All you Vegas Loyalists

LukeJ

Well-known member
I bought Adobe and it's impossible for me to learn. Granted, when it comes to this stuff, I'm about as smart as Jethro but the only way to learn is to read their directions. I need more. Is Vegas easier to learn? I read somewhere that it comes with an instructional CD. I gotta learn to edit.
 
Learning to edit and learning an NLE are two very different things. Being a good editor transends whatever system you are using at any given point in time.

Vegas is very user friendly. I picked it up in a few days to the point where I could do almost anything I wanted.I still pick up lots of little tid bits hear and there almost everyday, however. It is a deceptively deep program.

It is very different from other NLE's in it's style. It is more like a audio app then a video one, but coming from that I found it very familiar. Of course, now I look at anything Avid and cringe...
 
LukeJ said:
I bought Adobe and it's impossible for me to learn. Granted, when it comes to this stuff, I'm about as smart as Jethro but the only way to learn is to read their directions. I need more. Is Vegas easier to learn? I read somewhere that it comes with an instructional CD. I gotta learn to edit.

I'm dumb as an ox and I learned Vegas. My company even sent me to Final Cut school and I was the worst student in the class. I couldn't do Final Cut, I couldn't really do Edius, Premiere was a mind job, Liquid? forget about it. But Vegas? I can do it. So it's a software even dumb people like me can learn. Yet, it's very powerful.
 
Ive started using Premiere Pro after using Vegas for over a year and Im lost. Vegas is much more user friendly. There are some great books out there with tutorials for Adobe products, Ive been using one for After Effects and Illustrator. Vegas is very easy to learn and is a great program, You wont regret going with it.
 
I've been using Vegas for years for my personal stuff. But 5 months ago I started working at a place that is all Adobe and so I've had to use Premiere Pro from time to time.

Both are good editors, Vegas feels much more fluid to me and just a lot easier to use in general. Yet it's still just as powerful as everything else. Both Premiere and FCP feel very stiff. "You can't do that there, you can only do it here" sort of thing, whereas Vegas is more like "you want to do that there, ok". Vegas is very drag and drop.

The only problem with Vegas is that its never had as big of a following and now that it's owned by Sony it's becoming kind of crippled. I'd hate to say it but as much as I love it, if you're looking to get a job somewhere editing then you're probably better off learning Premiere Pro or FCP as the Vegas skill set is not in high demand. But if you're working for yourself Vegas is awesome.
 
The comment about Vegas being like an audio app is really right. I come from a multitrack editor/recorder software background so I found Vegas a natural. It really lets you handle multitrack/multilayer sound better than most in my opinion and I love to spend a lot of time getting the sound right. The other comment about Premiere being very stiff is also right. You may be able to do many of the audio things I like to do with premiere but its much more intuitive in Vegas.
 
Vegas was incredibly easy to learn. It was my first NLE, but I figured out how to splice (s), I was able to use it reasonably well. We had to learn how to use Premiere at my highschool for the technology class, and the whole time I was thinking, "Ugh in Vegas you can do this so much easier."

Go with Vegas, it won't fail you.
 
Time is money.

Time is money.

Bottom line is...how much time do you really want to spend editing? I personally would rather be shooting new projects and getting it out to festivals vs spending twice the time figuring out what went wrong on the timeline. Not to mention Vegas doesn't crash like the others as often. Go with Vegas..this is coming from a person who started with Avid then switched to Vegas years ago. I'm sure the new mac users will benefit using Vegas now that the intel cores are out.
 
Most of the others have given you a realistic picture. I can only second their opinions. Ive tried a lot of NLEs and was very dissatisfied until i came by Vegas. But its not a big commercial name in the media market. So if its of no brand value. I mean if you dont need to impress someone that you work on an avid platform then your very well off with Vegas. And it can do most or a lil more than any of these other NLEs would do (in a shorter route and lesser time). Wish you all the best and have fun learning it.
 
Thank you guys. Smithy, you got me thinking. Time is of the utmost importance for me. I'm buying vegas.
 
Yea. More and more ppl are switching over. I still enjoy AE like no other, but Vegas is a must in my editing suite. Maybe it'll mean more on a resume in a year or so....
 
hiro said:
i think vegas is gonna blow up here pretty soon :)

I would like to think that.

I'd like it if it did.

But it won't.

Not as long as Sony owns it. Sony is going to keep it tightly-integrated with Sony products and Sony's proprietary versions of things (like MXFs).

Which is their decision. They own it. It's their right, it's their business. They get to call those shots.

But it's going to keep Vegas down from where it should go.
 
David Jimerson said:
I would like to think that.

I'd like it if it did.

But it won't.

Not as long as Sony owns it. Sony is going to keep it tightly-integrated with Sony products and Sony's proprietary versions of things (like MXFs).

Which is their decision. They own it. It's their right, it's their business. They get to call those shots.

But it's going to keep Vegas down from where it should go.


I agree with David. Sony skipped a couple of lessons in preschool and pays for it... but not really, they're huge.
 
I have a desktop Mac for editing with FCP... I learned it first. It took several weeks for me to get comfortable with it. (And I'm still learning.) But I have a laptop PC that I use to dump my P2 files on, when out and about.

About a month ago I decided to buy Vegas for my laptop (and Raylight for MXF files). I was kind of apprehensive about having to learn another NLE. But I watched the Vegas tutorials at Lynda.com and was able to jump right in. Very simple to get started with! I attribute that, partly, to having already learned the basics of NLE from FCP. But, the second major component, to quickly learning Vegas, is that is just so well designed.

I love my Mac with FCP. I love my PC with Vegas. I have the best of both worlds. I guess that makes me Bi-NLE. I swing (edit) both ways!
 
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