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Vegas for Final Cut Pro Users

by Jeremy Hanke & Edward Troxel

This past month, I found myself involved in a project that required an all PC workflow. Due to a number of considerations, we chose to go with Sony's Vegas 6 as our primary editing software for this project. As this was the first large project that a couple of the editors had attempted with Vegas, I found that there ended up being a lot of explaining of Vegas quirks to editors that were far more familiar with Final Cut Pro.

As we ran into this issue a number of times, I decided to search the internet to see if there were any articles written on Vegas for Final Cut Pro users and found absolutely nothing. I found articles on Final Cut Pro for Avid users and Premiere Pro for Final Cut users (showing that cross-platforms are no barrier to articles!), but no conversion for Vegas for Final Cut users. As I thought about it afterwards, I realized that this made a certain amount of sense. To convert Final Cut Pro to the understanding of Avid users, it's like converting a Southern Drawl to West-Coast English--you're speaking the same language, you're just using a few different words and concepts. It's the same with Premiere Pro for Final Cut users, as Premiere Pro has grown to mirror Final Cut Pro in recent years. (This too makes sense, as both Premiere and Final Cut were originally created by the same people, although they are now run by completely different teams.)

However, converting Vegas for Final Cut Pro users is like converting English to French--virtually everything is different except for the words English stole straight from French. This is due to the fact that, unlike Final Cut Pro or Avid Xpress which have always been video editing programs, Vegas started out as a multi-track audio editing program created by Sonic Foundry. It added on the video element as more of an expansion and then grew into a fully capable video editing program, which was later purchased by Sony. In the end, you have a powerful video editing program that still thinks it's an audio program, which is not bad--it's just different.

As such, once you learn to understand the differences, you can appreciate the strengths Vegas offers, as opposed to simply suffering a mental infarction due to those differences. Since there was no article like this that I could find, I decided to write one on the subject. While I am an old school FCP user, I am still pretty new to Vegas, so I teamed up with Vegas scripting guru, Edward Troxel, to complete this article. (If you want to get some really cool ideas for Vegas and read his free newsletter on getting the most out of this software, you can go to http://www.jetdv.com)

While this article will not cover every term in Vegas and convert it to FCP understanding, it will convert some of the most common questions and terms. To go back to the French analogy, this is like a 'phrase' book that converts common and useful phrases into French so that you can get around, find good restaurants, and locate a bathroom when necessary!

Clips vs. Events
After the initial shock most FCP users feel at seeing an interface that allows audio and video to intermingle in the same area of the timeline, flips the docking setup they're used to upside down, and doesn't have a clip view-screen next to the timeline viewer, most users wonder what the 'Events' are that are referenced all over the program. Well, quite simply, 'Events' are anything that's on the timeline-video clips, audio clips, special effect overlays, still images, or text. If it's on the timeline, it's an event.

Blades vs. Splits
The next thing that tends to confuses FCP users in Vegas is the lack of any sort of razor blade for cutting segments out of clips. If you try to press the 'B' key like you're used to in FCP, rather than a razor blade appearing, you'll see that an audio bus track called the 'Master Track' appears on your timeline. (Again, the evolution from an audio program is why Vegas considers the audio bus to be the Master Track.) Instead, the way to split tracks is to place your playhead where you want a cut to be placed and press the 'S' key to 'Split' the clip. If you have a clip selected, then this will split only that clip. (Much like pressing 'B' once to create a single razor blade in Final Cut Pro.) If you have nothing selected on the timeline, then the playhead will cut through every track it is currently intersecting. (Much like pressing 'B' twice to create double razor blades in Final Cut Pro.)

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