Vegas and Long Form Narrative Editing

N

notharrylume

Active member
I am trying to select editing software for a no-budget long form narrative project. I am a long time PC guy.

Vegas seems to be an attractive alternative because of its full set of features, relative affordability and its ability to run on less powerful computers, like mine.

But, I have read in these forums that Vegas does not work or coordinate well with other non-Sony applications, and that if collaborators wanted to do sound, for instance, in a non-Sony program that it would be very difficult to export the Vegas edit so that it could be easliy used.

What do you suggest? I really don't want to move to Apple/FCP, and I don't want to spend the money on hardware and software to go the Avid route.

Thanks very much for your thoughts.
 
It depend on what they're using, and how you want to do it. There are issues with certain types of audio file exports, but there also other ways of going about things.
 
I wouldn't hesitate to use Vegas simply because it's such a fast editor.

The audio facilities in Vegas is vastly superior to any other NLE. Right now I'm mixing an album (no video) in Vegas. In my opinion there's no reason to use anything else for audio.

I have no sympathy for "engineers" who can't work with audio files from one NLE because there's no "import" command. Back in the day when I was a lowly sound engineer, we would transfer the audio tracks for a film on 1-inch or 2-inch tapes (16 or 24 tracks, each lasting only about 20 minutes), and later 40-minute VHS "ADAT" tapes (8 tracks). On larger projects multiples machines would be synced for more tracks.

Same with CCing -- render to A and B reels (if you really need to).

The time you save editing easily outweighs the inconvenience of transferring your finished work to other platforms for finishing.
 
I love Vegas, and we've edited two features on it, but proceed with caution and planning. Be aware that if you are going to hire someone to do your sound mix, they will probably be on ProTools and there is no way to output a project to them.

Our solution was to render out WAV files of the dialogue, music and effects, in reels, once the picture was locked. Made me nercous about audio sync, but it worked, and we got a professional sound mix on our second film this way. Ideally, Sony would get this working in the next version. You also could find a post sound mixer who is comfortable working in Vegas. But most not only work in ProTools but are also very dependent on the plug-ins the software relies on for their work.

Also, make sure you establish a workflow early on that encompasses a solid intermediate codec that you know will hold up well to Color correction and that you find a way to deliver the film to a post production house for delivery to festivals and distributors in Beta, Digibeta and HDCam and the like...

But it really does come down to what you're comfortable in - if your editing is that much better in Vegas, you'll probably edit a better film in it...
 
Mark:

Thanks for the detailed repsonse. This is what I was concerned about. I am considering shooting HMC AVC-HD, transcoding and editing from Cineform AVI. Will this intermediate codec work with ProTools?
 
Yes, Cineform is a great intermediate codec to use while editing. For delivery to the audio people using ProTools, we rendered the complete timeline as an audio only .wav file, not avi. So the audio facility will never use your Cineform files; they just send back a rendered file with the audio re-worked. Make sure you discuss this with your audio people beforehand, though. Not every ProTools person will be thrilled with doing things this way. They're used to being handed a project, not files.
 
I wouldn't risk

I wouldn't risk

long form editing with Vegas, you might end up being one of the lucky ones with no probs, but me along with many others have lots of problems with anything over 30mins with many effects and cc etc.
Don't get me wrong great editor, so long as it's short form. There are those who argue otherwise, I'm just giving you a headup to be careful.
 
Doumm: What kind of problems do you mean? For PC based long form editing without Avid software and hardware costs what do you think is better? Thanks.
 
I've edited many, many longform projects and never, ever had a problem because of it. Many others have said the same.

Without details, saying it's unworkable after 30 minutes of length is just FUD.
 
I just created in Vegas and then burned using DVDA5 a 1 hour and 23 minute mpg to DVD last week. 4.2gig on the DVD with zero problems. 10 hour render time in Vegas with the effects that I used. I create video all the time that runs longer than 30 minutes.
 
