VEGAS Pro and Premiere Pro Reviewed Price, Features, Ease of Use Side-By-Side Comparison

What you’ll learn:

• Comparison table - VEGAS Pro and Premiere Pro
• Features in-depth - VEGAS Pro and Premiere Pro
• Conclusion - Which software is right for you?
• Premiere Pro alternative

A flat purchase price will be a lot more than a monthly fee at first, but monthly fees may add up to the purchase price. (Annual subscription fees may work out to a lower price than monthly payments.) Also, with a flat fee, the software is yours to keep and you don’t lose it as you would if you stop your subscription. But subscriptions also allow you to access software you other otherwise might not be able to afford, or allow you to use software temporarily for a project.

A subscription plan also often means that you get an update to new versions and features for no extra charge, whereas you’ll usually pay extra if you upgrade your perpetual license to the next version.

VEGAS Pro can be yours forever for a one-time price of $399.00, or it’s available as VEGAS Pro 365 for a monthly subscription fee of $34.99 for a month-to-month subscription or $19.99 a month billed annually. The Premiere Pro price is by subscription only at a monthly fee of $31.49 for a month-to-month subscription and $20.99 with an annual commitment.

The way you work in any app.  Does the workflow help with productivity, or does it hinder you by making things more difficult or slower than it should be?

VEGAS Pro is designed to be intuitive, to work the way the user wants to work rather than locking the user into a way of working. VEGAS Pro gives you many different ways to accomplish most tasks, so whatever you prefer, you can do it. 

Premiere Pro dates back to the oldest days of computer editing, so it was initially designed to mimic how video editors worked on analog equipment.  It made sense at the time, because editors wanted and needed the workflow they were used to when they made the transition to digital editing. These days, some of the built-in functions of that style can affect workflow efficiency and learning curve.

A pro editor needs a flexible and quick timeline, that will take any file format, can be arranged however the editor wants, will play back video smoothly without many dropped frames, and won’t bog down the editor with difficult-to-use tools or unnecessary steps.

Designed for speed and flexibility, the VEGAS Pro timeline enables the editor to work the way they want. The editor can arrange and rearrange tracks at will – video and audio tracks are not in separate sections – and mix and match file formats on the same tracks. Simple touches like automatic crossfades on overlapping video make defining transitions almost instant, instead of having to pull the “handles” common in other editing apps – though trim handles are also available if you prefer that style of editing. While the Premiere Pro timeline is drag-and-drop, its design is most efficient when using the two-point and three-point editing common to the earliest computer editing apps. It’s a style of editing which promotes efficient thinking and planning. Premiere separates video and audio tracks, which influences the effectiveness when editing process of a complex project. Transitions in Premiere Pro are managed the traditional way, with handles.

Editing apps leverage the power of your computer’s graphics card to take care of some of the video processing, like effects rendering, freeing up the CPU to perform other tasks, resulting in a faster, smoother editing experience.

VEGAS Pro leverages Intel, AMD, and Nvidia graphics cards to decode AVC and HEVC video for real-time playback, as well as accelerate numerous GPU-enabled effects, so you get smoother playback even in complex projects without having to render. VEGAS Pro offers automatic GPU configuration and a GPU driver update utility for even easier GPU acceleration support. Premiere Pro employs hardware acceleration for effects rendering. Hardware decoding for h.264 and HEVC is available only with an Intel® CPU with Intel® Quick Sync Support.

One of the first steps in the editing process involves figuring out a rough cut. Storyboards make this a lot easier by letting the editor select, arrange, and experiment with the order of clips in the project’s media pool just like arranging photos on a desk.  It’s a quick and intuitive way to make an initial rough cut before ever going to the timeline.

Useful Tips: Storyboard Creation – Craft Your Vision Like the Pros

The storyboards in VEGAS Pro are quick and easy and allow for a playback preview of a sequence right from the media pool without having to go to the timeline. 

