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writing-gifts · 4 years

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we ain’t in kansas anymore ch. 01 (bruno x gn!reader)

chapter 02

Summary: After being dragged into the middle of a fight, there’s no way for you to return back to your norm. You have no choice but to get used to your new environment while dealing with language barriers, homesickness, and trying to tiptoe around the organized crime of Naples. And maybe, just maybe you can find a way back home in the process.

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A/N: There’s going to be a 2nd part for this AU for the 100+ followers milestone but I wanted to write out the outline of the 1st part into an actual chapter first.

I added a good amount to and changed a few things from the outline so if you’ve already seen it I would recommend still reading this.

(btw i put 202X instead of 2020 because I didn’t wanna date the story so specifically, at least not yet)

Dialogue in Italian is “Italicized like this”

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You have no idea what's going on. One second you were opening your bedroom door, and the next, you lost your balance and fell. But the fall was way longer than reasonable.

Now this random stranger has his arm wrapped around you and a knife to your neck. He's yelling in a language you don't understand at a man with a bob cut, standing a couple of feet away. He doesn’t look very bothered by the situation though.

Even though you might not understand what’s being said, you’re pretty sure if he gets any closer you're in trouble. But this has to be a dream.

You begin moving in your captor’s grasp undaunted by the weapon which is enough to distract him. He glances at you, his grip growing tighter as he adds more force to the knife. You stop struggling when you feel the stinging caused from the blade pressing into your skin. But suddenly he yells, the pain becomes much more intense, and then you’re not being held anymore.

Confused, you look down and see a severed arm at your feet and end up falling on your ass in shock. Your fingertips brush against something when you bring them to your sides and you look over to see another arm holding a knife laying next to you.

You yelp, bring your legs close to you and cover your eyes.

While chanting 'wake up' under your breath, you hear someone say something. It makes you flinch but you still peek through your fingers. Seeing a pair of legs so close to you makes you scoot away instinctively and you end up bumping against something. A shiver runs up your back but you force yourself to look up at the man instead of what’s behind you.

He says something else to you, maybe in an attempt to calm you down--it was hard to tell--but, of course, you have no idea what it means.

Still guarded, you reply, "Uhhh, sorry but I don't understand?"

His eyes widen slightly. A look of uncertainty shows on his face just for a moment before he says something else. You tilt your head and just stare at him while he stands there, but then he points to the opening of the alley. Oh.

You consider the hand he holds out to you. You weren't completely sure if you were actually dreaming anymore, so were you really going to follow him? And where would you go by yourself if you decided not to?

The man patiently waits as you mull this over while looking at his hand and then him.

Even though you were still conflicted, you decide to grab his hand and he helps you up. He then pulls out a flip phone--you hadn’t seen one of those in a long while--and makes a call. You dust off yourself while looking over at him.

You're surprised you didn’t notice his white patterned suit until now. What’s with all the zippers?

You touch your neck unconsciously and immediately yank it away from the pain. Your fingertips are covered in blood so you do your best to ignore the pain and wipe the rest of it off your neck, but you just end up smearing it instead. You’re getting ready to wipe at the cut with your clothes instead when a piece of light cloth is held out in front of you by the Zipper Man.

“Oh thanks…” You accept it although you felt a little bad knowing you were about to ruin it. You dab it around your neck trying to feel out the cut without making the pain worse but your neck felt unscathed. Which made no sense since there was so much blood.

You couldn’t be bothered trying to figure out what was happening though, so you finish cleaning up the blood and put the cloth in your pocket. Once the man sees you’re done, he starts walking out of the alleyway and you follow a bit behind him.

"Where are we going?...Wait nevermind." You shake your head. The question slipped out before you remembered he wouldn't understand.

He throws you a curious look and not knowing what else to do, you return an awkward smile.

The both of you walk in silence for some time after that before it’s broken by a yell.

“Buccellati! Everyone is taken care of and I didn’t find anyone else suspicious on the radar." He looks at you. "Who is that?"

"I'm not completely sure but I think the bastard I was fighting could teleport people from other locations, maybe even out of the country because they don't seem to understand any Italian. They aren’t a stand user either.” Zipper Man explains.

After that exchange, the boy looks at you with a shocked expression.

You simply stare back. "...W-What?"

The boy starts talking rapidly at you. “So you can’t understand me? Where are you from? Do you only know English?" He clears his throat and spouts off something in accented English.

You stare at him like a deer in headlights but not only from all the questions. "Is...Is that from a rap song? You probably shouldn’t say that. It’s kinda inappropriate..." You tilt your head and raise a brow. "How old are you anyway?"

“The only thing I really understood was ‘rap song’! Do you really not understand any Italian?”

“Ahhh this is so weird! I really must not be dreaming cause it sounds like you're speaking legit Italian and I don’t know any!” You huff and slide your hands down your face.

“Narancia,” Zipper Man looks at the boy, “Leave them alone. Fugo’s going to meet us at Libeccio. He knows how to speak English.”

He starts walking again. You follow him as the boy--who you guess was Narancia--comes up beside you and keeps asking you questions you don’t understand at all. But you try your best to reply. Maybe you two are having a somewhat coherent conversation…

After about 10 minutes, you enter a restaurant. An employee immediately greets the three of you and you smile politely. They led you all to a table in a different, empty room of the restaurant.

A menu is put in front of you but you shake your head. You went a bit crazy with your midnight snack before you ended up here and honestly you were too stressed to eat right now. Actually why were you all here anyways?

You and the boy continue your barely-conversation. But after listening to him ramble for a while, you hold up a finger so he quiets down.

"What's your name? Is it Narancia?" you ask.

"Are you guessing my name? Cause you just said it!" He points to himself, "I'm Narancia!"

"Narancia..."

You didn't think he could smile any harder than he was now. “Yea!”

You grin a little. So you did guess right.

You then turn towards the Zipper Man looking at him expectantly. "Your name?"

“Bruno Buccellati,” he says.

You're pretty sure that’s a type of cookie. Did he just bring up sweets for no reason?

“Bruno….B-Buccellati?”

He nods his head. “That’s correct.”

Is that a legit last name?

You let it go and point at yourself. "I’m ___."

You give a thumbs up when they both repeat your name back to you.

“Buccellati.”

You turn at the new voice and you can't help feeling caught off guard. Bruno definitely had unique clothes but this person took the cake. You couldn't help thinking of green swiss cheese.

“Fugo, sorry to call you out so late, but this is the person I was talking about. Can you be a translator for us,” Bruno asks.

“Of course.”

The Cheese Boy turns to you. “Hello, I’m Fugo Pannacotta, but you can just call me Fugo, and I’m going to be translating what you say from here on out.”

You smile. Finally something you could understand! “Awesome! I’m ___ and I have no idea what’s going on or how I got here!”

“They said they don’t know what’s going on or how they got here,” Fugo translates and goes back to you. “Where exactly are you from?”

You answer and pause before speaking again. “I’m in Italy right? It sounds like you all are speaking Italian.”

This talking back and forth and translating goes on for a while and you learn a couple things.

First, that something really weird and supernatural is going on. Bruno said it was called a ‘stand ability’--they’re like superpowers you guess.

Next you had accidentally gotten dragged into some mafia crap. You didn’t know you could be this unlucky.

“We’re in the mafia,” Fugo tells you matter-of-factly.

You gawk at him. “Mafia!?” Your voice goes up an octave. “N-No way…I mean yea sure gangs still exist everywhere, but isn’t this all a bit too obvious?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, it’s 202X! I think you'd have to be more tactful right? You wouldn't tell someone like me so quickly.”

Fugo looks at you like you're crazy.

Your brows furrow slightly. “What?”

“You said it was 202X. It’s 2002,” Fugo corrects you.

“But...huh? It was 202X this morning!”

“What are you talking about?”

"No, what are you talking about?"

“What's going on?” Bruno asks.

“They said it was 202X.”

Bruno and Narancia throw you strange looks next.

You huff. “What!?”

The next 15 minutes consist of you trying to accept the fact that you aren’t in your own time anymore.

The three mafiosos watch you pace back and forth in the room. Well two of them were. Narancia was too busy stuffing his face.

Fugo sighs, slightly annoyed, "Can you please sit down."

“How am I going to get back home?” you mutter to yourself. You didn't even hear him.

You could just fly back home on a plane but your family wouldn't recognize you since you were much younger at the moment…

You stop pacing, a terrible realization hitting you.

You look at Bruno and Fugo and ignore their questioning looks as you stare at their eccentric attire. You weren't exactly a fashion connoisseur but this seemed a bit much even for 2002. And on top of that, you’d never seen a mafia man wearing such loud clothing in any depictions or photos of them.

