Which is better Sony Vegas Pro 10 or Final Cut Pro X

"I'm a video editor that use Sony Vegas Pro 10. I've been editing with this software since version 9. My question is should I switch from Sony Vegas to Final Cut Pro X, or should I continue to use Sony Vegas?"

You ask this on a Sony Vegas user's group and expect a pro-FCP reply?

First. FCP-X is not FCP. You cannot edit an FCP project on FCP-X. The User Interface in FCP-X is not the same as FCP.

The "Industry Standard" depends on which industry you are talking about. Most job postings for editing projects specify the editing program that the job poster is familiar with. No consideration to what the end-product will be, just an emphasis on the tools. As it if really matters what brand of hammer the carpenter uses.

On the other hand, If I need an editor to help me with projects, I will look for Vegas editors simply because I can recover from any screw-ups that the hired editor makes.

So, if you are looking to engage the film industry, they tend to gravitate to one of Avid, FCP7, or Premiere Pro - because that's what they started with and/or that's what they were told is the industry "Standard". Again, the focus is on the tool, not the results.

Remember, FCP-X is not FCP-7. Learning FPC-X is, in my opinion, a waste of time. Avid probably has the steepest learning curve and a price to match. Premiere Pro also has a steep learning curve and almost as-steep entry price.

So, to better advise you, you should first define what you want to do.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

I am a small independent video producer who has used FCP and Vegas extensively in the last two years. The issue of going to FCPX is highly controversial in the FCP camp, because it is not a professional tool at this point in time. It is really an upgrade to Apple's consumer product. Why Apple did this, is the subject to a lot of debate. But the professionals out there currently are primarily using FCP 7 (otherwise known as FCP Studio, which includes a very high end color grading tool, and other relatively decent tools). FCP also has a huge world of add ons, more than Vegas, or Adobe, for that matter, though Adobe is catching up quickly. Apple has cultivated those companies, up to now. The niche companies that Hollywood high end production companies need to really round out the tools for massive, complex, multi-person/multi-team production work. The difference is that Hollywood has specialists for every single job, and they all spend all day on the tools, and need a lot of add ons that we just don't need, because the budgets don't allow it. We have some great add ons, Boris, VASST, etc, but not even close to the Apple world.

Many, including myself, are migrating to Adobe, which is also a complex tool, but not yet "industry standard". That name is reserved for Avid and FCP, at this point, but there have been some notable "hollywood" films cut on Adobe. adobe seems to be targeting the special effects industry as their way in. The vast bulk of current FCP users seem to be 'staying put', so your opportunity for jobs is in the current product that is in wide spread use, not FCPX. I would not suggest wasting any time with that product, if your goal is a job in the industry.

That being said, I find I use Vegas far more than I ever used FCP. FCP forces you to transcode every bit of video to their proprietary codec, Prores. It is much faster, read Time=Money, to use Vegas. Vegas can do 90% or more of what FCP can do, especially in the day to day cut and run world of inexpensive video production. Add Sound Forge or Protools and your Windows machine is totally capable of competing for most jobs. But it's not FCP, in that the criteria for getting work is FCP knowledge. Most FCP editors I've talked with either dismiss Vegas out of hand, as an amateur product, or don't even know it exists. Seriously. And 100% of the ones I've had say those things to me have never tried it, because I ask them that.

The wildcard for me is Adobe. A much more complex product, but it too does not need to be transcoded if you want to simply stay with your footage (I use a Canon Xf300 to shoot, so I shoot in an very good codecc that is 4:2:2 out of the camera, why I should transcode is beyond me). Many of the FCP editors on the boards around the world are starting to migrate to Adobe, myself included. I have it on order now, waiting on disks, as downloading the entire Adobe suite, even on cable modem,takes days. (just joking). But Adobe is playing for keeps, and wants that market really badly. They now have a product that can actually seriously compete for major motion pictures, and they integrate well with two of the other major tools out there,Photoshop and Illustrator. Then add the specific video add on tools that Adobe throws into the suite, and there is no doubt that Apple will have to work hard to stay on top, and they don't seem to be willing to do that.