The main project storyboard also appears and updates immediately on the timeline, so you don’t have to drag the storyboard sequence onto the timeline. VEGAS Pro also updates the timeline every time you change the storyboard, and uniquely, updates the storyboard every time you change the timeline, or any time you choose to do so manually. Storyboards in Premiere Pro work much the same way, but do not let you preview the sequence from the media pool, and don’t update on the timeline automatically; you must drag every storyboard sequence to the timeline manually.

Effective and creative use of text and titles can take a video to new heights. Credit your hard-working cast and crew. Give your audience additional information. Do it with style. VEGAS Pro features a professional title generator with a built-in library of slick, professional presets you can customize to fit your project’s needs. Premiere Pro also includes a powerful, flexible title generator suitable for professional needs.

When working with previously-rendered video files, VEGAS Pro leverages AI technology to automatically detect when scenes change, and makes splits or subclips or inserts keyframes in the video file at the scene changes, saving you a lot of time you’d otherwise use scrubbing and editing. 

Premiere Pro also offers automatic scene detection.

If you need a professional voice to narrate your video or provide spoken information, but don’t have time to audition talent, that’s where text to speech technology comes in. The easy-to-use Text to Speech tool in VEGAS Pro 365 can transform written text into dynamic speech, complete with personalities, accents, and proper moods. 

You can choose between dozens of different voices, accents, languages, and narration styles for a seamless spoken presentation. The Text to Speech tool can even translate text into different languages. Premiere Pro doesn’t offer text to speech.

Searching for that perfect stock clip to take your video project to the next level? VEGAS Pro 365 makes a vast library of stock, royalty-free HD and 4K video available to you through VEGAS Hub, with unlimited monthly downloads.

Premiere Pro provides direct access to the huge content library of Adobe Stock, but it requires a separate Adobe Stock subscription.

High-resolution video formats like 4K and UHD come with large files sizes and require a lot of storage. Modern apps offer cloud storage options so you can upload your footage to online storage instead of needing a shelf full of external storage devices — as well as making collaboration with other editors easy!

VEGAS Pro utilizes VEGAS Hub, a cloud storage solution you can access from the VEGAS Hub window or from a mobile app. Premiere Pro also offers cloud storage in the Adobe Creative Cloud with access through windows in Premiere Pro.

A great editing app gives you an array of tools to control your color and puts all of your most important tools all in one place, making color correction and color grading the most efficient and effective it can be.

VEGAS Pro offers the improved unified Color Grading panel, which gives you curves, contrast, exposure, color sliders, color wheels, the ability to import LUTs, and many other tools right at your fingertips in a single dockable panel for even more interface customization capability.

When used with the enhanced adjustable Vectorscope Skin Tone line, a logarithmic exposure control which emulates camera exposure, and the two-way auto-contrast tool, the Color Grading panel in VEGAS Pro offers an incredibly powerful color correction and color grading workflow. Premiere Pro offers the Lumetri Color panel, a powerful set of tools for grading that boasts even more features than the VEGAS Pro Color Grading panel.

Useful Tips: A Guide to Color Grading Your Video With the Powerful Unified Color Workflow

These days, the top-line footage leverages High Dynamic Range (HDR). You want an editor which supports HDR to keep you on the cutting edge of the video world.

VEGAS Pro supports HDR10 and HLG HDR formats and the Rec. 2100 color space, and lets you check your accuracy with HDR-ready video scopes. Premiere Pro supports HDR10 in the Rec. 2020 color space, HLG in Rec. 2100, and uses HDR-ready scopes.

Color management is a system which is designed to help your color workflow from beginning to end.  It includes encoding specs, screen specs, metadata, and other definitions vital to a consistent color workflow.

VEGAS Pro utilizes the ACES 1.2 environment, which is the Academy Color Encoding Systems standard developed by the MPAA, which was designed to be the industry standard. Premiere Pro uses Display Color Management, a non-ACES environment.