You begin pacing again.

...Were you even in the same reality? What if you weren’t supposed to exist here? Did your family not exist here?

From Bruno and Fugo's reactions, it must not be impossible for these superpow--stands to transport people from across thousands of miles. So maybe there could be ones that could transport people from even further! Maybe galaxies… even realities? Were there even limits to these things?

You turn towards the table to speak but can't help stuttering. “H-Hey...um is there like someone who can send me back where I came from? Like that guy from before! Is he even s-still alive? Can he send me b-back?”

Fugo’s pitying look is enough to answer your question.

“Nevermind, I uh…” You trail off and sit back down to stare at the tablecloth.

You sigh. “Fugo, this is just a guess but I think there's a chance I might not even be in my own world. Just a weird feeling.”

He looks at you for a moment before he tells Bruno and Narancia what you said. You tune them out though. They seem to be getting into something else anyway.

You unconsciously grab at your pocket and feel something--your phone. You're about to pull it out but then an idea hits you.

If you were still in your own world you should be able to call your dad. He hasn’t changed his number since forever!

“Guys, I need a calling card!” Narancia jumps from your outburst.

You need to call your dad, then you’ll know if you should start crying or not.

You stand up from your seat, set on leaving. “Somebody, come with me. We need to-” Your stomach growls. Loud.

Narancia laughs. “Holy crap what was that?!”

Bruno calmly calls over a waiter. “Tell them to sit down Fugo. We’ll take the next steps after they eat.”

Fugo starts to speak but you shake your head and cut him off. "No, I can't eat like this! Please let's just go now..."

Fugo doesn't move though. Nobody moves. The waiter awkwardly stands there staring at you. You feel a bit like a kid throwing a tantrum, mainly because you suddenly felt like crying.

"___?" Narancia speaks up.

You realize that being stubborn wouldn't get you anywhere, so you sigh and sit down. And when Bruno asks what you want to eat, you just wave your hand. You didn't care.

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chapter 02

#bruno buccellati x reader #bruno bucciarati x reader #bruno x reader #jjba #reader insert #gift's writing

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art-in-the-sunlight · 4 years

Text

Marooned in the Caribbean

By: @art-in-the-sunlight for @comingupwriting in the @friendly-neighborhood-exchange (and a huge thank you to @jelly-pies for beta reading and editing).

Rating: General Audiences. There’s a few depictions of violence and two characters drown (but they survive). No character deaths.

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Morgan Stark, May Parker, Pepper Potts/Stark, a mention of Happy Hogan

Summary: Peter celebrates his seventeenth birthday with May, Tony, Morgan and Pepper on Tony's yacht. However, trouble strikes in the shape of a horrible storm which sends Peter and Morgan into the ocean. How will they survive?

Prompt chosen: Peter protecting Morgan with a touch of Everyone Lives!Au domestic life of the ironfam.

Ao3 link Enjoy :)

“... and Happy Birthday to Petey!” Morgan sings at the top of her lungs before jumping into Peter’s arms, barely missing the candles in front of him.

“Aww thanks guys!” Peter grins looking around at his friends and family. Tony had invited him and May to his yacht to celebrate Peter’s 17th birthday. Peter turns back to Morgan. “Do you want to help me blow out the candles?”

“Yea!” Morgan turns to the cake, and blows out all the candles in one attempt.

“Woah! Are you sure you’re not the one turning 17?” Peter jokes, earning a giggle from Morgan.

“Alright there kiddos, it’s cake time!” May pulls out a fork, takes a piece of icing and holds it up for Peter to taste. As Peter takes a bite, he hears the shutter of a camera and turns to Pepper with a smile.

“Aww that’s a great picture.” Pepper smiles back at him kindly.

“My turn!” Morgan jumps out of Peter’s arms.

“I don’t know about that… Did she eat all her vegetables yesterday?” Tony pretends to think about it, turning to Pepper.

“Hmm.. I don’t remember. But I suppose if she promised to eat all of them tonight…” Pepper mimics Tony’s expression, hiding a smile.

“I promise! I’ll eat it!”

Everyone laughs. “Alright, Morgana. But only one slice. They’ll be more after dinner, if you want.”

Morgan nods eagerly, and impatiently waits as Pepper and Tony cut and distribute the cake.

May pulls Peter into her side and presses a kiss on his forehead. “Happy birthday, Peter. I love you.”

Peter leans into her and closes his eyes contentedly as May runs her fingers through his hair. “Love you too, May.”

Pepper hands Peter a slice of chocolate drip cake. Peter finishes it, leans back and looks around at his family. He had really gotten lucky, all things considered. A few months ago - well, 5 years ago really, an alien named Thanos had come to earth with the infinity stones and turned half the population of everything in the entire universe to dust, him and May included.

A few months ago, Tony and the rest of the Avengers had put together a desperate attempt using time travel - Peter was still spotty on the details - but long story short, they brought everyone back, and survived. It was a close call for Black Widow and Tony, the former was paralyzed from the waist down from a fall on an alien planet, and Tony had lost his arm.

But all of that was in the past. The important point was everyone was alive, they defeated possibly the toughest villain ever and got their happy ever after. There would always be more villains for the Avengers to defeat and more muggers and thieves for Peter to web up in New York but that was normal.

Peter snapped out of his train of thought when Tony sat down next to him and slung his nanotech arm around Peter. “What do you think, kiddo? Birthday party up to your standards?”

Peter laughs. “Mr. Stark, we’re on a yacht in the Caribbean ocean! This-this is amazing!”

Tony’s expression seems to soften, into a gentle smile. “Anything for you, kiddo.”

Peter leans into Tony’s embrace but doesn’t say anything. It’s a comfortable silence. Before the blip, he and Tony had grown close. Peter had never said anything but somewhere between patrolling New York City together, training and fighting, and upgrading their suits and working in the lab together, Peter had stopped thinking of Tony as genius, billionaire, superhero, philanthropist and more along the lines of… father. Dad.

Based on what he managed to piece together from Tony's behaviour, Pepper, Happy, Rhodey and the other Avengers's comments about Tony during the blip, Tony thought of him as his son too. Just the thought of it filled Peter’s chest with warmth.

“Daaaaaad! Mom says that we have to go inside!” Morgan runs up to Tony and Peter, and points to the left. A massive… cloud - if it could even be called that - is rolling in. Peter sees flashes of lightning inside the massive cloud.

“Yea okay. Morgana, help Peter take the chairs inside?” Tony stands up and stretches, before moving to the yacht sails. The gesture seems unconcerned but Peter can see a line of tension in Tony’s expression when he looks at the cloud.

Peter’s spidey senses tingle when he looks back at the cloud, and he gets a dark feeling which sends goosebumps up his arms. “That storm seems pretty big.”

Tony smiles at Peter reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it. I outfitted this ship myself. She has nanotech in her walls, along with FRIDAY. If all else fails, I can call a suit.”

~ ~ ~

An hour later, everything is decidedly not okay. The yacht is swaying side to side in the ten foot waves, each time coming closer and closer to flipping over. Pepper, May and Peter are huddled together on the sofa, while Tony taps angrily at the yacht’s interface. The storm was interfering with FRIDAY’s connection.

Morgan presses her nose against the door staring outside. Peter supposes that if he could get past the dark feeling from his spidey senses, the dark scene with waves crashing and lightning flashing would’ve made quite the enjoyable scene.

As if on cue, Pepper looks up and spots Morgan. “Morgan! Come here!”

“No! I want to watch the lightning!”

“Morg-” Pepper’s response is lost as something dark flies and knocks the door open. A large branch slides into the center of the room, quickly followed by gallons of water. Morgan falls and screams in terror.

The room instantly explodes into chaos. Tony, Peter and Pepper instantly jump up and lunge to grab Morgan. The yacht sways in the opposite direction, and the branch and ocean water slide out, along with Morgan. Tony and Pepper’s fingers scantily miss Morgan by centimetres. Peter jumps up to the ceiling, sticks there for a millionth of a second and then throws himself at Morgan as she slides out the door.

He catches her - in fact he nearly lands on top of her. He has a moment of relief, where he wraps Morgan in his arms tight. A split second later, he realizes his mistake. He used too much force, and now the momentum, along with the yacht’s slick deck sends them both over the yacht rail into the roaring ocean.

He hits the water head first and it’s agony. He feels like someone with his strength had punched him in the head. The next sensation is ice. The water is ice cold, and he instantly feels frozen to the core. Dazed, he opens his eyes underwater and realizes that Morgan is no longer in his arms. Morgan isn’t anywhere near him, from what he can tell with his limited vision.

