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Editing Software

Up untill now I've been slumming it with Windows Movie Maker 6.0 and have recently acquired a full version of Vegas Pro 11 (I'm currently tooling around with it whenever i can while i'm deployed, progressing slowly but surely...) but one of my friends I work with in our projects keeps pushing for Adobe After Effects. Are there any advantages that would perhaps put one program over the other?
 
Windows Movie Maker 6.0 (...) Vegas Pro 11 (...) Adobe After Effects. Are there any advantages that would perhaps put one program over the other?

Windows Movie Maker & Vegas are similar editing tools. After Effects is not.

Adobe Premiere Pro (or Premiere Elements, the basic one) would be similar to Movie Maker & Vegas.

While it is possible to edit footage in AEFX (clumsily), it's not what it's designed for.
 
To clarify, Movie Maker, Vegas, Adobe Premiere, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro etc are all editing software, though I'd hardly say they are similar other than the fact that you would use one of them to edit. Probably the most similar would be Premiere to FCP, or at least until FCP came out with X...

After Effects is compositing software, and not designed for editing, and I would suggest against using it to edit. You'd use After Effects to composite your shots and apply vfx either after you've edited, or alongside your editing, but both software would co-exist, rather than using one or the other.
 
Actually Vegas is like Premiere and After Effects combined. However. for a long film Vegas can overload on double duty and freeze and crash.

I'm using Vegas to do what After Effects can do and loading the rendered effects into Adobe Premiere with great success.
 
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I've just read Stu Maschwitz book about rebel filmmaking and it just amazes me how people would go with FCP and AE and pay for something to make a quality bridge between both. Why wouldn't just use the damn Premiere ?
 
I've just read Stu Maschwitz book about rebel filmmaking and it just amazes me how people would go with FCP and AE and pay for something to make a quality bridge between both. Why wouldn't just use the damn Premiere ?

Premiere was never considered to really be a viable option until FCPX came along, and then it was only thrust to the forefront out of necessity - Avid is still super expensive for the average user.

Premiere copied a hell of a lot of FCP features (though FCP also copied Premiere). Premiere also wasn't available on Mac initially.

Whole lot of reasons, really. I jumped from FCP to Avid and haven't looked back. I had a play around with Premiere before Apple brought out FCPX and really didn't like it at all. I still use AE for any compositing etc. I need.

Honestly, up until not all that long ago, Premiere was lumped in the same category as Vegas - more Prosumer than anything (there was the odd outlier of features that would be edited on it, but very few).

Only a few years ago, you would've struggled to find a post house using Premiere. Not all that long ago, you probably could've survived only knowing FCP and not Avid, but I'd say now you won't survive as an editor only knowing Premiere and not Avid, at least not in terms of working for a post house.

My 2c
 
The learning curve is much steeper on Premiere. I'm still figuring out Premiere where vegas was pretty easy to pick up, but it's more powerful for sure. My real editor switched to Premiere because of all the DSLR footage. He didn't want to have to transcode for FCP.
 
Actually Vegas is like Premiere and After Effects combined. However. for a long film Vegas can overload on double duty and freeze and crash.

I'm using Vegas to do what After Effects can do and loading the rendered effects into Adobe Premiere with great success.

Uhh, no.

I like Vegas. I think that since the OP already has Vegas, he/she should stick with it. It will be a long time until they outgrow it.

But it is not even slightly similar to After Effects.
 
Hmmmmm, that Lightworks looks interesting, IndieBudget. Thanks for the heads-up. How does it compare to Premiere and Vegas apart from the huge price difference? I mean, it sounds too good to be true.

?
 
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Yeah, you have Vegas stick with it. The addition of AE for effects and compositing would be good too.

And no, Vegas can't do 1/100 of the compositing After Effects can. It's an NLE, and an ok one, but not a compositor.
 
Lots of good info on this thread to go through. Again, thanks everyone for the input :). However, one last question on the matter... How does a program like HitFilm standard stack up as a compositer? One of my friends back home just decided to get it to try and help with this matter, but I never heard of it up until now.
 
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