Workflow, Vegas - After Effects

[Solafighter]

Hello,

for 7 years now, i use my good old Sony Vegas(currently working with SP11). For now, i never had any problems in any kind of editing. But now, i want to make the next step by using After Effects. I have read, that many people use the workflow with Sony Vegas and After Effects. Im using After Effects for some experiment projects, but uptill now, i could never figure out the most optimal workflow.

Obviously, i would use Sony Vegas for cutting, putting the events in order and position, doing some transitions, sound editing and so on. And then, im not sure.

What im thinking of, but never tried:
Put together the whole video with Vegas without any color corrections and effects. Then render the whole project as an uncompressed file and put it into After Effects. In After Effects, again cuting the video in parts(so the reverse step in Vegas) to have individual effects for each event(Difficult to apply different effects for different clips, if the whole vid is only one event). When done all the effects and and else, rendering this again as an uncompressed file and puting it back into Vegas with the perfect timing for the music and sounds. Done.
Problems i see: If there is a smooth transition(for example disolve or such), i cant just cut that into 2 parts. Effect editing would be impossible.


So basicly, what im asking, how do you guys do it? To get some impressions and ideas.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Well, ideally you would use Premiere with AE since they are made to go together (you can import your project directly into AE). Though if you are more comfortable with the Vegas interface, then what you just described sounds about right (using an intermediate lossless render from Vegas should be pretty reliable.)

If you really need your layers for effects, just render your layers individually from Vegas/AE.
And for crossfades, yeah... you'd have to render the two clips separately I guess.
(Though, I find it helps if you do crossfades as two separate layers, stacked, where one fades out or the other fades in, then when you want to export, remove the fades, and render the layers separately)
It might be a bit annoying, but it should work.

A tool that may help is Debugmode Frameserver, which allows you to skip the intermediate, and frameserve your whole timeline to a fake/dummy .avi file, which you can then import into AE. But you don't get any layers, and it's a bit of a hack imo; it only saves you the time and space normally used on a real render. For a short AMV, that's usually not much. But for a full-length movie, it can be a lifesaver. So it's something to consider.

Now if you can get it to work, try exporting as Avid Legacy AAF format from Vegas, and import that into AE.
It's probably your best option, since I think it keeps the layers/clips.
Though the one time I tried it, it didn't work, and I was too lazy to figure out why lol
http://bluefx.net/after-effects-templat ... r-effects/

Good luck

[Solafighter]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.

Thanks for these tips, real gave me some expressions and ideas how to handle the workflow. I'm currently at my mobile so I will take a look into that tutorial vid once I'm home.

[Solafighter]

Phantasmagoriat, you said, that the AFF export and import into AF didnt work. I figured out, that you can only export AFF files from Vegas, if you have the 32bit version. I have VP11, 64 bit, so i will do it different.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Yeah, I was pretty sure it had something to do with my versions of Vegas/AE; but at the time, I was doing something simple enough to use lossless intermediates instead

Crazy thought... but maybe you can also install 32-bit VP, and import your project files from 64-bit VP... then export as AFF... ?
IDK if anyone has tried this (on the same computer or on separate ones), but it might work in a roundabout way

[SuijinReflx]

Aside from what phantasawesomeguy said you could edit the whole amv in sony vegas without any effect (purely trimming cutting and timing) then render it as uncompressed. Next just bring that into after effects and edit effects from there such as colour correction. If you need to switch effects and certain effects wont go away then use the adjustment layer instead of applying the effect directly to the video track. Now i would recommend using premiere and After Effects together since that is what most editors do but i dont have premiere only after effects and vegas so i wouldnt know exactly which combination is better.

[Solafighter]

I see. Thanks for the answers till now.

To get myself a feeling- How many of you guys are using the Adobe Premiere + After Effects combination and how many the Sony Vegeas + After Effects combination?

[MetamorphosisStudios]

As a motion graphic designer and a 3D artist I just don't get why so many people use Vegas with AE >.>

[SuijinReflx]

Well i use Vegas because it was a gift and AE together because im a student so i can only afford AE while school gave me PS Cs4 for free I havent tried Premiere yet but im saving up and soon ill try out premiere to see if its good enough for its price. So that sums up the cost issues and another problem for me is that I've been using Vegas for sometime and i dont know if Premiere will be similar to it. I do like the AE interface though if thats what premiere offers.

[MiyaDV]

As a motion graphic designer and a 3D artist I just don't get why so many people use Vegas with AE >.>

Used Vegas since version 4.0, Just can't change I still love it and can pretty much edit anything so fast it's ridiculous lol. I've tried AE 6.5 or w/e when it had horses logo and hated it, I recently tried the new CS5 version and it's gotten alot better (Wanted to see how much faster mercury engine was compared to Vegas) I still couldn't get the hang of it, eventhough I pretty much know all the ins and out of AE, the interface was familiar but still not use to it for editing lol

And yeah I tried to find other workflows frameserving/proxying into AE never worked lol so rendering the clips lossless is what I usually do

I usually go like this: Editing video in Vegas - Hey, this scene would look good like this (region sellect it, render it, add effects in AE, render back out, replace in vegas) lol it sounds like alot of work but it's really not. And I usually always bring the final file into AE for slight color correction.