So, you are in a good position. Keep your Vegas skills up, buy Adobe and learn that, or Avid, both run on your Windows machine. For instant gratification, without buying a Mac, I guess I would choose AVID, if I lived in LA and wanted to find a job quickly. Maybe see if you can buy coffee for a few hiring editors to pick their brains.

Lastly, the world of video editing, because of Apple's dominance, is very Mac centric. Do not dismiss getting a Mac, if you want to break into this field, but to professionally edit on a Mac, you really need a MacPro, the most expensive machine out there. The other machines are not really able to keep up, (I own a state of the art 2009 laptop, and it is dismally slow at rendering or transcoding),though the latest top of the line Mac laptops can do the job, but those too, are very expensive. And never, ever be dismissive about the Mac to these folks, they are a religious cult that cannot be swayed in their belief that Apple is superior to Windows in every conceivable way. Many of them have never used Windows 7, but why should I be surprised...(G).

Alf

Not to beat a dead horse, but the only reason I find to use FCP is that there are so many other FCP users out there, that when I need to work with one, it is vastly easier to just say, yes, I have FCP, send me the files (=work). I consider it just another tool in my toolbox, no different than a saw or a hammer in the carpenter world. But a very complex saw that is not normally needed in my day to day work. But when I'm hired on a crew, then the saw is needed, and I say, sure I'll bring the specialty saw you all use. Heck I'm just one of the guys.

Adobe is *starting* to get to that point. Vegas, like I say, doesn't have a lot of champions in my neck of the woods, just me, and one or two others. But I champion it whereever I go. Except cocktail parties. Then when the *oh so smart* bring up the inevitable question, "You use FCP don't you?" I just shrug and say, "sure". They never need to know...because they really don't want to. (G)

By the way, as to add on's. I continue to find that VASST's suite that I recently bought is really a great add on tool. I use it every day I edit. Nice work John.

Alf

I'd really like to see some modern lower thirds. Clean, more an indie look than broadcast sports, which is what most of Vegas' quite data ones seem to me. I guess i just got to do my own, or buy them elswehere?

Alf

[Al Bergstein] "Lastly, the world of video editing, because of Apple's dominance, is very Mac centric. Do not dismiss getting a Mac, if you want to break into this field, but to professionally edit on a Mac, you really need a MacPro, the most expensive machine out there. The other machines are not really able to keep up, (I own a state of the art 2009 laptop, and it is dismally slow at rendering or transcoding),though the latest top of the line Mac laptops can do the job, but those too, are very expensive. And never, ever be dismissive about the Mac to these folks, they are a religious cult that cannot be swayed in their belief that Apple is superior to Windows in every conceivable way. Many of them have never used Windows 7, but why should I be surprised...(G)."

I might wait on that a bit, at least before dropping five-grand or more on a MacPro. Specifically, where in the world is Apple actually going with this all. A year ago, everything Al said here was not only true, from the MacHead prespective, but in general, yeah -- the whole Apple ecosystem was very much a leading one in pro video, a must-have in some circles.

But this latest set of moves suggests things may be changing. They haven't updated the MacPro in over a year. Will there be another MacPro? At present, Apple's pro market has been slowly shrinking, while their consumer market is growing, fast, as iMacs and iBooks enjoy the iOS coat-tail effect (I personally know two individuals who traded in their PCs for Apple Mac PCs, once they fell in love with the iPhone).

They've turned FCP Pro from a dated but professional application into a prosumer (at best) app with a few features (64-bit, better multithreading, 4K support) that FCP 7 users really want, everyone on pretty much every other platform already has, and heck, stuff that was in Vegas back in 2008 and 2009.

And they've also, apparently, killed the other suite tools: Color, DVD Studio Pro (which was never updated for Blu-ray, if that's important to you), and SoundTrack Pro. Motion and Compressor live on, as separate apps, for now.

Of some concern to larger scale FCP houses, Apple's also discontinued Final Cut Server and some other pro-level tools.

