I've been in the creative business for a long time, and I can say if someone asked me what is so great about Vegas as an editor, I'd say it just keeps out of the way of creative process and allows one to see the creative path one needs to follow in project creation.

@D7K - Oh Yes....Yes...Yes.... Nicely said 😉.

There is really ONLY one element (well maybe a couple) of the Vegas experience that shoots this all in the foot. (and maybe its getting a bit better, I'm not on the bleeding edge hardware wise, still, respectable rig) and that is playback speed. Hard to make some editing decisions if you're always forced into a Shift-B situation. The other is instability. Again, hard to stay focused and in the mood if your program is crashing. A "lesser charge" would be sometimes sketchy hardware interfacing. (If I turn on my Mackie Control, for example, after Vegas is open, and try to connect, immediate crash. Whereas other programs will just SEE it and make a connect, not a deal breaker, but just an indicator of the fragility of the program when you'd like to see it MORE ROBUST.

I see they took down the thread where I simply asked the hard question: 'Why has this same situation persisted, for years, in spite of some heavy hitters (Sony, now Magix) as sponsors?' (owners?) It is, dammit, a FAIR question. Someone called me "toxic." Gary R. has, overall, a good sense of humor, at least, but others, not so much. Tough love is real love now......don't get it twisted.

So the basic premise here I agree with, which somewhat adds to the frustration level. Hey you've got a nice Porsche, why do you insist on the Dodge Dart engine????

I think if MORE people just said the obvious, more would get done by way of FIXING the REAL PROBLEMS. Instead, fan boys rush to defend the indefensible....THAT is really the problem, AFAICT. OTOH, If people are just cutting real time footage, end to end, and not doing much compositing (like I do, with music videos) they probably can stay happy campers, so, maybe it is a case, as well, of YMMV.......THAT is why, also, I've advocated for a hiring of a real heavy, bleeding edge end user type. It seems to me, now more than ever, that the developers are NOT, per se, real users of the program. Or they use it more as a cutting tool mostly, not a compositing tool, which it is pretty good at, save for the gratingly slow playback.

@fred-w Yea, VEGAS Pro timeline and workflow is very unique and it kinda 3 in 1 ecosystem. You got NLE, Compositing & Audio DAW kinda capabilities all in 1 page. You dont need round trip like Pr/Ae or go to fusion page in Resolves If you have tons of OFX & functions come in default. It shines the most as NLE.

But this playback thingy, is what make VEGAS Pro not in favor in bigger industry. No matter what your machine configuration is, it will just stutter the playback and some point of the edits. Not to mention the trimmer window I cant get normal smooth playback.

It's not easy to fix that main problem from what I know as it used old coding system kinda stuff (I'm not a programmer). I still have hope that one day, VEGAS wont have laggy playback just like Pr or Resolves.

Fred - Spoken as a man who thinks he knows more than everyone else or an idiot, perhaps both.

@fred-w Yea, VEGAS Pro timeline and workflow is very unique and it kinda 3 in 1 ecosystem. You got NLE, Compositing & Audio DAW kinda capabilities all in 1 page. You dont need round trip like Pr/Ae or go to fusion page in Resolves If you have tons of OFX & functions come in default. It shines the most as NLE.

 

But this playback thingy, is what make VEGAS Pro not in favor in bigger industry. No matter what your machine configuration is, it will just stutter the playback and some point of the edits. Not to mention the trimmer window I cant get normal smooth playback.

 

It's not easy to fix that main problem from what I know as it used old coding system kinda stuff (I'm not a programmer). I still have hope that one day, VEGAS wont have laggy playback just like Pr or Resolves.

 

Thank you!!....That is MY POINT< the sleeves need to be rolled up and the check book (probably Magix') needs to be opened up, and a re-write is in order. Nothing less will do. BUT, if the people who raise families on the "status quo" - regular weekly paychecks - aren't motivated to really PUSH the Powers that BE to actually make THAT happen, and INSTEAD serve up widgets,bells and whistles and some access to GPU power (like a half solution) - well, to my way of thinking that is still a REAL PROBLEM.

Now, we know, employees or part owners CANNOT comment on that, It cuts too close to the bone. But dammit, allow others to SAY SO, so that MAGIX MIGHT GET THE MESSAGE!!

