it work.
In other words, not happy

[David Jimerson]

I'm on SP3.

[BRinyo]

I switched to Vista (64bit homepremium) since July. I used XP w SP3, before that. I never experienced any issues between Vegas and XP.
If You have an empty harddisk, I recommend to You a clean install with vegas only. You can check: is it stable or not?

[Ducatimark]

I have both a 2 Gig Intel Duo Core laptop (HP9060) and a workstation that I builit with 4 Gig / Quad core / Nvidia Quadro 1500FX card and since I worked out some of the setting's for rendering and stopped using giant size JPEG'S and PNG's I've had very few crashes. And I work in SD & HD, HDV and P2 natively with Raylight; I also open multiple instances of Vegas, Boris, and other programs at the same time. And I still rarely have problems. And one last thing, I use Boris Red as a plug in and using 3rd party products seems to cause everyone problems. I find it runs great even with the MXF files. And as a titling /effects / compositing package it sure makes it easy to get nice looking results.

Just my .02 cents. Hate to hear Vegas get a black eye when it sounds like you've got machine or other problems.

[strangways]

I found my computer locking up completely with 8.0b, so I went back to 8.0a and it never happened again.

If you buy 8.0b, you can still download and use 8.0a with the same license. Add Raylight into the mix, and DVCPRO-HD is a cinch to work with.

In fact, if you use Raylight Red and create proxy AVI files, any system that can play back standard-def SD footage at a decent frame rate can be used to edit HD.

I recently bought a $650 Dell PC with Vegas for editing at home, which I much prefer to the $2,899 Mac Pro with FCP that I use at work!

[Ducatimark]

I've asked this before but never rec'd an answer. What is the issue with 8b? I always update immediately and haven't had a problem with either machine. Any ideas?

[David Jimerson]

I haven't had any issues with 8.0b that I didn't have with 8.0a, so I'm not sure.

[j]

>I recently bought a $650 Dell PC with Vegas for editing at home,
>which I much prefer to the $2,899 Mac Pro with FCP that I use at work!

Same here. $600 Hp laptop, raylight, vegas 8.0b

I was able to take a commercial that was edited on FCP, take the P2 footage home, install Vegas, Read a bit in this book: "Vegas Pro 8 Editing Workshop by Douglas Spotted Eagle" and in 8 hours I not only figured out Vegas, I had a fully recut commercial burned to tape (at home!) ready for the client. (and the paycheck!) The commercial aired on all local network stations the next day.

Is it all things that FCP is? Dunno yet. Is it a killer deal for the money. Yes. It'll get the job done for sure.



BTW, thanks to this forum for finding the answers to my vegas/raylight questions before I even asked them! Couldn't have done it w/o DVXuser.

[aramikvideo]

I've been using FCe and FCP for a few years. Would there be a steep learnig curve to switch to Vegas?

[Richard J. Johnson]

For that price I think I will get the PC and keep the mac as well. 600.00 is nothing compared to 3 grand.

[David Jimerson]

I've been using FCe and FCP for a few years. Would there be a steep learnig curve to switch to Vegas?

It's a very different approach in many respects, and many get frustrated because it's so different. But once you climb the curve, I think you'll find it far more flexible.

[Avenger007]

I jump from Avid Nitris to FCP to Vegas every couple of weeks depending on the type of project. I used to have Premier in that list as well. I started on Vegas, so it was somewhat difficult to jump to the others. I think the drawback is learning to move from a fast timeline to slower ones in some respects. I typically recommend FCP/Avid users moving to Vegas due to their fundamentals already being there and translating well into Vegas. I still feel that the quality of an Avid/FCP render surpass that of Vegas on any level. The speed of editing will never be matched though with Vegas capable of full timeline audio editing side by side with video. Putting up with the windows OS is what gets me.

[BRinyo]

I jump from Avid Nitris to FCP to Vegas every couple of weeks depending on the type of project.
This sounds good and smart. :) I experienced sometimes vegas is better, sometimes the FCP. It's hard to choose which one is better. Why better? There are a lot aspects of questions.

[Avenger007]

good and smart...perhaps. But expensive. The only way I significantly cut costs was going the Mac route with dual boot to avoid two machines. Vegas still has one machine that is windows only, but Nitris will always be its own machine...thus expensive. The variety is good though depending on film vs digitial vs commercial vs feature film.