FUD reply

FUD reply

Hey David

sorry to clarify things, if the original poster searches DVXUser and also DVinfo, you'll find heaps of post from various users like myself who've had much pain from using Vegas. But as mentioned I actually like Vegas when I'm not pulling my hair out at 3am trying to render out a project due that day

The form of pain comes in things like the following:

- Inability to render out longform projects with many clips. (Rendering is one
the big bugbears, there's fixes but they're not 100%, including reduce render
threads to 2, reduce preview ram to 16MB)
- Crashes to desktop and general instability
- Pro Titler also crashes and not user friendly
- Crashes whenever RAM exceeds 2Gb

As I've said in my first post, I actually believe it or not love the Vegas workflow, but it's bugginess prevents it from being the best NLE out there. And it is random bugginess and probably comes down to hardware or software incompatability, the problem would be trying to figure out whats compatible and whats not, for example on my last major project, I didn't even install Sound Forge to make sure i didn't have any conflicts, and still no joy. It appears there may be a prob with the way Vegas deals with Quad cores, but then again it's random, some no probs, others like myself do.
At the end of the day, a demo version gives you an idea of the program, but most people don't trial a demo with a longform project.
So I'm simply giving a heads up that not everybody that uses Vegas are happy campers, and no doubt there will be 3 other posts after this telling you they have no problems, I'm just letting you know you can't discount it.
 
I think I can count on one hand the number of times Vegas has crashed to the desktop for me in six years of heavy use. Stability is one of Vegas's hallmarks.

Pro Titler sucks anyway. Wouldn't use if my life depended on it. Prefer using the classic titler and all the FX available through Vegas, including pan/crop, track motion, etc.. They never should have bothered with PT, and there's very little it does that I can't achieve otherwise.

Anyway, I can't say what did or didn't happen for you, only that it is in no way the norm.

As far as longform and having lots of clips and FX, the Sound DVD was three hours of intense greenscreen with about 12 motion video layers with lots of track motion and resizing and stacks of FX (CC, chroma blurs, gaussian blurs, noise layers -- nasty stuff), with 1080/24p DVCPRO HD. It was about as brutal a session as there could be. Yes, it took six days to render. But no, it did not crash or fail to render.
 
I'm with you David. I turned to Vegas back in 2003 to edit my documentary. 3+ hours of de-innterlacing, CC, MB Looks, hundreds of keyframes for pan/crop because I didn't have a stabilizer. Render took days but worked fine. I rendered a long form 1080i conference video last month that took 26 hours, and I was rendering over the 100 MB network. Did just fine.

I have never seen another editor where I could drop RED, SI2K, Viper Filmstream, EX1, and HDV all onto a timeline, and render to h.264 without missing a beat, or having to set up anything. Vegas isn't perfect, but it does some things REMARKABLY well.

They just need to BUY a titller.. geez...
 
I want to thank you all for your thoughtful responses; I find it really useful. What I conclude from your comments is that Vegas would be a good choice for a long form AVCHD project transcoded into either Cineform AVI or DNxHD with the following caveats:
1. Some hardware configurations might be unstable.
2. Audio handoff to other applications such as ProTools are a bit of a pain and require some planning and testing.
3. Titling should be done with an outside plug-in.

Thanks again.
 
notharrylume said:
I want to thank you all for your thoughtful responses; I find it really useful. What I conclude from your comments is that Vegas would be a good choice for a long form AVCHD project transcoded into either Cineform AVI or DNxHD with the following caveats:
1. Some hardware configurations might be unstable.
2. Audio handoff to other applications such as ProTools are a bit of a pain and require some planning and testing.
3. Titling should be done with an outside plug-in.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Yes, I would say that sums it up perfectly. And despite my problems with it over the last couple years, I still love the program. And hate when I'm forced to use Final Cut.
 
Re: Crashing.

One of the very reasons I use Vegas is the stability (plus it does a couple other things that other NLEs don't which makes it crucial for my business).

However, I did notice that it would crash with a large number of HDV clips. This is probably what doumm is referring to.
 
I had the 30 day demo crash on me a few times with AVCHD footage.
Also when I had some tif photos in the timeline via Quicktime, the demo would always crash at that point on rendering out to wmv-hd.

Then I read from a few people on another forum that the demo was "not as trouble free" as the licensed program.

I have to say after replacing all of my tif's with jpeg's and buying a licensed copy, I have yet to have one crash.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top