Me too. Here's why:
Cross-platform, uses industry standards, and has been used on numerous Hollywood and indie features of note.

Agree with VTG regarding Vegas Pro 8c and although I didn't uograde to it, Riredale with Vegas 9.

After that from what I have been reading on these forums there probably are other choices. But some of the others are GPU dependent as well. Of course Vegas 8 and 9 are still available. Until SCS rethinks their priorities I have no desire to either upgrade or switch NLE software. I do use Sorenson Squeeze for QT files, but that's about it. Vegas will never handle those properly.

You do get some people that are unrealistic though. Years ago when I bought Vegas 2 and 3 I started posting my beginner's difficulties on this forum and some people insisted that Vegas was "so intuitive" everything should explain itself. No software of this type is "intuitive" so one has to learn it's quirks and workarounds. That is why the forum is key.

I love this forum and the people on it and for that reason I will never switch.

John

For me I haven't found an alternative to Vegas 10. Between Vegas 10, Blender, Gimp & Syntheyes, I do everything I NEED to do. There's other stuff I want to do but it's never been needed.

>>>DDM, I'm fascinated by the world of professional video editing (by "professional" I mean where large budgets are involved).

I wouldn't ever use the work "panic", I've rarely ever seen that, I've felt it a few times, but done my best to conceal it. As far as time constraints go, I think it goes hand in hand with anything that actually has an "air date". Take sitcoms as an example, the season starts with a fair amount of time between that first shot episode and the night it airs, but like all things, as time goes by, that window gets smaller and smaller. But even if there is a good amount of time, everything has a schedule, it must, almost everyone involved is a freelance employee. The director, lets say, he needs to finish up his work on an episode in a timely fashion, he just doesn't keep coming in until the show is done, same thing with the camera crew, we shoot an episode in 2 days, period. If everything doesn't get shot, then that's a big deal, if falls on someone else's episode, everything just rolls downhill. Post production time must be booked, the top quality houses can't really accommodate a show that constantly has to push back it's sessions, etc. TV production is generally a well oiled machine, the line producers job is to deliver on budget and that just flows down to every department, nothing new, really. If you do big budget feature films then that changes, but even then, costs are tightly controlled. Some things, like special effects can spiral out of control because many times they are asked to do things that have never been done and are subject to getting them right.

As far as equipment failures, that's another area where Avid just really shines, I means, TV production of this type is really alot like factory work, it has to get done, each stage, and passed off to the next stage, and Avid delivers, the hardware works, or there are countless rental houses that are available 24/7, in fact most Avid systems used off line by each production is usually leased or there is a service contract with a rental house so there is no down time. Of course, all things fail at times but emergency solutions are readily available.

>>>THERE IS NO alternative to VegasPro 8.0b version even in products put out by SCS.<<<

Yes there is, Vegas 8.0c!

Im still on 8.0c waiting for the next stable release. It's so stable and trouble free on the footage I edit, there still isnt any reason to move on. Also, the primary editing PC is running XP Pro 32bit. So that will need an update too at some point to XP Pro 64 bit.

For me the alternative was Media Composer. Love the way it handles media, love the speed you can develop with it, love that I can motion track and do compositing right there and the effects are very strong as well.

No more squeezing this bit of footage into this gap between these two clips...ugh. Messy process. Keyboard cutting baby!


JJM

P.S. I still have a place in my heart for 'fun' Vegas as people have called it.

No more squeezing this bit of footage into this gap between these two clips...ugh

If you've selected the space (a doubleclick in the gap will do it) you want to fill and then press "A" while in the trimmer, your trimmer clip fills the space. Seems pretty simple to get a piece of footage into a gap. But the trimmer has been maturing lately and I don't know if it always worked this well.

Rob

No one here even acknowledges Grass Valley Edius
Why not download the 30 day trial of Edius 6.5 and wait to be amazed by stability and speed of export to various formats
The original poster asked for alternative
Check it out

I think someone up there acknowledged Edius. I was looking for it after Dan's initial Haiku since people often DO mention it as a good choice.

<Edit> It was Leslie who mentioned it, but kind of as the best of 2nd choices.</edit>

Rob

and still stick to it - vegas 1st, edius 2nd ;-)

JimboWHO,

Had heard of Media Composer and since you brought it up, I went and checked out the features, etc. Looks nice but.... t'ain't cheap: USD 1000 (OK, fine, technically $999). My first version of Vegas was the legit and legal v.6 for USD $99 (discs only) at B&H... :)

Switched to Edius via a cross grade after the fiasco with VP11. Some 15 months down the line Edius is now my editor of choice. However still use DVDA to produce BD & DVD's & VP for compositing.