[strangways]

I still feel that the quality of an Avid/FCP render surpass that of Vegas on any level.

That hasn't been the case in my experience. Can you explain? The quality of footage going out of Vegas is the same as it is coming in, assuming you aren't applying any filters or effects. Is that what you are referring to?

[plainman007]

I think thats what he means. He means after tampering with the orginal footage (like CC etc) the final rendered file from within Vegas will not have the quality of a simialr operation in AVID / FCP ?

Im also curious as to if this might be true ???

[David Jimerson]

It isn't. Avid and FCP have separate media encoding programs with many more presets available, but if you know what you're doing with the Vegas render process, you can match any of those. And if really want to use the same rendering, Sorensen Squeeze is available separately; you can render exactly the same as with Avid, and still not have spent nearly as much.

[Robert Eldon]

It isn't. Avid and FCP have separate media encoding programs with many more presets available, but if you know what you're doing with the Vegas render process, you can match any of those. And if really want to use the same rendering, Sorensen Squeeze is available separately; you can render exactly the same as with Avid, and still not have spent nearly as much.

Whoa! David, you mentioned that 'if you know what you're doing with the Vegas render process, you can match any of those.' Can you expand on that? Are there render parameters that can be 'tweaked'? I typically use the DVDA defaults when rendering for DVD.

Is there a book or tutorial available that can teach you so you 'know what you are doing' with regards to the rendering in Vegas.

Thanks.

[plainman007]

Hmmm. Ok. So the quality is comparably equal i guess.

Robert Eldon > Yes ! All render parameters can be tweaked completely. After you select a particular base type of render (for example mpeg2). Then you will have several sub-templates in the drop down list below (like mpeg2 for dvd architect etc). Now after selecting that you can further fine tune the paramters by clicking the custom button to the right side of the sub-template window. You will be presented (in our mpeg2 example) with bitrate settings. resolution, framerate. gop (group of pictures) settings. etc... BUT i wouldnt meddle with those unless you know exactly what your changing and how it might affect the output. Also sometimes you can land up with render errors and vegas ,might have to shut down. SO SAVE YOUR PROJECT before you attempt such renders. Also some formats will let you render only in resolutions which are divisible by 16 and so on. But you can always try as long as you are safe by saving before meddling. If you do find an independent render setting which works successfully, you can save it as a new render template using the save as button within the render tweak dialog.

But we are talking Vegas Render Presets here. I dont know if this is applicable to DVD Arch, or wether you can even call DVD arch output a render. Though it sometimes does rerenders internally. But i guess even there you can fine tune how a DVD authoring render should take place. Which parts to compress and which not to etc. But DVDA is an exclusive DVD Authoring application and i wouldnt call its output a render. It rather formats files to DVD spec right ??

[David Jimerson]

You have some control over the compression settings in DVD Architect, but nothing like you do in Vegas.

[Richard J. Johnson]

Okay, I am going Computer shopping on Saturday. What do I need for Vegas to run well? I don't want to spend Mac Money here and I would rather just get something decent off-the-shelf. Do I need quad core? how much RAM? What type of video card? Would I need a "Gaming" computer? Also it seems I need Raylight as well. I know nothing about it but it seems pretty self explanatory. I will be using the HPX170 or the HVX200a. both use the DVCPRO-HD codec I believe. Sorry for the noob questions. they say I need this> OHCI-compatible i.LINK® connector1/IEEE-1394DV card. what the hell is this?
Thank you in advance. I need some help on this one.

[David Jimerson]

Vegas pretty much runs on a pocket calculator, so anything you buy will be fine by Vegas.

That said, still get the fastest processor and most RAM you can with the money you're comfortable spending if you're editing HD. That's the rule no matter what NLE you're using. (The graphics card doesn't matter with Vegas, but get one with dual heads so you can add a second monitor at some point.)

Any computer you buy will have a FireWire port, which is IEEE-1394.

[Richard J. Johnson]

Vegas pretty much runs on a pocket calculator, so anything you buy will be fine by Vegas.