He frantically kicks until he reaches the surface. He sucks in a breath of fresh air and yells, “MORGAN!” before another wave yanks him back under. Peter’s lungs burn as he swallows ocean water. He frantically kicks upward again, trying to get back to the surface. Peter doesn’t see the same tree branch floating on the surface, right above his head. He smashes into it, head first, and the world goes dark.

~ ~ ~

Peter wakes up coughing. He rolls onto his side and spits out ocean water and bits of seaweed, before throwing up what was left of his birthday cake. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and slowly sits up.

Something digs into his side. He pats his side, and then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a red, metal swiss knife just slightly bigger than his thumb. He tries to remember where he got it but he comes up blank. Peter sticks it back into his pocket and looks around.

Peter’s on a sandy beach. The sun is slightly angled in the sky, and isn’t quite scorching hot yet so Peter estimates that it's sometime in the morning. There isn’t a cloud in sight. Waves peacefully lap at his feet.

Shakily, Peter stands up and turns away from the ocean. He stumbles a few times before righting himself. Several meters in front of him the beach slowly transitions into sandy dirt with a few shrubs, and then into what seems like a thick jungle.

Peter touches his head, and hisses in pain. His fingers come away clean, if not a little sandy. Based on the sharp sting that's now fading and the underlying throbbing, Peter knows he has a head injury.

What happened?

It comes back to him in pieces. His birthday, The swiss army tinker knife gift in his pocket. The yacht. May. Tony. The cake. The storm. Morgan.

Oh god, Morgan.

Peter swallows and forces tears back. He’s no use to Morgan if he allows his emotions to overcome him. He needs to stay positive. Peter and Morgan had fallen in the ocean at the same spot. Maybe there’s a chance Morgan washed up on the same shore as him?

Peter stumbles across the beach squinting in the sunlight, looking for Morgan’s figure. He tries to stave off his panic. Why did the sun have to be so… intense in the Caribbean? He knows the answer to that, of course. The tilt of the earth in combination with the curvature of the earth causes the sun’s rays to be more concentrated over~

The sight of a figure lying in the sand, close to shore in the distance stops Peter’s train of thought. Could it be?

Peter sprints towards her, and practically falls beside her. Carefully he rolls her over - and yes, it’s Morgan. She’s pale and there’s sand and seaweed covering her face, but it's definitely Morgan.

Peter shakily holds his hand over her mouth. She’s breathing. Peter sits back on his heels, closes his eyes and sighs in relief. Morgan’s okay. Something in Peter relaxes. Morgan’s going to be okay and he’s okay. All he has to do is send up some type of flare or signal so that Tony can find them. A dark thought passes through Peter’s mind. What if the storm had been too much? What if Tony and Pepper and May-

Through sheer force of will, Peter stops the thought in its tracks. Tony is the strongest superhero, the strongest person he knows (maybe aside from Pepper, May and MJ). Not even Thanos or the Infinity Stones (arguably the strongest weapons in existence) could kill him. Tony definitely survived the storm, which means that May and Pepper survived as well.

Peter focuses on Morgan. He puts a hand to her head. Her forehead is hot, but not worryingly so. He carefully picks her up and looks around. To his right, he spots a huge tree with large branches hanging over the beach, casting shade over the area. Perfect.

Peter walks over and gently lies Morgan underneath. He rips off a piece of his shirt, soaks it in water, and gently places it on Morgan’s forehead. She wrinkles her nose and softly huffs, but doesn’t wake up. Peter kisses her head and sits down next to her.

In the sandy dirt, he makes a plan. His first priority is to find shelter. Peter looks at the tree he and Morgan are taking shelter underneath, and decides that it’s good enough for now. Next on the list is to find water, followed by making a signal for Tony and then finding food. Peter sincerely hopes they won’t have to stick around on the island too long. He has never had to hunt for food before, and he isn’t quite sure what’s poisonous and what’s safe. He regrets not taking MJ up on borrowing her survival guide.

First things first, Peter needs to find water. He goes to stand up, but then looks back at Morgan. She’s especially vulnerable like this, and Peter doesn’t want to leave her alone. He figures carrying her around is an option, although it’s not one that he likes. There’s too much that could go wrong.

Peter scans the shoreline, looking for inspiration to a solution, when he spots a palm tree several meters away. His eyes follow the trunk. Twenty feet up, Peter spots a few coconuts. He smiles. This should be easy.

Several minutes later, Peter sits back down next to Morgan, looking slightly worse for wear with a few bug bites and three coconuts. He pulls out the army knife and begins carefully hacking away at the top of the first coconut.

After what seems like forever, Peter finally cuts through the coconut shell. He carefully pours a bit of coconut water on his palm, and then sniffs it. It has a faint odor, but more importantly, it doesn’t trigger his spidey senses. Peter raises the hole in the coconut to his mouth and takes a sip. The taste is a little weird, but to Peter, it’s the most delicious thing he’s ever had. He’s halfway done drinking the rest of the water when he hears Morgan stirring.

Carefully, he leans the coconut upright against the other coconuts, and then rushes to Morgan’s side.

“Hey Morgan! Are you waking up? Morgan?” Peter gently taps Morgan’s shoulders.

Morgan opens her eyes and squints at him. “Wha - Petey?”

Peter’s face breaks out into a huge grin. “Hey Morgan!” He helps her sit up.

“Where are we? Where’s Mom and Da-” Her raspy voice breaks off into a cough.

Peter hands her the coconut. “Here, drink.”

She takes the coconut with two hands and drinks. Peter nearly chuckles at the sight. It's adorable.

“What do you remember?”

Morgan frowns for a moment, before her face clouds and she looks on the edge of crying.

“Hey- nono! We’re going to be okay! Don’t cry!”

Morgan’s lip trembles, and Peter pulls her into a fierce hug. “I promise you, Mr. Stark-Dad is out there looking for us. And he’s going to find us as soon as… as we complete our mission.”

“M-mission?” Morgan still looks scared, but the threat of tears are beginning to retreat.

“Yea! The first step was getting coconut water.”

Morgan makes a face. “Coconut water tastes weird.”

Peter laughs. “It does! But it’s part two of the mission. We have to drink coconut water whenever we get thirsty.”

“Fine… But I’m only doing it so Dad can find us.” Morgan looks oddly determined for a kid. “What else do we have to do?”

“Hmm, let’s see. Find coconuts, drink coconuts…” Peter makes an exaggerated thinking face, and Morgan giggles. “Next is making a signal!”

“A signal?”

“Yea! Mr. St- Dad is already looking all over for us. But he doesn’t know where exactly to look, so we have to tell him!”

“How do we do that?”

“Well, I’m fresh out of flares, what about you? Are you hiding any under… here?” Peter lunges at Morgan and tickles her sides.

“Hey!” Morgan giggles and starts squirming. “Petey stop it!”

Peter withdraws his arms with an exaggerated thinking face. “No flares then. I guess we’ll have to make a smoke signal. See those pieces of wood?”

Peter points to the driftwood lying around the beach, presumably dragged in by the storm. “We’re going to use it to build a bonfire, and then cover it in leaves!”

Morgan claps her hands in delight. “Ooh just like the fire I built with Dad! We wanted to make it as tall as the sky but Mom said no.” Morgan looks disappointed.

Peter laughs and agrees. “Just like that, except the smoke will be as tall as the sky!”

Morgan’s eyes widen in excitement. She jumps to her feet. “I want to start now! Can we build it now, Petey?”

Peter stands up next to her. “Sure! But you have to promise me that if you feel tired, you’ll come back to this tree and take a break. And if you get thirsty, you’ll tell me so I can open another coconut.”

Morgan nods eagerly. “I promise! Can we go now?”

Over the course of the next few hours, Peter instructs Morgan on how to tell if the driftwood is dry. He shows her how to pile the pieces of wood together, so that they don’t immediately fall over. When the pile gets too tall for her to stack pieces of wood on, they take a break and finish off another coconut, and part of the third. He tells her to use rocks to spell out “SOS” in the sand, while he piles the bigger pieces of driftwood- some the size of Morgan - on their pile, along with some fresh branches he broke to create smoke.

They finish around midday, and Peter sends Morgan under the tree to rest. In the end, the pile is nearly as tall as Peter. He takes out the army knife and pulls out the two small magnifying glasses. He arranges them so that the sunlight is directly shining through both glasses and onto the wooden pile, and then goes under the tree to wait.

It doesn’t take long for the wood to catch on fire. They cheer and hug. Peter retrieves his army knife, and they watch in satisfaction as their pile of wood catches on fire, sending black smoke billowing up into the air.