Edius/GV forum is well supported with a strong GV presence which I'm sure helps.

Inclined to put Edius 1st & VP 2nd

After playing with the Edius trial, I agree with the comments about rendering speed and overall stability. If I had time to learn a new workflow, Edius is tempting. But nothing is like Vegas when it works.

An early post mentioned Lightworks. It's been over a year since I tried it and there may have been some improvements since then. At the time it struck me as somewhere between virtual flatbed film editing and early 90's Avid. It was like punishment.

Agree with diverG Edius is my main NLE
1 is Edius 2 is Premiere CS 6 and 3 VP 12 pro
VP 12 is better than 11 and there are a few nice features I wouldnt mind
Seeing in others

It ain't cheap you're right. I went and upgraded my video card and RAM to 24 GB in an attempt to do it correctly. I was looking for a 10 year fix, throwing in with MC for the long haul.

I got tired of the crashes and the utterly unresponsive support from SCS. I kept getting backed up - the frustrations piled up and the calendar didn't stop.

I've become completely enamored with Media Composer for better or worse. Version 7 is gonna be great.


JJM

"[I]I was looking for a 10 year fix...[/I]"

If I could predict technology futures 10 years in advance, I'd move to New York and get a job on Wall Street where I could make some real money.

Gotta say one of the things I really like about this board is that people can say "Vegas is lousy, and Adobe or Apple or whoever are great" and the message isn't censored by Sony. They would certainly be within their rights to censor, but they don't.

The other comment I'd make, and this is not meant to be critical in the least, is my confusion as to why 24GB of ram would ever be needed. I guess I'm just way behind the curve, but my 2GB system does and has done some very sophisticated video projects (2+ hours, lots of video tracks, color correction, 4-channel surround) with plenty of ram to spare. My work is in HDV and V9--could that explain the difference? Oh, and I don't use any paging memory.

Yes , but when I read some of the comments in this forum , where people expect
to surf on internet , have microsoft office running , email running , antivirus running , photoshop running , and even more running and then in parallel running vegas on a 'home' PC , they will have MUCH more problems running avid.

Have a look what avid recommends when having avid installed on a monster workstation HP Z820 to have it run optimal and without crashes .
( same counts for any other editing software actually )

http://resources.avid.com/supportfiles/attach/AVID_HP_Z820_Config_guide_MC_Symphony%206.x%20_NewsCutter%2010.x.pdf

I follow these rules on both my dell and hp workstations ( see my specs ) which are
only and solely meant for editing .
Have no problems with the fast sony vegas pro 10,11or 12
( 27 services are running only , so the bare minimum )

By the way , in the avid forum , one should have a look about the ( many ) complaints MC6.5 crashing .

The grass might look greener , seen from far away ......

And lots of RAM does speed up things in preview for sure , it can do without but with , it boosts preview many times more than using GPU ( also in after effects )

[I]"Have a look what avid recommends when having avid installed on a monster workstation HP Z820 to have it run optimal and without crashes . "[/I]

Where are the specifications for such as system to run Vegas?

This has been asked for by so many, so many times, one has to reach the conclusion that such information is not supplied only to maintain plausible denial of responsibility by SCS for their product's flaws.

Bob.

Bob seems to make an excellent (incriminating?) point above. Seems to me he had a habit of such things back when I frequented this forum more often.

Also, the "qualified workstations" etc that Avid suggests are meant to provide the community with a tested, proven platform. There are plenty of MC users who are running without incident on 'non-compliant' set-ups.

To John Dennis above, that (Wall Street) has been my vocation for 30 years and I'm here to tell you it ain't all it's cracked up to be. Photography and video is an interest that I've come to love at this later age. Perhaps it was the third major meltdown/crash in my career that did it!


JJM

A great thread, and here are my thoughts:

1. I'm glad I'm not the only one still using, making a living from, and not considering upgrading from Vegas 8. It is solid, and aside from 1080 60p and BCC not working, a great piece of software, day in and out.

2. I recently participated in a huge project, that involved a lot of post on Edius. I only cataloged stuff that I shot (100 hours or so). My experience with Edius is that it is also prone to crashing on large projects, and that is without heavy editing but only media management. I believe it is more stable than later Vegas versions, but everything has its limits!

3. As far as alternatives to Vegas, I like both PPro and Avid above Edius. Just my 2 cents.

kairosmatt

Well, not a pro software but has anyone experience with Coral Draw's latest VideoStudio Ultimate X6? I know they bought over Media Studio Pro a long time ago which used to be my favorite editing software in the late 90s; I did as many things as Vegas 5 could do at that time and it was cheaper. I may still have MSP 8 somewhere but I doubt it will run Win7.