BTW, Magix' Samplitude, for years, had the same problem: i.e., marketing dept. telling developers to keep cranking out novel "features" (bells and whistles mostly) when general performance and stability was the quest sought by established users. It performs MUCH better now, but it took years. The dynamic is well established in software concerns, marketing wants NEW users and thus seeks NEWISH GADGETs, like trinkets dangled, to rope in those new sales. It makes perfect sense on the one hand, but OTOH, the PRO USER - the one they've established a relationship with, sometimes is neglected by way of not addressing MORE FUNDAMENTAL issues.

Wow you now are an expert on Samplitude. How long have you been using it? Or as it seems did you just present assumptions based on things you've read on the net? Do you create music? Do you have an MBA in marketing or management? How many firms have your created based on your business expertise that reached 10 million in sales or more? What are your credentials for making such business analysis?

 

BTW, Magix' Samplitude, for years, had the same problem: i.e., marketing dept. telling developers to keep cranking out novel "features" (bells and whistles mostly) when general performance and stability was the quest sought by established users. It performs MUCH better now, but it took years. The dynamic is well established in software concerns, marketing wants NEW users and thus seeks NEWISH GADGETs, like trinkets dangled, to rope in those new sales. It makes perfect sense on the one hand, but OTOH, the PRO USER - the one they've established a relationship with, sometimes is neglected by way of not addressing MORE FUNDAMENTAL issues.

Thanks for making this post.

I tried VP14Edit and was really impressed with the timeline editing speed. As I continued to use VP (now 18), it just allows me to do what I want quickly and easily.

I know some have had issues with the software. But for me, and the way and what I edit, Vegas is far easier, faster, and is a joy for me to use.

Wow you now are an expert on Samplitude. How long have you been using it? Or as it seems did you just present assumptions based on things you've read on the net? Do you create music? Do you have an MBA in marketing or management? How many firms have your created based on your business expertise that reached 10 million in sales or more? What are your credentials for making such business analysis?

 

BTW, Magix' Samplitude, for years, had the same problem: i.e., marketing dept. telling developers to keep cranking out novel "features" (bells and whistles mostly) when general performance and stability was the quest sought by established users. It performs MUCH better now, but it took years. The dynamic is well established in software concerns, marketing wants NEW users and thus seeks NEWISH GADGETs, like trinkets dangled, to rope in those new sales. It makes perfect sense on the one hand, but OTOH, the PRO USER - the one they've established a relationship with, sometimes is neglected by way of not addressing MORE FUNDAMENTAL issues.

 

I've had Samplitude going on twenty years now. Lovely program. (I wish Vegas could/would adapt some of their better features, I'm not the only one that sees that possibility, btw) A few years back bells and whistles and the promotions of the same, while old time and more pro users are literally screaming for stability issues to be resolved, were in-your-face obvious, and developers intimated that their hands were often tied, (they were also a company with stretched resources as a niche/botique type offerring), and fortunately, some years later, that is not an issue any more. This is NOT rocket science, doesn't require and MBA to analyze, it just is, and it is obvious, and go back ten, twelve years ago on the forums....

One of the reasons subscriptions make sense, as a WIN WIN (and not, oh the company is making me do something that runs counter to my core beliefs, or other philosophical rant) is that the developer is LESS forced into gearing the programs offerings to new/potential cuatomers primarily, and can actually respond to the more core user base, the pros, the semi pros who want STABLITY first, not bells and whistles. Again, this is common sense, not MBA level discussion.

Ok Sir, is there a reason, (of course there is, being rhetorical) that Vegas won't play even some raw files or with some minor adjustment, (e.g. pan/crop) in real time, and Davinci and other programs have ZERO problem?? A few years ago, similarly, the color depth in Vegas was inferior to Adobe, just plain opening the file on the respective time lines. (I think that's since resolved) There were/are qualitative differences in the CORE elements
that render Vegas a cripple, it's star features aside (and why I stick, it does so many things right.)

 

This is NOT rocket science, doesn't require and MBA to analyze, it just is, and it is obvious, and go back ten, twelve years ago on the forums....

This is where you and I are very different in understanding the arguments you are putting forward. Business management tools (Yep like Multivariate Regression and other mathematical modeling tools) are need when evaluating complex systems. People's assumptions, beliefs, and projections based solely what one believes to be true is like intellectual junk food. Business systems work in large environments which can be impacted by laws, government regulations, reporting systems, (peer and not peer) review groups and users of products and services as well as the internal structure of the firm itself.

Your assumptions are based solely on your experience and your evaluation of other personal assumptions made public in communications which are not evaluated for truthfulness and hard data.

Understanding the way a business operates and the resulting products and services it provides in an integrated world market is in fact today "Rocket Science" and even then Chaos Theory at this point in time only needs the proverbial Buttery Fly to flap it wings to change the analysis. Case in point the international supply chain and the impact of CD19.

