Chienworks,

> Seeker: those examples are just shortening, not really changing. People are always abbreviating. <

They may be shortenings, but both Coke and Pepsi have demonstrated how important they think name recognition is for financial success. And they have not hesitated to "shorten" theirs. Perhaps Vegas Video should be shortened to just Vegas. That would solve the audio/video bias.

Cheesehole asked

"does anyone know of any successful products that used to be named something lame?"

Cakewalk did a major shift when they went from the "Cakewalk Pro Audio" series to the new name of "Sonar". They did this without missing a beat. It's possible, but I personally think that Vegas, while not the best name, could work. The problem, as stated before, is the lack of marketing. Especially to the Pro/Prosumers.

"Is a 24p HD version anywhere on SF's horizon by any chance?"

I thought you could use any resolution you want in Vegas. Or are you refering to something else?

I believe the current max project resolution is 800x800...

HTH, MPH

I checked and you are right. I had no idea. Makes me wonder why, I mean, what is the reason for that limit? Probably because you'd have a hard time getting anything bigger captured to .avi, but what if I don't want to print to tape, and really need higher resolution (maybe for titling something for HDTV)? Seems to me that would work fine if it wasn't for that limit.

Changing the name of Vegas won't accomplish a thing, if you really want to attract more up-scale clients, the ONLY name that matters is AVID. For better or worse, AVID absolutely dominates the professional editing market and no amount of marketing by Sonic Foundry (or anyone else) is going to change this. Also, anyone with Avid experience can walk into any pro post house and get some work done. Vegas, Premiere, Media Studio Pro or Pinnacle's new EDITION software are niche products aimed at the corporate, wedding or mid-level video producers. These software packages will NEVER make any significant headway into the high-end market, EVER.

Long before Vegas, I tried to convince clients that I could use Premiere to do exactly what they needed, but that argument fell flat on its face, Premiere isn't Avid and neither is Vegas. Don't get me wrong, Vegas is a great piece of software and I prefer it to Avid, but whatever its name, its not Avid and Avid is the name to which clients respond.

The price of Avid admission starts at about $1,500.

John

Rather bleek outlook i must say. I don't think anybody here has suggested that Vegas be pitched to be the app of choice for Episode III. Professional refers to one that makes a living doing this. Corporate videos, Wedding videographers, commercials, music videos etc.. are all examples of professional video work. What people are saying here is that Vegas has the potential to be known as the best editor for these types of productions. The original poster was just stating that it is frustrating when his clients raise an eyebrow because he is not using FCP, premiere etc...

I do not do this on a professional scale yet. I am currently working on projects to build a starting portfolio that I can use to eventually, make this my career. I have tried Premiere, I have dabbled with FCP and I must say that I have found Vegas to be better hands down. I have found no reason, for what I plan to be doing, to consider any other editor. Being that I enjoy Vegas so much and that I plan to use it in my future career, I want it to grow, advance or at least still exist in the future. I would be devasted if Vegas eventually faded away because SOFO could not gain enough Market Share. To gain Market share you must define your market and then advertise to it. We all know what Vegas' market is and we all know what it isn't. Vegas' market is not Hollywood. Vegas' market is the "mid level producers". knowing that it just would be nice if SOFO would capture what we all know it can....enough market share to be considered the AVID of the "mid levelers"

George Lucas States "no one has heard of it [vegas video] in Hollywood" This a testament to how name specific people are when it comes to product interest. I say this because SOFO claims to have a stronghold in the Film industry. From their website we read, "Sonic Foundry maintains a strong reputation and stellar list of brand name customers in the entertainment industry, such as 20th Century Fox, MGM, Sony, Warner Bros., HBO, and many others. In addition to image processing, the company offers a unique set of technology-based media management and distribution related services for film and television."

So Hollywood is indeed using SOFO products, but no one has heard of Vegas Video. Obviously they are not aggressive enough in their marketing, and I think most of us realize this, or are at least beginning to realize this. Some others in this post are far too Self-absorbed and naive about client relations to ever realize this.

"What's in a name ?/ A rose by any other name still costs $75/ dozen."

I remember Paul McCartney released an album once under a another name... Didn't sell !!

I've resisted reading this thread for a while now. But bored today.
Both sides are right. It's the END product that counts.. not how we get there.

The general public doesn't care how or where Celine Dion recorded herlast hit.
At the same time...how many of us musicians go STRAIGHT for the liner notes when we get a new CD to see what's behind it.

Western Society is driven by hype. And there's nothing we can do about it here.. so why don't we all just get back to work
(told ya I was bored)

A quick fix: Rename your desktop Icon for Vegas Video to a different title that pleases you. Then if a client asks what you are using, you can tell them the flashy new name you created and tell them its a Sonic Foundry product that is one of the most popular editing products in the market.