Another thing: these are only available in the Mac App Store. And in a very consumery way. Most professional applications are sold primarily as upgrades for existing users, not so much new users. There are no upgrades in the App Store, at least not to date. So at least at this point, it looks as if every FCP seat will be full price going forward. FCP X is officially the upgrade not only for Final Cut Pro 7, but Final Cut Express... and may favor the latter's typical use more than the former's.

And, as everyone knows, Apple's in transition, with SJ taking a step back from daily leadership. My suspicion -- this was planned some time ago, in order to make everything as smooth as possible, and this step back from the pro market is very intentional, not some last minute stumble by Jobs to be corrected by the new guy. But only time will tell.

Of course, it's ALWAYS best to wait on buying into technology into you absolutely need it. If an FCP rig is needed today for real work reasons, buy it -- assuming that work is sufficient to pay it down with in the year (Section 179 for taxes, etc). If not, doesn't hurt to wait... particularly since it's entirely unknown just where Apple's going. And if they really are leaving the pro market behind, since Apple's the only official Mac PC vendor, hardware will be left behind, regardless of the existing Apple-friendly video industry.

-Dave

[John Rofrano] "lol... are you sitting down?... Cuz' now you know three... me! :-O

I bought an iPad 2 about a month ago and I was totally floored by its brilliant simplicity. I went to set up my email and it asked me for my userid and password and the next thing I saw was my email! (Imagine that!!!)"

I never would have guessed :-) On the other hand, if you're a video pro who needs (needed?) access to FCP for work purposes, a Mac is the only PClone that does both FCP and Vegas. So that actually does make some sense.

Windows is a big mess, for sure. I believe some pieces of it are absolutely engineered to employ IT guys. I've worked with various versions of UNIX since 1975, I spend 11.5 years at Commodore working around an OS development team, and it's hard to find another explanation. And of course, Microsoft with Outlook is trying to sell you their terribly complex and annoying email solution, rather than using a standard. So they have a vested interest in not making it easy.

Of course, I'm using "Becky!", an email client I've been using since 1994, I think before Outlook existed, for my desktop mail, and it's an easy set up. Ok, I did enter my email parameters, but then again, I am using my own hosted email server.... I'm not typical.

A better answer is Thunderbird, or Android. In both cases, I entered my email address, and the email client figured everything out. In fact, when I entered my GMail account on Android, it didn't simply fetch my email, it synced up all my apps as well, over-the-air... something Apple's going to get around to some day, I guess.

But in fact, both of the Mac-switch people I know are very non-technical people. So they probably get a big boost from Apple's hand-holding, and don't get annoyed that MacOS is pretty alien to anyone used to other OSs. The first GUI I used was in 1983, on an Apollo workstation with a four-button puck. Most UNIX GUIs used three buttons (and needed them) back in the day, AmigaOS, OS/2, and then Windows used two, and they both made perfect sense. When I'm down to Apple's one, there's trouble in there, like reaching over to chord with shift keys and things.

I can handle 24 buttons on my graphics tablet, I can handle six chorded strings on my guitar -- I think any old human can do intelligent things with more than one mouse button without being totally confused. My mouse actually has about nine buttons and a scroll wheel... I'd probably get one of those jog shuttles full of buttons, if I didn't already have a jog shuttle on my keyboard (Bella for Vegas... mixed reviews). Mice need to get more useful, not less. But I digress.. I could rant against Apple UI concepts all day. Like how I can run Windows, N versions of Linux or UNIX, even fire up BeOS/Haiku or AmigaOS (thanks to an emulator) and be fine, but none of that experience translates to MacOS. It's fine if you're Mac-only, and I'm sure they've designed the OS intentionally balkanized... they want it to be harder for Mac users to like Windows or some version of Linux.

And while I'm on the subject, I don't like the direction Apple's moving, or Ubuntu 11.x has already moved -- making applications into Apps. I actually use windows all the time. Spread across my dual 1920x1200 monitors are 15 programs at the moment, including two instanced of Vegas 10, a couple of video conversion tools (re-muxing some weird MP4 I got with a new HD video capture card), Nero (BD backup burning), Evernote (song lyrics in progress), a couple of browsers, email client, Photoshop, Visio (some patent drawings for the day job), MorphMan (working on some animation, also for the day job), etc. I could not begin to be productive in an app-takes-whole-screen PC environment. It's annoying enough on a tablet, but somewhat forgivable given the low resolution.