Everything you suggest can have unintended consequences to Magix or the actual coding of Vegas. Just because you use a program doesn't make you an expert in how the coding works and what and what is not possible in the current environment.

I retired at 55 and am now 71. At one time I did use the tools I talk about to develop a business that two very large firms got into a bidding war over. Without understanding fully a businesses internal and external environments assumptions made about what the customer wants and what is possible for the firm to due (economically and resource availability) results in nothing more than an opinion without merit IMHO. And you are certainly free to disagree with me as I am with you.

 

 

I grew up as the son of an entrepreneur, who was the son of an entrepreneur. I have a VERY good sense of allocation of resources being determinitive of OUTCOMES, especially the MANIFESTLY OBVIOUS variety.

The "why's" and "how's" don't really matter as much as the WHAT (outcome). ARE you arguing against the manifestly OBVIOUS outcomes or trying to enter into some ridiculous pissing contests, or some sort of "you have no idea" what you're talking about assessment. Really, one doesn't need to know all that much, either things work or don't, and if they don't (or don't work optimally) are they making progress towards fixing that. I don't see how it gets much simpler than that.

Again, my friend, my concern is OUTCOMES, and outcomes go to resource allocation. It's manifestly NOT rocket science.

BTW, in a previous thread, I did offer some "cut to the chase" forensics: i.e., that when Sony bought Sonic Foundry's (original inventor/developer of Vegas) product line, it hired 70 of the 190 or so of their employees to maintain and develop the product line further; when later, Magix purchased Vegas, the same development team was reduced to about a dozen or so. What does that tell you?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB105208542012539500

I grew up as the son of an entrepreneur, who was the son of an entrepreneur. I have a VERY good sense of allocation of resources being determinitive of OUTCOMES, especially the MANIFESTLY OBVIOUS variety.

The "why's" and "how's" don't really matter as much as the WHAT (outcome). ARE you arguing against the manifestly OBVIOUS outcomes or trying to enter into some ridiculous pissing contests, or some sort of "you have no idea" what you're talking about assessment. Really, one doesn't need to know all that much, either things work or don't, and if they don't (or don't work optimally) are they making progress towards fixing that. I don't see how it gets much simpler than that.

Again, my friend, my concern is OUTCOMES, and outcomes go to resource allocation. It's manifestly NOT rocket science.

Your assuming your wanted outcomes are the outcomes that will drive market share. We know what happens when one assumes....

BTW, in a previous thread, I did offer some "cut to the chase" forensics: i.e., that when Sony bought Sonic Foundry's (original inventor/developer of Vegas) product line, it hired 70 of the 190 or so of their employees to maintain and develop the product line further; when later, Magix purchased Vegas, the same development team was reduced to about a dozen or so. What does that tell you?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB105208542012539500

Who knows how many coders were in Sonic Foundry? Who knows what corporate resources Magix thought they could provide to the core group of coders by using outside coders? How many of those 70 were administrative or sales staff which would be redundant?

"I have a VERY good sense of allocation of resources being determinitive of OUTCOMES, especially the MANIFESTLY OBVIOUS variety." Well you can think things are obvious in this relationship but it's been my experience that relying on the obvious is the way to Chapter 11 or 13.

Just not enough information. Look you stay out of my posts and I will stay out of yours.

People start threads to get feedback. I basically AGREE with you as far as the successful aspects of VEGAS, I ONLY say that it does bog down when you are doing a fair amount of compositing, and that is a YMMV sort of idea. Hardware plays a role as well, and user savvy, etc.

"Driving market share" is a reality, and a real concern, and I represent one segment of the "end user" class, who's concern is not 'driving market share" per se, and I just want that viewpoint represented, which is shared be others, and not resented, and I know that others certainly have their own opinions, you included. Call it "the squeaky wheel." If one doesn't squeak, at least a bit, don't expect any grease forthcoming. There was another thread, related to the general topic and side issues you'd be bringing up: Why is Vegas not taken seriously? Well, if the truth, or certain aspects of the story, are told, people get uncomfortable. Does that mean people should just shut up? I mean, we mean to keep things respectful and encouraging, but the truth is the truth.

I don't really understand people who balk or chaffe at people who'd be basically agreeing with them on all but perhaps a few points, points that are also important to the composite of a realistic assessment.

On the "Sonic Foundry" product line, the "base line" number is 190, not 70, from which the whittling down of "redundnant" positions would start. So you go from, ulimately, 190 to a dozen, and Gary has basically called people to be patient, as 'we are a small staff' or to that effect.