Look-Up Tables (LUTs) assist in color work by applying specific color characteristics to footage. Color correction and color grading looks can be stored as LUTs and shared between users of cameras, monitors, editing apps, and other software, for consistent color looks, often necessary with LOG or other video formats.

VEGAS Pro supports import and export of LUTs in .cube format, so you can import and share color looks with industry-standard equipment and software. VEGAS Pro comes with a built-in set of Camera LUTs for correct baseline images for footage from specific cameras. VEGAS Pro also includes a built-in set of Look LUTs to emulate popular movie looks. Premiere Pro also supports import and export of LUTs in .cube format.

The ability to track objects in a moving image opens up a world of possibility, from adding correction or effects to a single object in an image, to pinning other objects to points in video and having them move along with the video without manual keyframes or adjustments.

VEGAS Pro offers Planar Motion Tracking, which automatically adjusts the shape of masks as objects in the image change shape, such as the changing perspective of a building as the camera moves past it. 

It also lets you pin to objects in video even when perspective changes, so you can place a poster on a wall of that building and the poster will change perspective to match the changing perspective of the wall. Premiere Pro lets you apply effects masks which follow objects in your video, but it doesn’t let you pin objects automatically, and does not account for perspective changes.

Useful Tips: Video Stabilization and Motion-Tracking Workflows to Boost Your Videos

Professional editing apps offer powerful video stabilization tools, so you can often fix shaky footage and recover smooth images. Wobbly video doesn’t have to ruin your project.
VEGAS Pro offers advanced professional video stabilization, letting you rescue footage you thought you couldn’t use. Premiere Pro also leverages professional video stabilization.

Slow motion is a bedrock effect for adding drama, tension, or excitement to a scene. Some of the best slo-mo effects allow the ramping of speed down and up for spectacular temporal transitions.

VEGAS Pro offers velocity envelopes for ramping speed up and down, and also Optical Flow Slow Motion, ideal for truly cinematic slow motion. The frame rate of cinema, usually 24 fps, doesn’t work well when slowed down, because there aren’t enough frames per second for optimal smoothness. Optical Flow Slow motion analyzes the footage and creates the frames needed for smoothness. Premiere Pro gives you the ability to ramp footage up and down, but doesn’t employ frame interpolation for slower frame rates.

Useful Tips: Video Effects Every Editor Should Know: Add Essential Effects to Your Videos

Killer video composites often require mapping an image onto another to make them appear as one. For example, you might want to add a custom moving ticker to a building marquee. A mesh warp tool lets you do just that.

With the Mesh Warp Tool in VEGAS Pro, you can not only map objects, you can correct all kinds of different distortions in your video – or create distortions for fantastical effects.  With Premiere Pro, you’ll have to go to outside software to achieve the same effects.

Useful Tips: Video Transitions: The Essentials and When to Use Them

One of the most time-honored VFX techniques around, chromakey lets you remove a solid-colored background and replace it with whatever you want, letting you put your actors on other planets or devise epic space battles, or combine with CGI to create a virtual set.

VEGAS Pro includes the BORIS FX Primatte Studio plugin, an extremely powerful set of chromakey tools used in such blockbuster films as Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. Get the perfect, polished key with Primatte Studio. It automatically analyzes green or blue screen footage and adjusts lighting to correct unevenly lit screens. Primatte Studio employs powerful edge correcting, light wrapping, and manual transparency tuning for seamless insertion of your subjects into the backgrounds of your choice. It also integrates the award-winning Mocha masking and planar tracking system. Premiere Pro comes equipped with Ultra Key, another advanced chromakey tool. Premiere Pro comes equipped with Ultra Key, an advanced chromakey tool.

Useful Tips: The Ultimate Guide to Chroma Key and Green Screen

When adding visual effects, sometimes you want the same effects to apply to the contents of multiple video tracks so that all of your image layers take on the same look.

VEGAS Pro implements Adjustment Tracks, so you can apply a chain of effects to an Adjustment Track and the contents of tracks underneath it take on those effects. Premiere Pro offers similar functionality with Adjustment Layers.