[John Rofrano] "Now to be fair, I wasn't running Windows on my laptop before. I abandoned Windows long ago and I've been using Ubuntu Linux for quite a while so I really switched from Linux to Mac OS X but after my experience with the iPad, I understood why Apple maintains strict control of both the hardware and the software. It's the only way to guarantee the quality of the customer experience. The "swipe" gestures on the touchpad of the MacBook are simply brilliant. I don't think I've clicked on a scroll bar in weeks (just a two finger swipe is all it takes to scroll)."

The mouse-wheel seems to have done the scroll thing for me for about a decade just dandy. So ok, Microsoft maybe got one thing right (Logitech mouse, but I do think MS added the wheel).

I have Windows 7 64, 4GB of DRAM, 1.2TB of HDD, dual Intel Core2 CPU, and a 1680x1050 screen on my laptop... and it's fairly annoying for any real work (video or CAD). When I used it for Work, I had several different versions of Linux on tap via VirtualBox, but kept Windows native -- I need the graphics performance for video or CAD, you lose at least some of that in a VM (just how much depends on the VM).

Today, I mostly use it for the occasional big field recording thing (anything that's too big for the Zoom H4n), like a whole band recording session. I'm pretty happy with the tablet for basic stuff: reading email, light web surfing (if I'm not jugging more than 10 or so web pages), etc. It also does the eBook thing pretty well, but I have one of the only tablets that's readable in bright sunlight (Notion Ink Adam with a Pixel Qi display)

[John Rofrano] " I do believe we are living in the dawn of the "post-pc" era, where smart devices are the norm and laptops and desktops will only be used for special purposes. Only time will tell."

We may be entering a "post-PC" era (do keep in mind, a Mac IS a PC), but not a post-pc era. While not IBM-compatibles like my PC and your Mac, our phones and tablets are very certainly personal computers, and will remain so. Yeah, they're taking a different approach to an extent, but only so much. I can still fire up a bash shell on my tablet if I like -- works better when I plug in a USB keyboard, of course... same as with any long typing session. Touch without tacticle feedback is never as good as with... keyboards live because they're very good at what they do. But I'm willing to make them optional in return for a book-sized computer that runs all day (ok, your iPad2 is more a modern magazine, my Adam ... well, maybe "Vogue", or a copy of BYTE from the 80s, far as the thickness goes).

The key here is simple: computers have really outpaced people. The average computer of 2000 didn't make all us video folks happy, I needed more for CAD, more for photography, more for music once we started replacing whole racks of gear with plug-ins. Hardcore gamers, too, only want more. But the average web browsing, text editing, simple-game-playing user was pretty happy with an AD2000 PC. And this year's crop of tablets, nominally an ARM Cortex A9 dual core at 1GHz, 512MB of DRAM, and at least 8-16GB of "disc" space, completely out-specs the average PC of 2000, if it's technically just barely a match for the average PC Netbook today in raw performance. Make the OS more efficient -- and this means more efficient than Windows, and you're there. After all, most of the tablet/phone OSs, Android, iOS, and even WebOS, are running on top of some version of UNIX... the same thing powering servers, supercomputers, TiVos and DTV boxes around the world. While not born on the personal computer, the PC was the main engine of evolution for UNIX, and particularly Linux, in recent times. So basically, we're even running PC OSs on these things. Still computers, even more personal.

And Apple's catching up to this idea -- that maybe these are stand alone, rather than needing a tether to some PC somewhere. Android did that right from the start. But I won't be editing video on either, any time soon...

-Dave

I am in the middle of exactly this bake-off myself. My son talked me into buying a huge MAC Pro with FCP 7. Today for example I tried to get a simple project started but the UI is too opaque for an occasional user like me.

To me, most apple users are just too arrogant in their anti-Microsoft out look to understand that the market needs a user friendly interface with dive down ability for power users. The 3 button mouse brought up earlier is a perfect example. Jobs hated the 3 button mouse, so now Mac users have to get carpal tunnel searching around for the right menu to descend, rather than a simple right click for a drop down menu. It's stupid and wasteful.