They settle back down underneath the tree with the last coconut. Just as they finish it off, Morgan spots something in the ocean, near the horizon. As it approaches, the shape becomes more distinguished until Peter can tell it's a ship.

Morgan and Peter run out onto the beach and start waving their hands above their heads, trying to get the ship captain’s attention. Slowly, Peter watches as the ship veers off its course, and begins heading towards them. Morgan cheers and hugs Peter, but Peter doesn’t share the same sentiment. His spidey senses are giving him a dark feeling and sending goosebumps up his arms.

Peter’s in the middle of trying to convince Morgan to wait beneath the tree when a shot rings out. Driven by instinct, Peter immediately tackles Morgan to the ground. Barely a second later, something hits the ground a few feet away from them. Peter turns back to the ship, and spots a glimmer of a sniper’s scope in the sunlight.

“Petey!” Morgan cries out in fear, as Peter practically lifts her to her feet.

“Come on Morgan!” Peter’s pulling her off the beach, towards the jungle as fast as he can. “We have to hide!”

Morgan stumbles after him. Another bullet hits the sand a few feet to their right, and they both flinch.

“Wai- NO!” As they reach the tree, Morgan jerks her hand out of Peter’s. “I don’t want to go in the forest! It’s scary! And Dad… how’s Dad going to find us in there?”

Peter pulls Morgan behind the tree so they’re temporarily hidden. He looks at Morgan. She’s terrified, shaking and there’s a few tears falling down her cheeks. He softens his tone. “Listen, Mr. S-Dad is going to see the bonfire, and then he’ll search every inch of this island, okay? But now we have to go-” Both Peter and Morgan flinch as another shot rings out. “-right now. Okay?”

Morgan nods, and Peter doesn’t waste any time. He picks Morgan up and runs as fast as he can through the jungle, crashing through the undergrowth.

After what seems like an hour of running, Peter slows down, and then stops when he comes across a moderately small stream. He sets a strangely quiet Morgan down, kneels next to the river and splashes his face with water. To his surprise, it doesn’t smell salty.

He cups some of the water in his hands and brings it up to his face. When he doesn’t get a warning from his spidey senses, he takes a sip. The water is cool and soothing.

“Morgan, here.” Peter gently helps Morgan to the edge of the stream. “Cup your hands like this, and then drink.”

Morgan makes a face. “Isn’t the water mucky?”

“Uh, nope! I mean, probably not? But it’s a freshwater stream, and we really need to stay hydrated with this heat…” Peter takes another drink of water, and then looks around. His path of running through the jungle is clearly outlined with trampled plants and vines and branches snapped, and pushed out of the way. He had essentially led whoever was on that ship to their current location.

“Petey, what are we going to do?” Morgan’s tearful brown doe eyes stare up at him.

Peter rubs her head and stands up. “We just have to add a few steps to our plan.” He tries to sound confident.

“What steps?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

To his left, Peter sees a tall, sturdy looking tree with large branches and fairly thick leaves. To his right, there’s a few old branches with dried leaves falling off. Peter moves towards them, and lifts one up. There’s a large hole, maybe ten feet deep underneath.

Peter smiles. “We’re going to set a trap.”

~ ~ ~

Almost two hours later, four armed men enter the small clearing by the steam. Grunt number one turns to the guy at the back and says, “The trail ends here, sir.”

The boss snarls in anger. “Spread out and find them! We’re not letting those two Stark brats get away! We need the ransom money!”

Grunt numbers one, two and three spread out around the stream, looking for clues.

After a few moments, grunt two spots a shoe lying on top of a few branches to the right. “Hey bo-” He steps closer to pick up the shoe, but the ground disappears, and he falls down, into a hole.

At the same time, grunt number three spots a shoe lying on top of a couple vines to the left. He steps closer, and picks up the shoe. All of a sudden, a large rock with vines wrapped around it falls down and the vines jerk up, sending the man flying upwards in the air… in a net made of vines. He drops his gun in the commotion and starts swearing.

The boss and grunt number one immediately move together so they are back to back and raise their guns. “What the hell…”

A large figure swings from the top of the tall tree that grunt number three is hanging in and crashes into grunt number one. They roll on the ground, and the figure manages to disarm the grunt and loop the vine around him, immobilizing him.

The click of bosses’ gun safety turning off stops the figure in his tracks. The boss has his gun trained on the figure’s forehead. “Don’t move! I’ll shoot!”

The figure stops moving and yells, “Now!”

A bright light is shone directly into the boss’s eyes. He stumbles back disoriented and raises an arm to shield his eyes. The figure takes the opportunity to disarm the boss and tie him up in vines.

Peter grabs the boss and drags him to the ten foot hole. He holds the guy by his arm and dangles him over the pit, in such a way that the boss can’t see beneath him.

“Wait - no please! What-what do you want?”

“Why did you attack us?”

“You’re Stark’s kid, right? He’s looking all over for you, there's suits flying everywhere. He’s looking in the wrong area though, any experienced sailor can tell you that. We figured we’d grab you guys and make some cash.”

Peter’s face is stone cold. “How many of you came here?”

“Just us four, kid. Now let me go-”

Peter smiles. “Okay.” And lets him fall into the pit. The boss screams, and then presumably falls on top of grunt number two. There’s a lot of muffled cursing.

Peter looks up to the tall tree. “Morgan! You can climb down now!”

Morgan carefully climbs down and runs to Peter. “Petey! He said Dad’s looking for us!”

“That’s right! Good job with the light!” Peter takes the Swiss army knife from her, guides her around the traps and tied-up grunts and back to the path in the jungle. “We’re going to see if their ship has a radio we can use to call Dad.”

Morgan stops walking and turns to Peter. “But… I don’t want to go aboard the ship. It’s scary.”

Peter kneels down next to her so they’re face to face. “We defeated all of them back there, Morgan. They can’t hurt us anymore.”

“But what if they escape? Or if-if there’s more bad guys on the ship.”

“Then I’ll protect you, Morgan. Always.”

Morgan hesitates. “Pinky promise?”

“Pinky promise.” Peter stands back up. “You know… Dad always told me that you loved adventures.”

“I do! Me, Mom and Dad always go on adventures!”

“Yes? Well think of this as another adventure. We’re pirates and that ship on the beach has treasure!”

Morgan stares at Peter, her eyes glinting in delight, before she grabs Peter’s hand and pulls him toward the beach, “Come on Petey! We have treasure to find!”

~ ~ ~

A few hours later as the sun is setting, one very stressed-out Tony Stark steps out of his iron suit on the beach. Peter and Morgan immediately hop out of the ship to meet him.

“DAAAAAAD!” Morgan runs up to Tony and hugs him. Tony kneels down and catches her and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You’re never going to believe what happened! Me and Petey had the best adventure ever! We drank coconuts and made a bonfire and then we raided the ship-”

Tony pulls back slightly without releasing Morgan from their hug to look at her. “Hold on, what?” Then he spots the black bandana on her head. He tugs at it. “Morgana, what is this?”

“We’re pirates! ARRRRRRRR!”

Tony looks up at Peter in confusion. “What?” Then he spots the chicken leg Peter’s eating.

Peter just smiles and responds, “We’re pirates.”

Tony shakes his head and picks Morgan up with one arm. He steps toward Peter, wraps an arm around him and kisses his forehead. “Mom’s on her way, and May is waiting with Happy in the Quinjet.” Tony pauses for a moment. “I’m just glad you guys are okay.”

Peter relaxes into the hug, in a way he hasn’t since he arrived on the island. The same feeling of happiness and warmth he felt on the yacht while sitting with Tony is back. “Me too.”

“Hey Morgan,” Peter starts. “Do you want to show Dad your pirate key?” Peter feels Tony tense slightly and he realizes what he just said. Dad. Shit-shit-shit-shit-

“Yea! Look Dad!” Morgan pulls a key attached to a string from around her neck. “Me and Petey found it on the ship-” Morgan is interrupted with the sound of another suit flying by. The trio looks up, and its-

“Mom!” Morgan starts wiggling and Tony puts her back down on the beach, but he still keeps a hand on her shoulder until Pepper lands. Morgan runs up to her, and Pepper catches her and wraps her up in a tight hug.

Peter steps away from Tony awkwardly. “Sorry about uh, calling you Dad-”

“Hey, no it’s okay.” Tony gently pulls Peter back to him. “I know I’m not your biological dad, and I wasn’t the one to raise you, but I still think you as my kid. I wasn’t just worried about Morgan, I was worried about you too.”