Magix has 274 employees and 34 million in revenue. You bring up legit points, but why disparage slightly different take on the big picture ideas? We'd both agree the "big picture" is helping shape the end user experience. Why is that a "don't go there" subject area?

@D7K Just curious, how and why are you using Samplitude with Vegas?

You can important and export music files, you can bring video in to Samplitude and edit the score to fit the video. IMHO Samplitude for me is the best DAW for my purposes. The midi instruments (I work mostly with MIDI) supplied are very good and you can even use Samplitude as a scoring program if you don't have a program specifically for scoring (BTW MuseScore is free and very good). It is not a cheap program but it is very full featured and version 6 suite is a very, very powerful system. Here is a link to the Samplitude forum. Spend sometime there to get information on the various tools and typical uses from real users. I evaluated lots of DAW's and Samplitude seem to fit my needs the best.

@D7K, @Rednroll I'm going to have to wholeheartedly agree with D7K and you'd use Samplitude like ProTools, with maybe the added (and aforementioned) ability (which ProTools may do as well, haven't tried) to pretty seamlessly export/import individual sound files, like video-linked audio files, in Vegas out and back in with a round trip to Samplitude for its finer editing capabilities. (You simply choose preferred external audio editor in Vegas Preferences, from there its very easy, any file you choose will open in Samp. When you're finished the edited file replaces the orig. on the timeline, the orig. is retained on your drive, of course.) That has been in place for years, and it just works great. Again, it may work equally well with some other editors, but I've not tried any others.

I jumped onto Samp, (and quite a few others did the same) when Emagic was bought by Apple and they pulled the plug on further PC development of Logic. The good news is Samp is MUCH more powerful a program, and sonically, it is touted as probably the BEST as far as the actual sound, the actual audio output, there is just a clarity to Samplitude that exceeds others, including Protools, though you will see discussions dismissive of that idea, e.g.: "how can that be? both are just digital summing devices," but the sonic signatures are there, just the same. Switching from Logic made that IMMEDIATELY apparent. I've never looked back. (though I do like Logic, its MIDI functionality especially).

Samplitude is the real thing, some like it better than ProTools, it has gabs of features, very stable, and it's editing is second to none. Mixing is fantastic, automation very good, external controllers well integrated. Great GUI. The feature that most mentioned as setting it apart is the object level editing, each object, can act, in effect, as it's own track, with separate plug ins, stretch, pitch, volume automation, each object with it's own eq, pan settings, stereo mode choices, x-fade choices.

The ONLY feature I miss on Samplitude is MIDI voice presets, manufacturer provided, for external hardware synths, though you could, I suppose, create your own. You can, however, use a third party app for that if you'd really need such.

That is a good explanation Fred. It is indeed very good, it's Independence Sampler's instruments are very good (as good as the full midi orchestra I purchased) and SpectraLayers Pro is a useful addition for some (for those who visually like to work with wave files) . But as I said I work mainly with MIDI and to that point I use my PX-5S keyboard as a input device. For me another great feature is I can use the synth in the PX-5S to create complex files in a sound format and then using Samplitude's Melodyne tool I turn those files into midi files and can assign the instruments in Samplitude to give me a totally different presentation of the music (score) created on the PX-5S.

I am actually surprised that Magix doesn't offer both Vegas and Samplitude as a suite to small production houses that work with video and sound/music.

... and SpectraLayers Pro is a useful addition for some ...

SpectraLayers Pro 8 was released today.

@fred-w Yea, VEGAS Pro timeline and workflow is very unique and it kinda 3 in 1 ecosystem. You got NLE, Compositing & Audio DAW kinda capabilities all in 1 page. You dont need round trip like Pr/Ae or go to fusion page in Resolves If you have tons of OFX & functions come in default. It shines the most as NLE.

The benefit of Adobe Dynamic Link is that the applications participating are legit in their market segments. Audition is great for Audio Post and honestly you can't even compare VEGAS to After Effects or Fusion, which is a VFX workspace... not just some place to use OFX plug-ins (that can be done on the Edit page without issue).

The idea behind Resolve is that different industry professionals sit on their respective page, sharing the same project. It was not built for one person working across all the pages - though it absolutely can be used that way. It was built for an industry that uses Media Composer + AE + Nuke + Pro Tools + Resolve as specialist best-in-class tools across different links in the video production pipeline. You know, the people that buy BMD's outrageously expensive hardware.

