Womble vs. Vegas

Okay, I am ready to try my hand at fan editing and am trying to determine the correct software I need.

I must admit, even after reading ADM's guide, I am unclear on the specific functions of both programs....

Could someone clarify for me the differences between WOMBLE and SONY VEGAS?


Do I need BOTH software for an edit? Or will just one suffice? Is one better than the other?

signed,
Bob the Luddite.

hey bob.... well, it all depends on what you want to do.... both Vegas and Womble are the same kind of thing... the are both video editing programs.... you could do your whole edit in either one..... with womble, you simply rip the info right off the disc and you can edit it as is... that's what' it made for.... it can just directly edit the rips, or the vobs or whatever... that makes things a little easier.... which is nice.... but womble isn't a hugely powerful editor, and you will have far fewer editing options (including not being able to do a 5.1 mix) but that all might be offset by how easy it is to get things started....

vegas on the other hand is a far more powerful editor, many more editing options, and the ability to do 5.1 mixes.... BUT you have to use other programs to change the format of the video so that vegas can edit it.... vegas is a little picky about editing MPEG's in general.... and you generally have to transfer things to a high quality avi for best editing results... OR... some people actually frameserve TO vegas in order to get around having to switch formats....

AND, some people will do a mixture of the two... they will use womble to edit the video, and they will use vegas to make their 5.1 mix....

anyway, all that to say that they are both basically the same kind of program... but each has their good points and bad points.... womble is less powerful, but far easier to start editing..... vegas is far more powerful, but can be a real pain to get to the point of starting edit.... i personally use vegas, but that's also because i am an indie filmmaker, and already had vegas and was familiar with it.... but there are plenty who prefer womble......

Thanks for the quick reply.

When looking up Womble on the net, I see there are two different versions...

WOMBLE MPEG VIDEO WIZARD

and

WOMBLE MPEG VIDEO WIZARD DVD

I would assume I need the DVD version????

I would suggest starting with womble. You can edit very easily, and if all your sources are 5.1, you don't really need vegas (unless you have some specific, complicated audio changes you want to do). It's a good way to get into the groove of editing.

well, there is a simpler version of vegas that is much much cheaper.... if price is the main issue....
is called Vegas Movie Studio (and there's also a platinum edition)... from what i can tell it's pretty much
the same as vegas without some of the more advanced stuff.... it includes a less advanced version of
DVD architect, and costs about $75.... the platinum version costs about $115..... both obviously a pretty
huge step down from Vegas Pro's $550 price tag

here's the page on the vegas family....
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp

and a comparison between them all....
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudio/compare


overall i might suggest womble... easier to get started... the only reason to go with the Vegas Movie Studio solution is
to learn the ropes of it before moving up to vegas later....

I've been using Womble from the get-go and I've had very few problems with it. The biggest issue I've had is it'll add or drop a frame or two during rendering, which can cause a bit of annoyance for sure, but over all it's a simple tool for creating edit. You can still do some pretty impressive stuff with it, even though it's cheap. If you're still not sure, see if Vegas and Womble have free trials. Experiment with those, then decide which one you like better.

Womble is a great way to get started if you don't have any big visual effects you want to pull off. It would be perfect for an edit that just involves straight cuts. (I.E. no video fades, audio transitions that require manipulation, After Effects style rotoscoping, or anything vaguely fancy - all just purely story driven straight cutting from scene to scene)

If you have to encode any video segments larger than a transition or two, it would probably be best to get any of the "real" video editors. Womble is great for the basics when you don't want to re-encode stuff. Complex stuff requires more capabilities and better encoding algorithms.

For reference, I haven't needed to move past Womble yet, but I've only just barely skimmed by on Womble for two editing jobs. (one of which is eventually getting distributed...)

ADigitalMan uses Womble though, so he's probably figured out some extra tricky ways to get it to do what he wants.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their very helpful advice.

I love this forum, everyone is so supportive.


BUT... after much consideration, I decided to say goodbye to PCs. Yesterday, I purchased an iMAC. I am now saving up for FINAL CUT PRO SUITE, but in the meantime I figure I will play around with iMovie.

Maybe someone post a Basic Fan Editing Guide for us few Mac users???