Peter feels his face heat up. He wraps his arms around Tony and buries his face in the side of Tony’s neck. Tony chuckles, and runs a hand through Peter’s sandy curls. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

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lorrainecparker · 7 years

Text

An in-depth discussion about Magix VEGAS Pro

This interview below is about Sony Magix VEGAS Pro! If you’ve worked in editing and post-production for any length of time you’ve probably heard of the non-linear editing package know as VEGAS. Most likely you remember it as SONY VEGAS but the package was sold to the software company Magix in 2016 and it’s moving forward under Magix’s wing.

Why a big multi-thousand word article about Vegas right here, right now? It goes back to NAB 2017 when I led a class called NLE Independence – Editing Beyond Adobe, Apple and Avid. This class wouldn’t have been complete without talking about VEGAS and since I had never used Vegas I had to find someone who was knowledgeable using this NLE.

That led me to Bobby Grubic who was kind enough to sit down and chat with me about VEGAS so I could speak somewhat intelligently on the subject. And Bobby did one better, dropping by the NAB class and speaking in person on Magix VEGAS.

It was a fun day at #nabshow today. Thank you Scott @editblog for inviting me to present at your class today. @magix @lasvegas #nle #editing #software #vegas #postproduction

A post shared by Bobby Grubic – Artonix Studios (@bobbygrubic) on Apr 24, 2017 at 3:46pm PDT

I recorded the chat Bobby and I had just to be sure I didn’t miss anything but got to thinking after I was done … this would make an excellent blog post so I transcribed the interview (well … the fantastic SpeedScriber transcribed the interview, I just edited the thing) and posted it here with some VEGAS screenshots to try and make it all make sense.

The VEGAS editing product is available in a wide range of options from the low priced VEGAS Movie Studio line up to the $399 – $799 VEGAS Pro line. I think most reading this will be interested in VEGAS Pro unless you’re one of a small group of dedicated users out there.

VEGAS has a lot to offer and a read down the VEGAS Pro software comparison shows just how feature rich this tool is. I played around with it here and there in preparation for the NAB class and was impressed with what I saw. It’s really quite sad that Vegas hasn’t caught on over the years but that probably has more to do with how previous owner Sony marketed the tool … as in really didn’t (and we talk about that a bit below). With Magix at the helm Vegas has a new life but it’s living in a very crowded NLE market.

VEGAS is PC only so Mac users are out of luck. If you’re interested in this conversation below I would recommend downloading the 30-day free trial and following along with some of your own media and kicking the tires for yourself. The transcription below was from a pretty free-flowing conversation between Bobby and myself that wasn’t really meant to be read so please forgive any weirdness, but I’ve tried to edit it so it’s more easily readable.

Here’s Bobby Grubic and myself talking Magix VEGAS. The old-school NLE you’ve probably never seen. As I often do when playing around with a new NLE I edit videos of my kids first. It makes for great screenshots and they haven’t revoked my permission to use them … yet.

Magix VEGAS looks like a lot of other NLEs with a familiar two up viewer display and a timeline for track based editing.

Scott Simmons: Yea I’m an Avid, Premiere, Final Cut guy and we were pitching these sessions for NAB and I was like ‘you know these days there’s a lot more than just these three’ so I’ll pitch them a class on editing alternatives. I have dabbled with Resolve and play with HitFilm a little bit and hadn’t played with Vegas’s I really hadn’t really had a PC to use and I do now have a laptop and you know I was like Is this going to be a fun class and they were like “Yeah that’s a great idea let’s do it”.

I got to install Vegas and mess around with it I’m like yeah but I’m not going to be able to speak intelligently about its strengths you know. So I need to find someone who uses it. So I have reached out to the Magix Magix PR folks and yeah they give me you.

Bobby Grubic: I’m an Avid user too. I was actually educated in it originally at university. And I used Premiere also back in the day. I still get my hands on Premiere, so I do not discriminate on other editing platforms.

Scott: I don’t either. I mean I’m a freelance editor so it’s kind of like you know what are you going to pay me to use I will use it that I care not. If I can pick I’ll pick different ones for different things. But if I can’t pick you tell me what you are going to use and I’ll sit down and use it and if it’s something new I’ll figure it out.

Bobby: At the end of the day it’s like how you tell the story as editor. Well of course you want to like what you see as your final product. But the editor makes it either flow or it doesn’t.

Scott: Yeah absolutely. I think they each have some strengths and weaknesses that you know for my money kind of depending on what I’m doing it can I can move faster depending on what the particular requirements of the job are. I often say “same buttons, different places” and once you figure out where the buttons moved you can use any of them pretty efficiently. But obviously you know someone who spent decades in front of Avid was just dropping down in front of Final Cut Pro X or Premiere and they’re going to have some problems to use they get up to speed.

My thing has always been to “educate on the differences and not debate the differences”. Even though I debate quite a bit I favor none. I enjoy them all. I guess it’s kind of my thing.

A little detail on a few of the tools available in Magix VEGAS Pro.

Bobby: They all have their advantages and as you said, it’s like what are you doing in the job? Are you sharing it with somebody, if you are sharing you know it’s a different fish and you have to be compatible and you know all of that is very important. Some are more compatible some are less compatible.

Scott: Absolutely. How much do you work in Vegas over the others?

Bobby: Well here’s the thing and again it goes back to a particular project. If I have something that has to be done quickly and I have to do audio on it too. I will stick with Vegas all the way through because it’s much easier. It’s quicker. It makes me 100 times quicker than actually trying to fix audio either in Avid or Premiere because you have to get out of it.

And that’s one of the huge advantages. Even like 10 years back with Vegas because you could apply picture or audio effects right on the timeline. You never have to leave it to actually accomplish either effects for the audio or some very similar things that you would be able to do in After Effects. I mean the editor is so good in manipulating with different formats that if I don’t share it, it makes me very quick.

Scott: Correct me if I’m wrong but did Vegas not originally begin as an audio only workstation and they added video?

Bobby: Yes so it was the Sound Forge original editing platform and then they added on top of that the whole video engine. That’s correct. So that’s why this platform to begin with had this very powerful audio engine and audio editing tools built in because it was an audio editing tool.

There’s a full suite of audio mixing tools in Magix VEGAS. The mixer is only part of it.

Scott: Now when you mentioned formats I have heard over the years as more formats came along and you know Premiere gained the ability to really edit with lots of formats and Avid finally you know started gaining even though it’s still struggling to edit multiple formats. Yes I have heard the occasional person say “oh well you know Vegas has done that all along”. And I think people think about OK really it’s Final Cut X is really the original NLE that has been built ground up and edits everything. But from what I’ve heard Vegas was editing everything long before anybody else was.

Is that true statement?

Bobby: Yes it is. And I don’t want to bash Sony, but they had something way ahead of everybody and I actually talked to some Sony people back in the day because I was really using it and I really wanted to have an even more powerful tool that I can share with more people within the project because he was not popular and Sony was just not good promoting that particular product. But now that Magix bought it I think it’s going to be a new life for this software because Sony did not advertise it whatsoever.

That’s why I always call it a Swiss Army knife. And you said you’re using Mac? I have used Mac all along. So I always buy the top end Macbook Pro dual boot and I only have two things on PC’s side. I have my Avid and my Vegas. Nothing else. And that’s always clean. I don’t even browse the web with it. And so I always have that available when I travel and I have either or. And like I said if I don’t share it, it’s Vegas first choice because I don’t have to go out of the program. I can finish everything. I can actually make DCP on that particular thing and ship it out to be shown on the big screen and not many people knew about that.

VEGAS has several different places to apply effects which is an important difference between it and other NLEs.

Scott: Forever we’ve known Sony Vegas it seems like Sony always preceded the word Vegas. But you’re right they didn’t do a lot to really promote it and get out there into the public with public knowledge. Like you I don’t quite understand it, then they sold it and they still have the Catalyst suite now which includes an edit tool. So it’s kind of like well sold one and you have another one a much different editorial tool it’s way different than Vegas that’s for sure.

You mentioned like staying in Vegas to do everything but I think a lot of people would argue especially with Premiere you can stay in PPro with the exception of like high end compositing and maybe the most detailed of audio work you can stay in Premiere from start to finish. You’ve got decent audio tools you’ve got you know a lot of really good effects stuff. You’ve got good color tools. What can you do from start to finish in Vegas easier and faster than you can do say in Premiere?

Bobby: Premiere in the last three years really caught up with some things that Sony Vegas had that they have now. But there are things that you can not do easily in Premiere which is… let’s say you have all the footage 4K. So I will set up my canvas to be 720 P. I’ll just drag everything of my 4K drop it right on timeline move it any way I want recrop, reframe all my footage. Right on the fly. And as I’m doing that I don’t have to prerender anything to see it. And that’s something that Vegas had for the last eight years and I’m still using that particular function. I can have five different sizes on my timeline that I can just manipulate, mix up and not pre-render one proxy.