I have arrived at this bake-off because I use a lot of Sony equipment and have a dual core PC so I am drawn to Vegas. I have, however, a lot of horse power for rendering in this super Mac 12 core so I am drawn to FCP. Regarding FCP I am considering FCP X for the easier UI as being better for occasional use. Vegas looks like an easier direction now for a PC laptop with small files to render and no restrictions to Quad Core.

Maybe the higher art favors the power user approach but the profit to keep the SW writers alive is in the mass market.

[William Beazley] "To me, most apple users are just too arrogant in their anti-Microsoft out look to understand that the market needs a user friendly interface with dive down ability for power users. The 3 button mouse brought up earlier is a perfect example. Jobs hated the 3 button mouse, so now Mac users have to get carpal tunnel searching around for the right menu to descend, rather than a simple right click for a drop down menu. It's stupid and wasteful.
"

I completely agree there. I lean a bit toward what John said... I'm not sure anyone made really good use of buttons beyond three. And there's the potential of adding touch sensitivity to a mouse -- also not there yet, but both Apple and Microsoft are playing with it.

But the three button mouse with scroll wheel is extremely useful. And it is ultimately GUI driven. Apple's GUI was written for a single button mouse, so they're not using multiple buttons that well. Windows copied the OS/2 idea of one button for "select", the other for "object menu" (well, it was a real object on OS/2), and the third button evolved very nicely to deal with scrolling.

[William Beazley] "I have arrived at this bake-off because I use a lot of Sony equipment and have a dual core PC so I am drawn to Vegas. I have, however, a lot of horse power for rendering in this super Mac 12 core so I am drawn to FCP. Regarding FCP I am considering FCP X for the easier UI as being better for occasional use. Vegas looks like an easier direction now for a PC laptop with small files to render and no restrictions to Quad Core.
"

Well, I'd not be happy with either of your systems as-is. The 2-core PC is not fast enough for HD video editing. Ok, technically you could ... I have such a laptop, and it can be done. But I'm much happier editing on my six core desktop.

FCP7 certainly has a following, but I suspect some of that is simply that same Apple arrogance -- the average FCP user may not be not aware of much else. It's still a 32-bit program, and behind the times on many things. My daughter run it on her MacBook (a loner for kids in the Communications Academy at her HS), and I was actually quite floored on how poorly it handled native video editing. She used a couple of my camcorders on a project, and I handed her the video files... AVCCAM/AVCHD files from Panasonics. They loaded, but the speed (it's like a dual-core 2GHz-ish i5 MacBook Pro... should be at least as fast as my 5-year-old HP) of editing made this completely useless. So I made her a set at qHD AVC.. still not enough horsepower for editing. Finally I tried qHD AVC-Intra, and we were good.

It was only later I found out that the standard practice at school for importing digital video from her camcorder (also an AVCHD-based Panny) was to feed video out at SD to a Canon XL-something-or-other, which converted it to DV for import. Oh well... anyway... very, very.

While that's probably solved on a 12-core system, I don't imagine a 32-bit program really has enough memory resources to make much use of a 12-core system. But that would totally rock with Vegas. FCP X certainly costs less than FCP7 (if you don't already own FCP7), though they've removed features. Some are pro features you may not care about, but others... no real DVD authoring anymore, for example. But at least it's a 64-bit program; that really does make a difference once you're doing large HD projects, anyway.

There's now a 30-day trial of FCP-X (you have to get it from Apple's web site, not the Mac iTunes Store where you buy the paid version), always has been with Vegas. Sometimes the best tool is simply the one that fits your brain the best.

-Dave

Yeah... thinking about it, I believe I remuxed my AVCHD prior to moving it to the Mac. The video files did load, just way too slow to consider using. I'm sure I could have loaded DNxHD or persuaded the Mac to trans code to ProRes or whatever, but ultimately the downrezed AVC-Intra was good enough. I wouldn't have chosen to do extensive AVCHD editing on Vegas on my laptop either, but it is at least possible.

-Dave