That said, still get the fastest processor and most RAM you can with the money you're comfortable spending if you're editing HD. That's the rule no matter what NLE you're using. (The graphics card doesn't matter with Vegas, but get one with dual heads so you can add a second monitor at some point.)

Any computer you buy will have a FireWire port, which is IEEE-1394.

Man, this Vegas/PC is thing seems Cheap and easy. thanks for the Info.

[DVXSanDiego]

One note of caution. I, personally, have had render hangups on my system with 8.0b. There are people who swear 8.0b has not caused any problems for them, and the one thing they seem to have in common is Intel motherboards paired with Intel processors. My next system will be an all Intel based quad core running 64-bit Vista, ready to run 64-bit Vegas. My current motherboard is an Asus. I'm not completely convinced this is the problem, but I'll avoid any non-Intel boards in the future. After all, Mac Pros run on the Intel motherboards and chipsets and I haven't heard any problems from the people running Vegas on Mac Pros....

[David Jimerson]

I always use ASUS boards; the Sound DVD was rendered from 8.0b using an Athlon64 X2 processor. No problems (except that with all the 1080 greenscreen work, it was a looooong render!).

I have a quad-core Intel with an ASUS board now. No problems thus far.

[David Jimerson]

Man, this Vegas/PC is thing seems Cheap and easy.

Yup. And very powerful. It's a combination that has made me a pretty fierce advocate.

[DVXSanDiego]

Hey David, thanks for the reply. Could you please tell me exactly what board, memory and processor you're using. I'm still having to render out our feature into chunks because of problems with 8.0b. It will render, slowly filling up more and more memory, until it just freezes up. If you can tell me your setup, assuming you haven't had any of these render problems, I can replicate your system and leave these problems behind.

[David Jimerson]

Currently:

Intel Q9450
ASUS P5E3 Deluxe mobo
4 GB (2x2GB) OCZ Platinum DDR3 (PC1333) RAM (dual-channel config)

Caveat: I have not done any longform renders with it yet. But I had no problems with my old setup.

[William_Robinette]

I have almost David's exact setup (slower quad core though) and just finished a 1080i 4.5 hour DVD project (long-form) and it works just like it should. My renders out of Vegas to a DVD-A compliant MPEG-2 were 2x realtime after levels/color correction being inside nested projects.

[DVXSanDiego]

Thanks David; I would be interested in hearing back from you once you do some long-form renders. The longer I deal with this, though, the more I think the problem has been with my Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard. All the tech forums, especially Anandtech, report frequent memory issues with it. Given the number of people who report no problems with Vegas 8.0b, it certainly makes more sense.

[DVXSanDiego]

Thanks William, so much. Are you running the exact same motherboard? And what specific processor? And could you tell me what kind of memory you are running? And, sorry, one more question; what OS? XP SP2?

[yeahfilms]

It WILL run on anything. I've ran vegas4 on a 600 MHZ computer, it didn't even have a cd drive!

I run vegas8 on a 1.8 GHZ, 1.0 gig of RAM... it purrs like a leopard. (do leopards purr?)

[Ducatimark]

DVXSanDiego (Mark Holmes) -

Have you adjusted your video settings under Preferences? Check your numbers there, I had constant lockups during render until I talked to Sony HelpDesk and they told me to adjust the Dyanmic Ram Preview to 512 Mb and #of threads to 3 (I have a duo core laptop with 2 Gb ram and a quad core workstaion with 4 Gb ram).

The basic recommendation is to up the minimum level of ram (I've gone as high as 728 on my workstation) and keep the number of threads to one less than total. This allows the machine to continue with other behind the scenes activities that might interfere with rendereing. But don't set ram too high or it will run out of ram for other operations....

I'd try that before I toss my computer!

Also, are you making sure to lower the resolution of any stills or 3D work to less than 2K? I do a lot of work that mixes photos in with video, and hangups are routine if I don't re-size the picutres to about 1K for most work. I also try not to use the stretch video checkbox on render settings if I don't need to. Instead I make sure all my picutres and video fill the frame using the event pan/crop tool and unchecking the source>maintain aspect ratio if the picture or video doesn't fill the frame properly

Don't know if anyone else has had these issues, but it works for me. My longest projects to date have been running an hour or so. I just finished an eight minute project with 14 tracks, green screen, color correction, multiple layers of Boris Red compositing for titles and effects (done in Vegas as a plug-in), plus an imported uncompressed QT render of a 3D effect, and 3 layers of audio. It rendered to MPEG-2 perfectly.

