Sony Vegas and AE Workflow?

Hey all,

Up until now, I've been using premiere pro and after effects to edit my films. But now I want to switch from premiere pro to sony vegas 11, but I will still be using after effects for visual effects and such.

With premiere pro, whenever there was a clip that needed vfx in after effects I'd right click on it and select "Link with after effects", and it would open that clip in after effects so I could edit it how i like. Is there an option or way to do this in vegas? Or am I going to have to just open the raw files in AE, edit them, render them out, and then put them in vegas?

Thanks
 
I never went far with AE, but I am a Vegas user. I had to render out an uncompressed file and open it in AE. There was no integration between the two that I could figure.
If you hadn't already wired AE, I'd say go with Vegas and Boris, it works within Vegas though it doesn't have nearly the power of AE, it nonetheless greatly enhances the power of Vegas -- which is already one of the most powerful standalones. But sounds like you already got AE down so...
 
I've never used Sony Vegas before. Are there things it does that Premiere Pro can't do (or can't do well)?

Generally people will say Premiere is great because it integrates so well with other Adobe stuff like AE and Photoshop. Vegas is popular for it's audio strengths (it started as an audio app actually) and its one stop shop status. Hard to go wrong these days with anything you pick. It's all so powerful and stable.
 
This sort of came up in an earlier thread. Wheatgrinder and Dreadylocks might have the answer you're looking for.

Sony Vegas to After Effects Thread

Wheat posted this tutorial which might be what you're looking for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXKdU1p_bkE&feature=player_embedded

USNfilms, like escher and brianluce mentioned and were discussing above, it would be great to hear why you're making the switch from Adobe to Sony.
 
I'm a Vegas fanboy, and there's no comparison Escher. Seriously. The Boris plug ins greatly enhance Vegas but still leave you way short of the power of AE.

Vegas is fast and easy though -- like a good woman.
 
Vegas is an NLE, After Effects is a compositor. Unless vegas stops being an NLE and starts being a compositor it'll bever be near as good for VFX.

Would not want to cut anything longer than 60 seconds in After Effects though haha, even that is pushing it.

I'm too a bit confused as to why you'd drop premiere for vegas? No offense to vegas fans, it is a good program, but Premiere is a lot more powerful in most every way, plus if you're using AE you can import and export and cut and paste between them without rendering massive uncompressed files. The big reason to go Vegas over Premiere is if you're already very experienced in Vegas.

All the same, to answer your question about workflow, it's similar to premiere and AE. Cut the project together, export it either clip by clip or as an entire timeline to a video file and import that to AE, do you're effects, export back uncompressed into vegas and put the final audio touches and what not then export to your final product. Where it's slower than premiere here is that instead of exporting video files, you can import sequences into AE and then import compositions into Premiere, saving a lot of rendering and double rendering just doing one render at the end. If you ant to make a change in your effects once it's back in vegas, you have to render the whole clip again into a new video file, instead of realtime making the change in ae and seeing it change in premiere.

If you're going to DVD, you can go even farther in Encore. Import the Premiere sequence into Encore, make a change in AE and see it real time go into Encore as well. Pretty freakin cool.
 
I use Vegas and Premiere, and I prefer the speed of Vegas for smaller jobs (and the audio tools). Vegas does have some effects, but it just isnt comparable to AE. The effects are pretty common and IMO cheesy. If youre editing wedding videos and need a lens flare its probably fine, but for production stuff its just lacking... but after all, it is an editor.

Some will argue that Vegas can do anything AE does, and even if it were true the time it would take to achieve the same results so outweighs the benefit of an all-in-one package that its kind of pointless.

My workflow has always been to do my edit then render out the clips that need effects uncompressed (or .png sequence depending on the resolution) if I need to bring a completed clip back into the editor, or some lossless codec to use as my plate in AE if I just need to bring the effects footage (as a layer in the NLE). My clients send me files this way so it just works for me.
I'll usually add a few seconds at the beginning and end of the clips just to have some room if I need to move it a few frames in the editor.

In Premiere, I just send it to AE.....
Curious as to why you want to move to Vegas if you know Premiere?
 
I've gotta say too, the youtube tutorials for using Vegas composting for greenscreen, visual effects, and color correction are really bad. They are the pits.

I've learned a lot by trial and error on my own working on my current production. My rough effects look better than the effects shown in the tutorials.

I'm hoping to one day work with another filmmaker to film my techniques and how-tos to do special effects with Vegas.
 
I use Vegas and Premiere, and I prefer the speed of Vegas for smaller jobs (and the audio tools). Vegas does have some effects, but it just isnt comparable to AE. The effects are pretty common and IMO cheesy. If youre editing wedding videos and need a lens flare its probably fine, but for production stuff its just lacking... but after all, it is an editor.

Give the Boris plugins a shot, it will dramatically improve the power of Vegas -- beginning with a much better keyer.
 
This sort of came up in an earlier thread. Wheatgrinder and Dreadylocks might have the answer you're looking for.

Sony Vegas to After Effects Thread

Wheat posted this tutorial which might be what you're looking for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXKdU1p_bkE&feature=player_embedded

USNfilms, like escher and brianluce mentioned and were discussing above, it would be great to hear why you're making the switch from Adobe to Sony.

Awesome, this is what I've been looking for, thanks for the share.

For everyone asking why I'm switching from premiere to sony vegas, it's because of render formats. It sounds strange, i know, but I don't like premiere's render formats. I publish my films on YouTube, and YouTube has a strange acceptance for file formats.

For example, If I render out a 3gb video file from premiere pro in the h.264 codec and upload it to youtube it won't look that good when watched at 360p (which most people watch videos at). Vegas, on the other hand, has a render option sony avc and the file comes out with a .m2ts extension. I've discovered that these files are much smaller than the ones from premiere and they look a lot better on youtube at 360p. Since premiere can't render files out in sony avc with a .m2ts extension, i'm switching to vegas for the final render.
 
For example, If I render out a 3gb video file from premiere pro in the h.264 codec and upload it to youtube it won't look that good when watched at 360p (which most people watch videos at). Vegas, on the other hand, has a render option sony avc and the file comes out with a .m2ts extension. I've discovered that these files are much smaller than the ones from premiere and they look a lot better on youtube at 360p. Since premiere can't render files out in sony avc with a .m2ts extension, i'm switching to vegas for the final render.

I haven't done any exporting from Premiere yet, but this sounds like maybe it's an h264 settings issue? Were you using a built-in preset or did you make your own set of h264 settings?

There's also the possibility that Premiere's h264 encoder sucks. :) Video formats only describe the process of decompressing and there are many ways that an encoder can get the original video into the specified format. This is why some encoders are better than others.
 
I haven't done any exporting from Premiere yet, but this sounds like maybe it's an h264 settings issue? Were you using a built-in preset or did you make your own set of h264 settings?

There's also the possibility that Premiere's h264 encoder sucks. :) Video formats only describe the process of decompressing and there are many ways that an encoder can get the original video into the specified format. This is why some encoders are better than others.

I used a h.264 preset, but then I used that preset to create my own custom preset to get the best quality.
 
Back
Top