VEGAS project setup will look familiar to seasoned editors as it’s got most all of the normal project setup things you might expect.

Scott: That’s very Final Cut X like in the sense that it seems to have a very good sort of playback engine architecture under the hood that it can do of a lot of real time playback without any rendering, any proxies. I’ve often heard that about Vegas.

Bobby: FCP X caught up. They realized that Sony’s not doing anything really. The latest Final Cut is the pretty version of Vegas. I like to try other things to see how they work but still it’s not as easy as me just grabbing all my different files. And lately you know you can have different formats. You can have MPEG, you can have RED. Certain things that actually are more demanding when you just don’t have one camera or one source of files that are exactly the same compression. That’s where Vegas actually does much better than any of those other ones because you can very quickly integrate those in without converting anything. So you can work with your native files without proxies on your laptop.

Scott: I’ve got it on my laptop right here. I’ve got some 4K I shot on a Panasonic DVX200. It’s quite buttery smooth. And I think one thing I don’t know about Vegas and I’m sure you can answer this, like in Premiere your timeline that’s what you base your resolution and frame rate off of in Avid it’s the project itself.

Bobby: Correct and that’s a huge difference. OK that’s another thing that’s very different that I also use very often so that if you master something I can very quickly change my canvas or my preview which is the same thing. Do you have Vegas open right now? So if you go up there where you have a preview window and you have your little what do you call it … I’m just going to open it too.

Scott: The left side that’s the source monitor. It’s called the trimmer.

VEGAS does have one COOL feature that I’ve been asking for in other NLEs: moving your mouse over the source side viewer skims/hover scrubs without having to click and drag to scrub in a mini-timeline below it.

Bobby: It’s not something that’s as great as Avid or Premiere. Honestly I do not use the trimmer as much because on a timeline by itself you can do frame by frame trimming and you can see it on the timeline exactly how much you are pulling back and forth. So trimmer doesn’t really do anything for me because it will just make one additional step to slow me down. If I’m preparing something and I have let’s say a 30 minute single file, yes I would use trimmer to single out my clips but if I have multiple takes trimmer doesn’t really do much.

Scott: One thing I notice is I booted up I’ve got my bin of clips I’ve imported and I go up to my folder, my bin or whatever and I double click a clip thinking it’s going to load up in the left side trimmer window but when I double click it throws it in the timeline. Wait a minute … this is not right… it’s just different.

Bobby: So if you go to project properties this is one thing that is really cool that you can change in that project so quickly and keep everything as is. So let’s say you’re working 4K and you’re doing both Ultra HD … so you start your project on that and you start your project let’s say on 29.97 frames per second.

Scott: Right.

Bobby: And you do your whole timeline let’s say with five clips and you go right back in there in properties and you change it to 720 24p. Vegas will make recalculations for you based on real time you will have to do very little adjustments or none. In most cases it’s 99 percent that I didn’t have to do any adjustments whatsoever to my timeline by changing the canvas or the project properties then export that natively out.

Scott: It seems very fluid like it kind of doesn’t really care what you’ve got. It’s going to adapt to what you want to do not what the media is.

Bobby: It’s very powerful.

Lots of stuff going on in the VEGAS track header. Like almost After Effects lots of stuff.

Scott: Of course that can be a problem if you’re 720 and you say make it 4K when you decide you have a 4K show because obviously we know you can’t magically manufacture pixels where pixels don’t exist and have high quality images.

Bobby: Once you create a project you’re not locked to that particular canvas and it will do a very nice calculation to downscale you and keep in proportion with everything you put on the timeline.

Let’s say you send this to Europe. So it’s going to be PAL DV for their standard television because they’re still airing the standard television so you’re going to apply that and make your canvas that or the project. Well now you’re going to go to one of your clips. Do the right click on your mouse. Over the clip … go to properties and make sure maintain aspect ratio is checked. And make sure disable resampling is checked.

Scott: Is this only a single clip in the timeline?

Bobby: Single clip. Video event. Oh yeah. You have a loop turned on so turn the loop off because you loop your file. That’s left from the audio engine you can technically loop your video forever just like you will be able to loop the audio file. You see that little icon next to that little slider? It’s called event pan and crop. So click on that and a new window will open which technically is a little boiled down version of something you have now in Final Cut Pro X. In Premiere it works slightly differently I think.

Scott: Yeah that looks like your intrinsic built in motion properties.

Bobby: Yes. So you’re going to do right click over that window on top of the footage on whatever picture is shown there. So if you say, match aspect ratio, you see what happens it matches the aspect ratio. But now you have a timeline that’s very easy to manipulate. Let’s say you leave it where it is and go to the very last frame. And take one corner and pull int towards the center. So we kind of pushed in. Right now you have that particular footage done and can animate it with a little motion on it.

Scott: That’s like Frame Flex in Avid or your effects controls tab in Premiere. It looks like it does a lot of the same stuff like you know we were talking before about same buttons different places but it’s just different.

Effects can be opened in their own modification window for animating and key framing. Notice the little clip timeline at the bottom of this window.

Bobby: It has everything. It had it 8 years ago. Magix didn’t add anything to it yet. They’re claiming they made it a little bit more stable. It was not crashing for me before. People have different cards and you know different drivers. So you find that clean system just for that. So we’ll see where they’re going with it. But anything that you have in the major three NLE programs you have this program.

Scott: I was going to ask you as you’ve worked in Premiere as well, what is it missing? Or maybe nothing.

Bobby: There are certain things in Avid where you have certain things like ScriptSync. I love ScriptSync. Yeah that’s one thing that is so unique for Avid nobody else has it.

Scott: You’re right that is a very exclusive Avid thing but you know that’s one of those features which isn’t sort of the must have in every NLE. I can go into Final Cut Pro X these days and still there’s a few little things I can’t believe it doesn’t have – dupe detection or audio dissolves. But as for things like that you’re saying in Vegas it’s all there.

Bobby: Yeah. I’m just trying to think. Is there anything like that we can do that you’re curious if this program can do? Maybe that’s the best approach to take right now. You can actually test it yourself and I’ll lead you through or I’ll say no you cannot do that.

Scott: I was flipping through the menus and stuff, it’s got multi-cam built in there. You can burn Blu-rays, it came from a background of being able to work with tape as far as ingesting and outputting. I see scripting. There’s a whole scripting tab which I don’t know how difficult or easy it is to write scripts for it but like under the scripting pop out there I see things like batch render, export, EDL, stereo to mono… So looks like you could do a lot of stuff and you can probably do most anything someone can write a script for.

Need to output to physical media? VEGAS has you covered.

Bobby: Yes. And there is a Vegas Source. There are guys that do the scripts and they wrote some very nice scripts for automation. And there is only one so far because again Sony did not promote this software and was not trying to put it anywhere. Sony was not aggressive like Apple and trying to put it you know in universities which is always a first step to actually get people educated. They were not interested in promoting it. I think it’s going to be interesting now that we know each other talk about this a year from now because you know if Magix really doesn’t do one of those aggressive things and try to promote it, it’s going to be one of those urban legends and die out.

The Scripting menu could be a useful place if people write scripts for it.

Scott: I don’t think they would have spent that money to buy it unless they were at least going to try to get out there and market it. And we’re marketing a little bit ourselves here and as I’ve said before I’m pretty agnostic on my tools and I’m happy to learn a new tool or to show people there’s a better way. I’ll tell you one other question that’s not a feature question but I think one thing that I noticed the first time I opened up Vegas is that it’s intimidating in the fact that I’m like “oh my god there are so many little buttons and switches all over the place”. And I fear not buttons and switches because in my mind button switches means it does stuff and doing stuff is what I want my tools to do. But Lord have mercy you’ve got this whole toolbar down the bottom and you’ve got obviously your transport controls under each of the windows, you’ve got the track header panel on the left side. There’s just so many little things in there. You’ve got the clips themselves in the timeline and I’m seeing these all the little red, blue, turquoise little things which looks like rubber banding. Then you’ve got the crop thing built in and it’s just that there’s a lot of stuff!

Bobby: That’s unique to it because you really have the ability to animate and affect your effects. And this is something that probably nobody explained to you or this is a good time to talk about this which I really like about it and I use After Effects too. And I played with Flame too. I remember the first time I opened Flame I was like oh shit. But what I like about the timeline … you can apply the effect on the timeline and it will affect whatever is in the timeline. It’s called Track effects. So you can put for example an effect that will affect all your clips on the timeline then you will go and apply individually effects to a clip.