[aramikvideo]

I've been a FCE and FCP user for years but the glowing remarks about Vegas have really piqued my curiosity. I'm most interested due to the affordability of the program itself and the fact that I wouldn't have to have a $4000 computer to run it.
I did read some posts, in another thread, which mentioned that Sony's acquisition of Vegas is unfortunately pushing the program into being a more proprietary app. Is it true that only Sony's breed of AVCHD is compatible? If it is, it's rather unfortunate and short-sighted of Sony and would definitely make me think twice before switching.

[Barry_Green]

Is it true that only Sony's breed of AVCHD is compatible? If it is, it's rather unfortunate and short-sighted of Sony and would definitely make me think twice before switching.
No, not exactly. Sony, when they added AVC-HD compatibility, guaranteed it only for Sony camcorders. The attitude seemed to be "well, others might work, or might not, you get what you get." Since then they have fixed some aspects to allow better compatibility. Whether they'll offer all-encompassing support remains to be seen. It would indeed be foolish of them to perpetuate a "Sony-only" attitude.

[David Jimerson]

It would indeed be foolish of them to perpetuate a "Sony-only" attitude.

Which makes me wonder why they do what they do.

On one hand, it makes sense -- we make cameras, we're going to support them, and that's our priority -- but the "eh, if it works, it works" attitude displayed toward everyone else's cameras seems foolhardy in the extreme.

Is it that they think they can get more people to buy Sony cameras if they get them hooked on Vegas? There are those for whom the editing the software is the #1 priority, but I have to think they're in the minority.

Whatever the reason, it's an approach I find to be exactly backwards and contemptuous of the customer.

Where exactly do they want Vegas to go? What market do they want? I simply can't tell. But one thing's for sure, they haven't given it the functionality it needs to increase its market share among non-Sony users.

For DV, it's still the best choice, IMO. But the DV world is shrinking very quickly.

[Chenopup]

Is it true that only Sony's breed of AVCHD is compatible? .

The Vegas 8.0c update has fixed some bad issues with AVCHD but it's getting better - probably not much worse than support in the other NLEs now. Canon AVCHD runs pretty slick now, better than it did in the last build.

Like David said though, I don't think Sony Creative has a detailed plan on where they want to be with Vegas - cater to the consumer? cater to the pro? it's such a hodge podge of both, they just can't make up their mind.

I also agree that for DV, no editor comes close to Vegas. If you're wanting to stay in one program for decent compositing function, color correction and audio tools, Vegas still wins well in that department too.

I will say with the new ProRes decoder, taking .m2ts and AVCHD into FCP, converting to ProRes and then bringing into Vegas is my best workflow yet, even though they both appear to be a bit better supported with the new Vegas build.

cheno

[DVXSanDiego]

DVXSanDiego (Mark Holmes) -

Have you adjusted your video settings under Preferences? Check your numbers there, I had constant lockups during render until I talked to Sony HelpDesk and they told me to adjust the Dyanmic Ram Preview to 512 Mb and #of threads to 3 (I have a duo core laptop with 2 Gb ram and a quad core workstaion with 4 Gb ram).

The basic recommendation is to up the minimum level of ram (I've gone as high as 728 on my workstation) and keep the number of threads to one less than total. This allows the machine to continue with other behind the scenes activities that might interfere with rendereing. But don't set ram too high or it will run out of ram for other operations....

I'd try that before I toss my computer!

Also, are you making sure to lower the resolution of any stills or 3D work to less than 2K? I do a lot of work that mixes photos in with video, and hangups are routine if I don't re-size the picutres to about 1K for most work. I also try not to use the stretch video checkbox on render settings if I don't need to. Instead I make sure all my picutres and video fill the frame using the event pan/crop tool and unchecking the source>maintain aspect ratio if the picture or video doesn't fill the frame properly

Don't know if anyone else has had these issues, but it works for me. My longest projects to date have been running an hour or so. I just finished an eight minute project with 14 tracks, green screen, color correction, multiple layers of Boris Red compositing for titles and effects (done in Vegas as a plug-in), plus an imported uncompressed QT render of a 3D effect, and 3 layers of audio. It rendered to MPEG-2 perfectly.