Hey a Mac fanedit guide would be a great step forward!

Don't be surprised if you're the guy to write it. :lol:

Actually, I don't know why there isn't one already. There are folks editing on Macs.

[un-called-for, and downright untrue PC-biased joke]


But, to continue the thread, for the benefit of [another totally unwarranted biased joke]

Vegas has video compositing, complex cropping, and loads of other stuff (I don't have it). Dunno which versions do what. You can do multitrack audio (and video, I think). And you can encode your super-fancy sound edits to ac3, with an extra plugin you pay for.

You can force Vegas to edit mpeg. But then you have to recompress the result back to mpeg. That gives you a quality loss. (No problem if you're working on avi's - like stuff captured, to huffyuv, from tv, vhs, or laserdisc).


Both Wombles give you fast, frame-accurate mpeg editing, without re-encoding. That's unique in Non-Linear Editors (AFAIK). (VideoRedoPlus does, but it's not an NLE). Warning: Womble has a truly horrible mpeg encoder. And I haven't heard of anyone coming up with a frameserving method. If you have to do transitions, or other effects, then put that section into something like Avisynth, encode with a good mpeg encoder, and pop that mpeg back into Womble.


WombleDVD is very preferrable to regular Womble.

With regular Womble, every audio edit gives you a click - so you have to crossfade. But when you crossfade, you have to export to mpeg2 audio, because regular Womble doesn't do ac3 encoding.

WombleDVD adds ac3 encoding, so that problem is solved. And you can mix 2.0 ac3 sources, with 5.1 sources. It'll upconvert 2.0 to 5.1, if you tell it to. It also takes stereo wav's, converts them to ac3 2.0 or 5.1. (I've tested the basic function, and it does ok. But I didn't dig deep. For instance, they might have to be Dolby 2.0 WAVs to get anything on the rear channels, I don't know).

Jaiman Tuckuh said:

With regular Womble, every audio edit gives you a click - so you have to crossfade. But when you crossfade, you have to export to mpeg2 audio, because regular Womble doesn't do ac3 encoding.

WombleDVD adds ac3 encoding, so that problem is solved. And you can mix 2.0 ac3 sources, with 5.1 sources. It'll upconvert 2.0 to 5.1, if you tell it to. It also takes stereo wav's, converts them to ac3 2.0 or 5.1. (I've tested the basic function, and it does ok. But I didn't dig deep. For instance, they might have to be Dolby 2.0 WAVs to get anything on the rear channels, I don't know).

Click to expand...

AHA!!!!11!!!! That's why my edit of Clone Wars TV to remove the commercials had a click at every edit! I gave up on Womble because there weren't any forums nor answer to my email, and I wouldn't buy a product that wasn't supported.

Thank you! Finally I can get closure on that lol.

I've heard tales of 100GB edits-in-process, which is considerably beyond my hd capacity. Do either Womble or Vegas produce these?

Only if you're very very careful. For example, when I created my Hot Fuzz edit, I compressed the video using a MPEG-4 codec, compressed each audio track into FLAC format (deleting the original WAVs when done) and deleted any files I was sure I wasn't using by using Vegas' project cleanup tool. I was editing this on a 10GB hard disk.

Egads... not sure I'd have the know-how to do all that... I might have to ask for help at [strikeout:39mbws8f]some[/strikeout:39mbws8f] several points.

What about Womble? Does it create ginormous (say, 10+ gigs) works-in-progresss?

gaith1 said:

What about Womble? Does it create ginormous (say, 10+ gigs) works-in-progresss?

Click to expand...

No.

Jaiman Tuckuh said:

Both Wombles give you fast, frame-accurate mpeg editing, without re-encoding. That's unique in Non-Linear Editors (AFAIK). (VideoRedoPlus does, but it's not an NLE). Warning: Womble has a truly horrible mpeg encoder. And I haven't heard of anyone coming up with a frameserving method. If you have to do transitions, or other effects, then put that section into something like Avisynth, encode with a good mpeg encoder, and pop that mpeg back into Womble.

Click to expand...

I have frameserved Womble using TMPGenc with wonderful results.

Gah, why does Womble not allow grouping of clips on different tracks? Very annoying. :?