Scott: It looks like an adjustment layer or adding an effect to filler in Avid.

Bobby: But I think it’s even better than what Avid has in a way that once you understand it you get so much control over applying an effect even when you grade. I mean this is kind of crazy for grading because you can apply one thing over that timeline. So let’s say you’ve done a cut and you want to export that cut out you bring it back into the timeline just to you know make it more efficient. And so you’ve got to have tons of clips and then you find particular places that you want to do more adjustments you apply. And this is one of my techniques you apply one grade across that will give you grain and a certain feel but it will sit on a top level and apply to everything else.

There are a ton of video effects in VEGAS. This is a list of Output FX that can be applied to the output of the timeline.

It’s a whole level of an effect application that really can come in handy. OK so I just gave you two levels now I go up there where the preview menu is you can see you have a video output with effects so you can apply another effect across all timelines. So now you have three different levels of actually applying and adjusting your picture. Nobody has this.

Scott: Oh video output effects right there. That little icon that looks to me like a trimming tool is actually the effect.

When those Video Output FX are applied you can see them in the little flowchart at the top of this Video Output FX dialog box. Clicking one brings up the effect controls.

Bobby: The little icon is a slider which represents effects in this program. And there is no pre-rendering.

Bobby: So if you want to have a true real time for certain things you will go to tools up there on top and build dynamic RAM preview or shift+B. Are you familiar with the little tool that you get with the Red Camera?

Scott: Redcine X.

Bobby: You know how they actually lowered the resolution of your preview? You can have a different quality of your picture right there. So based on your processor you can like go all the way down to draft.

Scott: If you had someone stepping into Vegas and like I mentioned the whole thing when you when you double click a clip in your bin it does not load in the “source” monitor, it just goes right to the timeline which is different. Different behavior but that’s just that’s just the way it is. But you can still drag a clip up into the trimmer or into the source side on the left mark an IN and OUT point and then insert or overwrite.

Bobby: Correct or there is a whole tool and this is what you have right now it’s default and you can actually adjust that for yourself. So you should go up there to options and there are several very important things on the bottom of that menu: custom toolbar, customized timeline bar, customized keyboard, preferences. So as you go to this customized keyboard and there is a trimmer bar in there and you can actually select which key is going to bring stuff to your trimmer.

Scott: So it’s very customizable. I think one thing I’ll advise people to do at the top of the article is download the demo of Vegas and go through that and bring it up for you when you read this article. I think that would help. You know another interesting thing that I noticed is that normally when I’m down in the in the timeline I would click in the timecode ribbon and drag my playhead. But I cannot drag the playhead … actually it will drag the playhead it just goes very slow. Like I was trying to figure out what’s the quickest most efficient way to grab the playhead and scrub around the timeline.

Bobby: You want to go quicker? So what you are going to do is use your arrows, left and right arrows. That’s number one. So this is very powerful too. You have up arrow on the keyboard and down arrow. Based on how deep you are and the timeline that’s how fast you’re going to scroll. So let’s say you go to pull all the way out and you see all of your clips. Your scrolling is going to go much faster when you click to the right so left or right arrow you’re going to go left and right and you’re going to scroll up to it … you should fly.

Scott: Interesting. OK I can see that now. And I noticed that if I drag in the space above the timecode ribbon it’s like dragging my in and out point and giving me an in and out range.

Bobby: And out and that’s creating markings. Yeah. That’s kind of cool.

Scott: And then I guess is sort of like an audio workstation if I drag a video clip left or right on top of another clip it’s going to create a dissolve.

Bobby:You can also set up what kind of result you have by the default the program creates for you. Or you can turn it off.

Scott: I saw a button down here called auto ripple which reminds me Resolve has sort of a ripple mode you can turn on and off. So when you turn that on it’s kind of a totally different behavior as you click and drag clips in the timeline than if that is turned off. Now is there a way that when I drag a video clip onto another that instead of creating a transition it actually overwrites it? Ok I just figured out I just turn off the automatic crossfade it does that.

These are a number of the different editing tools and modes at the bottom of the timeline.

Bobby: It’s funny I was thinking how to explain it to you but you already did it. I love it.

Scott: It’s kind of interesting it doesn’t actually overwrite the clip completely because when I moved that clip back out of the way the other clip is still there.

Bobby: What it does is it keeps the old clip under, but the other one takes priority.

Scott: That’s funky.

Depending on your Automatic Crossfades setting dragging one clip onto another can automatically create a dissolve.

Bobby: Also if you create another track, it just keeps tucking it under on a different track that you can actually tuck wherever you want to tuck your clip and it will just play as a top level clip and it will give you priority over the track position on the timeline.

Scott: How do you add another video track?

Bobby: Right click on the side, hit insert.

Scott: There’s this other thing I noticed here it’s next to the magnet called Insert Region or the R key and I was playing with that. What does that do?

Bobby: Honestly, I don’t know that because I don’t use it much.

I don’t know what the Regions are for but I’m sure they are useful.

Scott: I did it twice and I’ve got a region that’s marked with a 1 and a region that’s marked with 2 and I click it again I get a region of 3. That’s something I’ve never seen before.

Bobby: I don’t know, but I have something else that I use to mark the regions which actually is useful in the other tool which is the Blu-ray maker.

Scott: Track marker.

Bobby: Yes. So this is very useful because with those you can translate an export to scenes for a DVD or Blu-ray. It will honor those and seamlessly transfer out as scenes.

Scott: I see that now that’s a track marker and if I go down here and hit M just an insert just regular marker it’s a totally different type of marker that pops up.

Bobby: So yes correct. So you have different markers.

I do know markers and VEGAS has them. And you can put notes in them.

Scott: It’s got a lot of flexibility and I don’t want to say it’s complex but it has a lot of stuff. I think that may be what scares off people and I think that’s part of Apple’s goal when they built Final Cut Pro X which is: like “let’s make it simple” which I think is kind of a smart play in this day and age of media. It’s very simple but yet if you dig in it gets quite complex. Vegas on the other hand wears it’s complexity on its sleeve in a sense when you boot it up it’s like: look at all this stuff that you can do but you just have to kind of dig in and do it.

Now talking mixing… and to use Premiere as an example it has Clip-based mixing as well as Track-based mixing from what I can tell. Which makes sense if you’re from a big audio background as an audio tool. And you know as you said it’s audio mixing abilities are second to none.

Bobby: Everything that Pro-Tools has this program has and I’m not over-exaggerating. I mean that’s one of my degrees as I also have a degree in Recording Industry. So I use ProTools. Everything you can do in ProTools including using effects that they have in ProTools you can do here.

Audio effects can be applied and manipulated the same way as video effects.

Scott: I see that I have HitFilm effects. I don’t know whether I maybe installed them on this machine or they come built in. But the HitFilm effects are an option.

Bobby: They actually bundled up the latest version with it. It has a nice stabilizer. They just bundled it in. It also has a very powerful velocity tool which is like another timeline that you can just put over your particular clip.

Scott: And when you say velocity that’s like remapping speed effects?

Scott: Looking under the edit menu under the editing tool I see the normal edit tool for slip and slide and you’ve got a time rate. What is the shuffle tool? That’s a new one.

Bobby: Shuffle tool. I don’t use that. Sorry.

Editors will recognize many of the tools available in VEGAS. But the Shuffle Tool?

Scott: No it’s OK it’s under Edit > editing tool. And then you get slips and slides and all that and then shuffle. I’ve never heard of a shuffle tool.

You know in both Premiere and in Final Cut you have a toolbar where you click and you change your tool and and in Avid you kind of work in modes. But I don’t see a toolbar in the sense that Premiere has a toolbar.

Bobby: One thing that I actually like using from here it’s time, stretch and compress tool which also comes from the audio stations. So if you go up at the end of it and move beyond the the length of that clip it will actually time stretch.

Scott: Yeah that’s it. It’s like the rate stretch tool in Premiere.

Bobby: They also had this from a very long time ago.

Scott: What is the biggest project as far as like how much media and final delivery length have you done in Vegas?

Bobby: Probably 40 minutes to an hour. Something like that.

Scott: That’s a good length. I mean you’re not doing just like five minute corporate pieces or music videos and you’re doing bigger stuff.

Bobby: Yes I did several DVDs for different exercises and different yoga classes. And again it was a full solution for me. I didn’t have to go out of the program. It was all made, select scenes, edit, export, directly to DVD and it worked like a charm.

Scott: How did Vegas handle a 40 minute timeline? Any slowdown as you get more media stuffed into it or is it pretty able to keep up?