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the input, and I think I'll try it, (maybe on my next system) but it is increasingly looking like it's the hardware. There was a burning electrical smell coming from the computer on startup today. I shut down, blew out the inside with compressed air in case it was dusty, and restarted. Still burning smell. I tried operating it, brought up the internet, just waiting to see what happened. The computer just shut down, no warning, like the plug had been pulled from the wall. I tried rebooting after a few minutes, and it seemed to start up fine, but I immediately shut it back down.

This is a packaged system, too, from Velocity Micro. Not happy right now. It's only about 18 months old...

Maybe it's going to be an HP workstation this time... with an extended service contract...

[PatrickR]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the input, and I think I'll try it, (maybe on my next system) but it is increasingly looking like it's the hardware. There was a burning electrical smell coming from the computer on startup today. I shut down, blew out the inside with compressed air in case it was dusty, and restarted. Still burning smell. I tried operating it, brought up the internet, just waiting to see what happened. The computer just shut down, no warning, like the plug had been pulled from the wall. I tried rebooting after a few minutes, and it seemed to start up fine, but I immediately shut it back down.

This is a packaged system, too, from Velocity Micro. Not happy right now. It's only about 18 months old...

Maybe it's going to be an HP workstation this time... with an extended service contract...

Sounds like your power supply blew up. They are usually fairly easy to replace, and you can get a decent one from NewEgg for about $45. Usually with pre-built computers, they get cheap power supplies to keep the cost down. However, buying a new computer is always fun, too. :)

I've been reading this thread because I'm a PC guy. I have a small business building computers and doing networking, but the only editing I've done, other than just "playing around" has been with FCS2. Ironically, the biggest learning curve for me was figuring out how to use a Mac. I've been reading this thread because I have a computer that I built almost 2 years ago and it was a beast at the time and I wanted to see if there was a good way to do some editing on it. It's got a Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz with 2GB of DDR2 1066 RAM, 320GB SATA2 OS drive, 1TB RAID 5 array for storage and a GeForce 8800GTX video card. It sounds like this would be a pretty good setup for Vegas, and with all of the glowing reviews I've heard on this thread, I'm pretty much on board. I do SD projects shot on the HVX and an older Canon ZR45MC (I know, but 7 years ago it was an $800 camera) as much, if not more than HD stuff shot with the HVX. If I keep the HD stuff on the Mac, then I think I'll have a great little DV editing machine.

Thanks for all the great info and opinions in this thread.

One other thing. I currently dual boot with XP SP2 and Vista Ultimate 32 bit. Any idea which would be better for Vegas? I'm willing to do a clean install of either one, since I've just started getting a little bit of instability in XP and I don't have much installed on Vista other than a few games that I can alway re-install if I need them.

[proride]

Hey All,

I have been going back on forth on FCP and Vegas for over a year now and I found this thread very helpful and balanced. However, it raised a few questions for me:

Reading between the lines, I assume one can run Vegas on a Mac partitioned with say XP Pro? Any hardware issues? Or is it better to stay with PC based machines?

I have always directed /subbed out editors however two upcoming projects will absolutely require me to edit so it begs the question: Do I learn on FCP which seems to be industry standard (cult) or Vegas for ease and learning? Sony's lack of direction with Vegas and the increasing need for HD projects (not to mention Premiere Pro which Davids HD comments caught my attention) is something that has kept me at the crossroads.

Because I consistently run up against mac/pc issues with clients, it seems the choice is go with Mac and have the boot option to run windows.

Comments? Real world experience?

Thanks!

[David Jimerson]

If you want to hedge your bet, a dual-boot system is the way to go. No Vegas issues.

[proride]

If you want to hedge your bet, a dual-boot system is the way to go. No Vegas issues.

That is what I thought....still so many work on FCP so it seems like learning both Vegas and FCP will be long term needed solutions.

[j]

If you have to work with the outside world, FCP is the way to go. I don't know of any industry professionals in my circle that have ever seen Vegas. I cut FCP at work and Vegas at home.