This is why it uses Pages. People editing motion picture generally are Editors, not VFX Artists or Audio Post Engineers... or Colorists. At that level of the market, people specialize. The Pages allow each module to have a UX that is tailored to the type of work being done by the individual doing the work, e.g. the use of Nodes instead of Layers on the Fairlight (VFX) Page.

To a lesser extent, the same could be said of Creative Cloud.

Resolve and Adobe's apps are functionally far more deep than VEGAS Pro. Having this all crammed into one top-level page (or one application, in Adobe's case) would be severely overwhelming to most people. Sometimes, having some semblance (or literal) separation is a good thing.

I think they did it right by keeping VEGAS Post as discrete applications, instead of trying to merge them together.

VEGAS Post Suite is more comparable to Resolve than VEGAS Pro, being objective.

But this playback thingy, is what make VEGAS Pro not in favor in bigger industry. No matter what your machine configuration is, it will just stutter the playback and some point of the edits. Not to mention the trimmer window I cant get normal smooth playback.

What makes VEGAS not in favor in bigger industry are things beyond the playback. Like support for industry standard CODECs, reliable interchange format implementation, the ability to run on Macs, and until really recently the ability to work with high raster video footage. Additionally, it's not a collaborative NLE. There's a reason why companies like Avid, Adobe and Grass Valley have invested so much in infrastructure or solutions for collaboration. The addition of Collaboration was a huge help to Resolve from a marketing perspective... simply for it existing.

It doesn't hurt that it is one of the two industry-standard color grading platforms, either, and was already installed everywhere in its primary target market. Resolve's uptake in the prosumer/consumer market had more to do with the massive price drops BMD introduced, and the very generous Free SKU.

I don't think the playback performance matters, at that level of the market, because VEGAS Pro is eliminated from consideration before these people even bother to run it and see how it performs. Downmarket, it's hard to compete with free, especially as PCs, year over year, get increasingly powerful - siphoning away some of VEGAS Pro's biggest advantage (its ability to run well on common consumer PC hardware).

It's not easy to fix that main problem from what I know as it used old coding system kinda stuff (I'm not a programmer). I still have hope that one day, VEGAS wont have laggy playback just like Pr or Resolves.

VEGAS' playback performance is what I would expect out of a DAW... Like Cubase, or Cakewalk or Pro Tools. It's not what you'd expect out of a video editor, and the lack of attention paid to such a critical area of the application (that makes itself so obviously noticeable to anyone who even trials the application) is disappointing. It costs too much (particularly LTCO) to perform at that level.

You can important and export music files, you can bring video in to Samplitude and edit the score to fit the video. IMHO Samplitude for me is the best DAW for my purposes. The midi instruments (I work mostly with MIDI) supplied are very good and you can even use Samplitude as a scoring program if you don't have a program specifically for scoring (BTW MuseScore is free and very good). It is not a cheap program but it is very full featured and version 6 suite is a very, very powerful system. Here is a link to the Samplitude forum. Spend sometime there to get information on the various tools and typical uses from real users. I evaluated lots of DAW's and Samplitude seem to fit my needs the best.

Thanks, was wondering what you were missing from Vegas, but as soon as you said scoring music to video and Midi it made a lot of sense.

I recently have been getting more into virtual synths, very familiar working with midi and outboard gear. Mostly just for writing music and not doing any music to video work. Been slowly but surely trying to move everything inside the box. My original thought was that I was going to use Acid Pro since I'm familiar with it and is similar all the way around to Vegas. I dread the thought of learning yet another program. However, the 1st set of virtual synths I installed was Waves Inspire Virtual Instruments Collection. All the instrument plugins showed up in Acid Pro, but only 3 out of the 10 actually loaded when I inserted them into a track. So wondering if something went wrong during the install of the plugins, I decided to install Reaper. Fired up the same virtual synth plugins in Reaper and they loaded and played fine. So I'm highly reconsidering if continuing to attempt using AP10 is going to be a continued experience of plugins just not working inside of Acid or if I should just move on and start learning something else.

I'll likely start using Reaper more, but the little things of unfamiliarity are already starting to add up. Reaper is very configurable but almost too configurable. For instance, I was trying to get the UI to look/feel more like Vegas. The 1st thing that bothered me were round pan controls instead of a slider adjustment. I've learned to adapt to using a mouse with round controls by clicking on them and adjusting with my mouse wheel. Try that on Reaper pan knobs..nope, pan control doesn't move. Then I dig into the preference settings and find that is a configurable preference. I'm sure Reaper will do everything I need, but those little differences become time consuming frustrations.