Bobby: Not at that time because the footage was HD. But I’ll tell you it was getting slowed down when I was working with RED. And I mean I cannot really blame it because I was working with 4K/5K. So I’m not creating proxies. I was working directly from it and it would start getting “tired” from time to time.

Scott: You know I’ve had this conversation a time on Twitter. People talk about “real time 5K on my own my laptop” in whatever tool and a lot of it is Premiere talk and you know I’ve worked off very fast RAIDs on very fast Macs and I often still can’t get true real time 4K playback especially once I get to dig deep into the edit. And I often ask questions like well “what is your playback set to”? And “there’s your little green drop frame indicator stay green or is it turn to yellow”? And the answer is always “Oh well I’m working at a quarter. The drop frame indicator goes to yellow” and I’m like OK that’s not real time 4K / 5K editing. If you drop frames and you have to lower the resolution in my mind you’re making a compromise. I think still working with some of this high rez media it’s just not feasible yet for most systems.

Bobby: I agree with you. True for 4K playback it has to be 4K displaying 4K on your monitor. And this program is not doing that precisely. It’s using let’s say raw 5K but I am downscaling my preview to a minimum.

Scott: Yep. And that’s OK when you do it well and it’s pretty seamless and fluid then that’s wonderful. It’s when you start getting lots of stuttering and you start getting pixelated to the point where it looks like shit then that’s bad. But you know from what I’ve just been messing around with here in Vegas it’s quite fluid. Now I’ve got 4K off an internal SSD on this Dell 5510 so it’s a pretty decent laptop system. But it “feels” good and that’s one thing as you play around with Vegas that feel that you get is part of the charm of it. It’s not like in Avid when you load up some 4K and you start clicking around it feels clunky and it just doesn’t “feel” good.

Bobby: And that’s what always brought me back to like I said I can fly.

One thing recently they added … pretty powerful exports which actually let you share Premiere projects and others.

VEGAS Pro offers many different import and export options project project interchange.

Scott: It really does it supports a lot of stuff there. You can go to the export menu and it says: Media Composer AAF, Premiere project file, Final Cut 7 or Resolve XML, Final Cut Pro X XML. I’m actually working on a documentary that the director has done some of the syncing and some of the rough assembly in Vegas and he’s exporting Premiere projects that I’m opening up. Now I have seen a kind of a glitch where if he’s done any kind of panning and scanning or cropping that it kind of messes up when it comes back to PPro or sometimes I can see the audio in the timeline but yet it won’t actually go to my output channel. We’ve sort of decided that’s a bug between Vegas and Premiere.

But you know the fact that it has these import and export options for all the other NLES built in is a kind of a testament to what I think Sony at least was thinking for years now it’s like we want to be able to get to anything and come from anything. Now I agree with you why in the world would all that functionality exist when it wasn’t promoted is beyond me. With FCPX XML export built-in now someone took some time to do some programming there because it’s a different XML than the old FCP7 was so that took some engineering if nothing else to make it work.

Bobby: Absolutely. I tried Final Cut X. It’s actually a very nice upgraded version of Final Cut that integrated all the best stuff that Vegas had. They did their homework and Sony just wasn’t using it anyway. And they really did a good program. Premiere was always good. They were always having their own things. Premiere I do like because you are integrated with Photoshop. You are integrated with After Effects. What I don’t like about Premiere is the audio part, it’s still very clunky and still very limited. There are things you just can’t do it there. You just can’t. And here with Vegas you can. And that’s a big difference for me. Not many editors clean up audio.

Scott: But this day and age you do more than ever before though.

Bobby: I was about to say they will have to. Those editors that are still resisting they will have less and less jobs because there are less the less jobs where you know you can afford to have an audio guy and a video guy and you know everybody wants it today and they want it for less money. And you know you have to eliminate something in the process.

Scott: And that’s what you do and often it’s audio and it’s often color so we editors are stuck doing everything.

Bobby we’ve been just about an hour any other like specific little you know things you want to champion about Vegas that some people might not know about or that I may not have asked about?

Bobby: It was a great chat.

Scott: I would definitely encourage people to download it and play with it because like I said I think everybody knows it exists but no one has ever seen it out in the wild. I think in my you know 15 years of being a freelance editor I haven’t been called to work on it but I was at a place where they had some edits suites and they were running Vegas. That said this job I’m doing as we record this the director uses Vegas and loves it. And so that’s twice in 10 or 12 years I have encountered it! But maybe Magix is going to do something with it like we haven’t been before.

Bobby: I really hope they do because you know honestly, the program is great. But everybody else has caught up with them. So they have to make another leap and improve even more on their CPU usage, because they cannot live from what they got from Sony.

Scott: Yeah. It’s almost like Sony like they had a golden opportunity at one point but they kind of squandered it.

Bobby: Yes. Yes. So even though it’s a great program I think Magix’s biggest challenge is to convince somebody at this point, who didn’t use it like I did, for you guys that use Premiere every day and Final Cut that this program is worth a look because it’s more than very similar. Why would I switch if it’s not substantially better?

Scott: Yep and I to become a great NLE. That have a great color corrector obviously but you know what is compelling about the NLE to make one move over from Premiere for instance and I think other than the color grading system you know at this point not a whole lot but if you need it and color is your thing then maybe maybe it’s a good choice to stay all in one NLE but if you know of color just a tiny little piece of your thing I don’t see a compelling reason to move from Premiere to Resolve at this point. But you know, Resolve is still young as an NLE so maybe there’s something amazing about to happen that and I don’t know. (Editors note: this was recorded before Resolve 14)

The thing I see here in Vegas is pretty amazing stuff. But at this point is it enough to make someone move from Premiere? The answer may be maybe yes for some people, no for others.

These color tools will also look familiar to most editors.

Bobby: But I just want to add one more thing that you just triggered. So color correction, and you just brought up Resolve. This is a very powerful color correction tool also which is quite amazing. So if you go at it again as we spoke about three different levels you can adjust the look of your picture so we’re not talking effects. Now let’s talk about strictly color correction and grading. If you go and pick any of your places that I showed you where you actually apply effects, you can see some of the tools they already have built-in without having to use third party tools.

Very powerful color correction tool and secondary color correction tool. And then you have Vegas HSL adjust and saturation adjust.

Scott: Does it have video scopes?

Bobby: You have everything. Yes, you can turn on the scopes if you go to View. Everything is fluid. You can actually arrange your desktop your working space any way you want to go by just dragging these components in whatever window you want.

Video scopes? Check.

Scott: So it’s kind of Premiere like in that since you’ve got a lot of options for setup.

Bobby: So there is a color match that was added in three years ago which is very powerful and which will quickly match color of two different clips by you just selecting it. It’s a very quick starting point for actually matching and color correcting your footage.

You can start if your footage is way off from something else and you do an initial match and then you can grade on top of that because you can create chain effects inside a clip. And then you can chain it on that particular track and then you can chain it on top as your master preview. So you can have three different places to manipulate your picture.

Scott: It looks like as you add different effects you get like a little effect flowchart chain that pops up which is kind of cool to help you see what you’ve put on there.

Bobby: That chain up there is a cool thing. So once you have the chain you actually have multiple things you have pan and crop or color matching or whatever by clicking through the chain. You’re actually quickly rotating through your different manipulation windows of effects and you’re really quickly accessing whatever you applied.

Scott: And it looks like you’re seeing the actual result immediately.

Bobby: And you just hit your spacebar and it’s playing.

Scott: Oh that’s cool. You play right from in there. Like I said it’s got some engineering underneath it which is kind of neat.

If you didn’t see the tool you were looking for in the images above maybe it’s in here.

Bobby: Yep it’s playing without you rendering anything. And again you have to downgrade your preview but you have it immediately. You don’t always need to see full quality picture and you agree you want to see the motion flow of your edit. Does the story tell anything and then later you need that full picture. But then you can use that tool which is dynamic RAM preview which gives you full time, full 4K preview all the way. But you have to pre-render.

Scott: It’s looks like it kind of adapts well to what you need during the during the offline, the creative part of the edit of which is good real-time but enough quality to see what you’re doing. And it feels like it’s got a good trade off to that.

Bobby: Yeah I would say that the trade-off is always part of the game. There was never a perfect system … we are always trading off something.

Scott: That we are. I would encourage people to go give it a download and there’s a trial if I remember correctly. So get on there and give a try.

Bobby thanks for chatting with us here. And keep on editing.

Bobby: And that’s what I say for you too.

This interview was transcribed with SpeedScriber. Sign up for alerts when SpeedScriber launches

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