How's that? :)

Silly.

I'll get back to work as soon as I fire up my copy of Sonic Foundry's Final Xpress Studio X...

- jim

John Cline wrote:

<<Changing the name of Vegas won't accomplish a thing, if you really want to attract more up-scale clients, the ONLY name that matters is AVID... Don't get me wrong, Vegas is a great piece of software and I prefer it to Avid, but whatever its name, its not Avid and Avid is the name to which clients respond.>>

I don't know if you intended to write it this way, but it came out contradicting. There are probably many reasons why AVID is widely recognized and Vegas isn't. The fact is, name recognition is important and marketing the name along with the product features is what sells it. However, there are many types of marketing skeems. SF has chosen, for whatever reason, not to mass-market Vegas Video. Before purchasing VideoFactory a couple years ago, I didn't even know Sonic Foundry existed and I live in Wisconsin where SF is located. I found it by doing a web search on video editing. I never considered Premiere because of the price tag, but I had at least heard of it before. Ulead was the other I found, but it took all my intestinal fortitude to keep from bashing in the computer screen trying to get it VS to work how I wanted. I decided on VF because it was cheap and blew away even the higher priced apps as well as having the Vegas engine. I later updated to Vegas Video in order to do more video tracks and other advanced stuff. I agree with both sides on this topic. If you try it you'll like it, but on the other side, if you don't know about it you can't try it. It's like the old saying "What cam first, the chicken or the egg?" I have found that SF has a target niche in mid-level pros. They save their money on expensive advertising and put it into R&D. They count on word of mouth through forums and acedemic use to sell their product. The point of all this is that their marketing could be better to sell to those that do not know about the product. A step in the right direction is partnering with Canopus to bundle VV LE with their DV products. This has been done for years by Ulead and even though their product sucks, people use it and upgrade to the full versions.

If SF is serious about VV, they will market the hell out of it and only then will they see their market share increase. If you don't believe me, take a marketing clas some time.

Vegas connotes no windows, no clocks, addiction etc.---Perfect name for an NLE.

Anyhow, I had a little conversation with the marketing head of Sonic about the name and he told me that its no wierder then Flame, Smoke, Videotoaster etc----He refused to tell me how the name originated--Maybe in celebration of the first version they took the programmers to Vegas---

The obsession with the product's name a few have is really starting to get annoying.
I can see people beefing about some feature, or lack of same. I can understand if something is broken. Some whining about the name of the product? Give me a break.

I further bet those beefing never worked in marketing in any capacity in their life. Hint.

I remember seeing VV2 at Best Buy a year and a half ago. I looked at the package, thought the interface looked cool, but then thought, heck, this is a audio company. I don't think so.

Well, then VV3 came out, and I've heard nothing but praise for it. I have the demo that I play with all the time. I've got a demo disc of Pinnacle Edition coming to me, and then I'll decide between the two.

I used to feel sorry for Sonic Foundry. Here they have a great product, and it's not marketed. B&H has it, but it's not included in their list of NLE's, you have to seek it out specifically. But as I've read in this thread, little marketing means more profit that they hold on to. I just hope they're making enough.

Billyboy,

Why does this annoy you so much. I don't understand how a forum can be annoying. If you don't agree with the posters, then you have two choices, either post your opinion or just simply stop opening this thread. I don't think the people in this or the other post are whining. None of us work at SOFO and I doubt any of us actually believe that they are going to suddenly change their product name on the advice of a few posts. These posts are half in fun and half in love for the product. Whether SOFO should change the name , market more or do nothing it doesn't matter. Forums are a place to get help, give help, seek opinions, give opinions and yes, conversate (uh, I guess you would call it conversation???) Anyways, don't take it so seriously man.

I AM expressing my opinion and it seems you don't like it.

A better question is why the forum currently has several threads all dealing with marketing and the name of the software. I'm not annoyed, more ammused that some people have nothing better to do. I'll give you the same advice, don't read my posts, if they annoy you so much, which apparently they do. Further "Forums are a place to get help, give help, seek opinions" Indeed they are. So how does this thread fit in? It don't. My opinion. Ok?

Billyboy,

I apologise if my post seemed negative towards you in any way. I didn't mean it in that way. I do respect your opinion, you are a regular here and I have learned a ton from this forum and from your advice as well. I was just pointing out that these threads exist again, half in fun and half in love of VV3. Do these threads help anyone, probably not. Do they hurt anything, probably not. If some of us want to type a couple lines pretending that we should be in charge of marketing at SOFO then really, whats the harm? If some of us want to throw in a couple name suggestions here and ther then again, what's the harm?
You are right in that all of us here managed to find Vegas and become addicted to it so their marketing and name must've worked for us right? I agree. But again, its all in good fun. Please take no offense.