Cutting edge software takes advantage of advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). For improved effects and even asset management, the integration of AI means a faster, more powerful, smoother workflow.

VEGAS Pro 18 integrates the new Deep Learning modules to enhance its powerful new visual effects.  Use Colorization to bring new life to black and white, archival, or other monochrome footage, and apply filters in styles like Picasso or Van Gogh with the new Style Transfer FX. Premiere Pro leverages AI for its Auto Reframe and color matching effects.

A full Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) gives you everything you need for producing polished, professional sound. Most video editing apps have basic audio editing tools, but for full-featured audio editing, they require you to work in a separate app.

VEGAS Pro has all the tools of a full DAW.  Record and automate audio in a multitrack environment with input buses, professional metering, punch-in recording, and more. Premiere Pro offers multitrack audio tools and metering, but sends you elsewhere for the full DAW environment.

You need a full set of effects tools for a robust sound track.

Both VEGAS Pro and Premiere Pro give you a wide variety of audio effects. From equalizers to compressors to noise gates and more, a solid collection of audio effects will let you sweeten and perfect your sound.

Useful Tips: Adding Audio Effects to Your Video for Professional-Level Sound Editing

Assign audio tracks to buses and then adjust them all at once by applying effects or change the volume.

VEGAS Pro gives you up to 32 auxiliary audio buses, input buses, and effects buses.

Assign tracks in any combination and even assign buses inside other buses.

Premiere Pro lets you assign tracks to submixes, but does not offer true buses.

VEGAS Pro includes SOUND FORGE Audio Studio, an extremely powerful, feature packed audio editing program, integrated with the VEGAS Pro timeline.  You will not find a more powerful toolset for audio editing than in VEGAS PRO combined with SOUND FORGE Audio Studio. Premiere Pro integrates with Adobe Audition within the Adobe CC suite but does not include it when used as a single app.

Delivery of video these days can be in a number of different formats. Some of the most common are AVCHD, MP4, H.264, HEVC and Apple ProRes. A robust editing app gives you the choices you need to deliver the formats clients and platforms require.

Both VEGAS Pro and Premiere Pro offer export to a wide variety of formats, including Apple ProRes with customizable templates for any use. Premiere Pro also offers exports to Apple ProRes and Avid DNXHD.

Useful Tips: Best Video Formats: Choosing What's Best for You

Letting the computer do the work helps tremendously with productivity. Batch rendering allows you to export multiple files without having to manually start each one.

VEGAS Pro and Premiere Pro both offer batch rendering. Just set up the batch render and walk away.

Export and rendering take time, especially from complex projects. If you can leverage your graphics card to help carry some of the load, so much the better.

VEGAS Pro offers GPU acceleration for encoding into AVC and HEVC formats, cutting render times up to half – including GPU acceleration for HDR presets.

Premiere Pro leverages the graphics card to render effects. Hardware video encoding is available for h.264 and HEVC only when using an Intel® CPU with Intel® Quick Sync Support.

Are you looking to broadcast multi-camera events or live tours? Do you have ambitions to be a live vlogger or social influencer and want a little more dazzle? VEGAS Pro has you covered with VEGAS Stream. Move beyond a single webcam and take advantage of multiple cameras, dynamic graphics, and video play-ins. Switch with ease between cameras and remote presenters. Stream your presentation straight to popular conferencing services and apps, and even edit your live event and upload it to your favorite social media and other sites. Premiere Pro doesn’t offer a live streaming option.

Today’s video delivery world involves streaming video on popular sites like YouTube and Vimeo and on social media like Facebook. Each platform has specific format and upload requirements.

Instead of forcing you to manually export to platform requirements and then manually upload the file, both VEGAS Pro and Premiere Pro make it much easier to cut through all the red tape, exporting your project straight from the timeline to the correct format for each platform, and then automatically uploading the video to your account.