Thinking of jumping ship from FCP to Vegas.

aramikvideo said:
I've been using FCe and FCP for a few years. Would there be a steep learnig curve to switch to Vegas?
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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.
 
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.
 
Avenger007 said:
I jump from Avid Nitris to FCP to Vegas every couple of weeks depending on the type of project.
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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.
 
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.
 
Avenger007 said:
I still feel that the quality of an Avid/FCP render surpass that of Vegas on any level.
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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?
 
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 ???
 
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.
 
David Jimerson said:
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.
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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.
 
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 ??
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
David Jimerson said:
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.
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Man, this Vegas/PC is thing seems Cheap and easy. thanks for the Info.
 
Avoid non-Intel Motherboards

Avoid non-Intel Motherboards

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....
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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