I too have resisted joining this 'conversation', but at 2:00am I also have nothing better to do. Ok the project I am editing could be done, but I am mentally cooked.

Avid earned its place by being an offline editor. To do that job, export of EDL's that were compatable with other systems was important. After all, who would edit on a computer? What a silly thing to do. Well if I can save a few dollars by preping the EDL for the on-line bay and demoing the output then I will use the tool. That's what we all said. Soon many directors etc starting using Avids for off-line. Now there was a large base of people who have touched the system and are familiar with it.

Mid level folks want the name of the equipment and are impressed by it. Big time folks look for the transfer type between stages. If I delivered an EDL compatable with Avid or CMX, then no one would care what it was done on. You would simply say, I will deliver an Avid EDL. With the low cost of VV, people would naturally migrate to it.

If SF was looking to push into the higher market, which btw they may not want to because it is a lot of headaches for very little return, the next step would be compatable EDL's. That has been the only comment I really agree with. That would allow us to do off-line HDTV etc. But then again, down-converting to DV screws up the master timecode anyway. I guess VV is headed the right way as a stand alone post production solution, unless you would be silly enough to take your DVCAM tapes to an on-line bay for final assembly.

Sell your finished product, not your process. If your clientel bites on equipment names, then to keep your market, use that equipment. It really is your only choice. The successful users and post houses are the ones that spread the word about the great tools. Until they(we) spread the buzz, it will not be accepted. We have to sell the product to clientel, not SF. They can't. Clientel read SF's stuff and discount it as hype. The reviews have been good. SF has been getting it in front of the right reviewers. Ok they could bribe B&H to get a better floor position. SF changing the name will not make any difference.

SF may be looking to stay in the market they are in, which is a good one, until computer speed jumps up in a little while. They are actually well positioned development wise to take advatage of the speeding technology growth. Others with hardware assist etc have big hurdles to cross everytime the computer gets more powerful.

I now slide into my flame proof suit. Fire away.

K

As a reseller of NLE products I have only this to say - flames, no flames, whatever. Since the advent of realtime hardware assisted captured cards I have been most happy for the lack of rendering. I know everyone is going to throw out the hype of realtime previews, but that isn't true realtime. It's just realtime on the CRT in a little monitor window within the NLE software.

Sure, computers are getting faster and faster so rendering may not be that annoying to many users. It certainly hasn't seemed to bother Mac users - who even claim their systems are realtime because the video plays back on the timeline - they still have to render for final output. Even many of the realtime cards on todays market only give realtime output to the analog devices, still forcing you to render before output to the 1394 device.

I like Vegas Video very much and find it easy to use. But, I have been working with non-linear editing since 1989, and I can begin to edit on any software without reading the manual first. In truth, NLE software is all very nearly the same in fundamental application, whether it's Mac or PC based. If your clients can see what the capabilities of your system are then they will appreciate what it can do much more easily. If the only example of it's output capabilities are the realtime preview on the desktop in that little monitor - true, they may not be so impressed.

When I do demos for Pinnacle Systems, Matrox, DPS, or NewTek there is always a very large monitor there in front of the crowd, and whatever changes I make to the video can be seen by all - instantaneously. Considering that many are completely satisfied with SVHS there is little worry where rendering is concerned. If they want it on any higher format, that depends on the NLE card proper. Then only upper level Avid, DigiSuite, Velocity 3D, or VideoToaster on the PC, and maybe the Ignitor for Mac. But, at that point we have left Vegas Video, Media Studio, and Adobe Premiere behind for the most part.

But, to finally make my point, whether you like the Vegas Video interface or whether your clients seem to approve of what package you use - getting the final product in their sweaty little hands should be paramount to the situation. But bear in mind, letting them know you cannot actually work in realtime may give them some concern as to how much of their money is going toward waiting for a render - when they want to pay for in studio productivity. It may not necessarily be that they don't understand the differences.

Having the ability to immediately output to any device at the exact moment the editing is done is way better for you (because you can get paid more often) and way better for them (because they get their product quicker). Whether you have an NLE software preference or not.

I too avoided reading this thread for a LONG time. I saw the subject and thought...what a waste of time. Well, that's just what I'm doing now.. wasting time.

Hey.. folks work hard, they deserve to gripe if they want and have some fun if they want. Especially if it's not hurting anyone and can do it at their own convievince.

If and when I feel this threat stupid, annoying, a waste of time, or no longer fun I can then chose to not read it. But I'm NOT going to tell someone they can't have it.
That's MY opinion.