BillyBoy is right on. He is very knowledgeable about video, has a site with tutorials, provided a ton of info in a no BS manor. He is like what I'm used to being from New England, very "matter of fact". When I decided to pursue the video end of Vegas I learned a lot from him.

About a year or a little less ago, a bunch of warm and fuzzies on the Video forum mounted an attack on him to ban him from the forum even posting new topics on the issue which turned into very long bashing threads. I felt sorry for BillyBoy, he was hurt after all the FREE aid he provided that he actually stayed away from the forum for a good period of time. I'm glad he's back but he's not as enthusiastic as he was which is a shame.

Someone posted something like "BillyBoy vs Rednroll will be a hoot" in here a few days back. I said to myself, nah, if anything they'll get along.

MJ

Man, I gotta say I find the whole ‘fortress Sony’ approach in general pretty over the top...I was just talking to someone about this yesterday.

I’ll say this in as a constructive way as possible...holding up hands...not having a go here, just making an observation:

Sometimes the Sony folk seem very, very sensitive to any criticism. Sometimes they even seem sensitive to other points of view.

It has totally weirded me out about this place for a long time.

I know what it is like, I’ve been around the block a thousand times. I’ve been involved in countless product forums before both as regular punter and a beta tester. I totally know how irrational, myopic, unrealistic and selfish users can be.

But man, the amount of times I feel like I have tried to partake in a perfectly rational, constructive conversation about an issue only to be greeted with the old ‘up go the shutters’ routine.

I don’t know if it is just me...if I rub them up the wrong way or something. Does anyone else ever get this feeling.

...Really fellas tell me. Am I that annoying? (Shut up red, don’t you answer that! :-) )

Weevil, I knew you weren't being sarcastic, Red, no worries. I've been to Detroit.
Yeah. They (Sony) should just be upfront about what they are or aren't going to do. It's the only way anyone can make an informed decision. I absolutely appreciate Peter's intelligence and earnest approach, but really, when you buy a program and its upgrade path you buy the future and who wants to buy a future cloaked in silence, mystery, and swamp gas?
Can you say "pig in a poke?"

I don't think Sony is alone in their approach to not informing users as to what they are up to. The same complaining goes on in the Cubase/Nuendo forums as far as I have read. See "Input Monitoring" over in the Nuendo forum.

As Klyon stated, Vegas is so easy when it comes to comping. And what other program does everything that Vegas does on both Video and Audio side? Will they get to BWF? Probably. Then maybe ReWire and everything else that is being asked for. But it's not all coming in one upgrade.

Vegas has never claimed to be going after the ProTools/Nuendo market. They even pulled product out of MI. What does that tell you? But every time I decide that another product would be better for me, I keep coming back. I'll pay the $150.00 (or in my case, $250.00) out of support alone.

Case in point: I have to get up to speed on the Video side of things quickly as I just have added to a steady vocal session. My client also promotes live shows (fashion and music) and I now have the gig to create a Comp DVD of those shows. He was excited to hear that I upgraded to the DVD package. Nuendo is not going to help me there.

I'll give you some of my personal experience of a right way and a wrong way to have a constructive discussion with the Sony guys. If there's something you don't like about Vegas or feel it could use some improvement with the way you like to work, or if there's some new feature you feel you've got to have...then the wrong way to do it, is to say...."This other competitors software has it, and since it's in there I feel I have to have it." You need to give a good reason why you feel it needs to be in there, and how you're currently limited without it and give an example how you would use this feature. If they come back and say, well yeah we know it's not in there, but you can achieve the same thing by doing A,B, and C, so yeah it's a good suggestion but, we're failing to see how you're currently limited, except for being too stubborn to look at other alternatives . You shouldn't take the defensive and say, "Well I shouldn't have to do that, I don't have to do all that in this other product". So the obvious reply to that is, "well yeah we can throw all the features in there like the other products, but then you'ld also wind up with the messy interface and non-intuitive workflow like in the other product too. "

Here's some feedback that I gave when I started using Vegas v1.0 and I like to think that a lot of the powerful editing features that are currently in Vegas is due to the details I presented of how I work, and how I was currently limited and How adding this feature helped overcome it.

This has to do with the current slip editing features in Vegas. I was working in a studio that used AMS Neve audiofiles for digital editors, doing a lot of radio commercial production. While the audiofile, is nothing glamerous in features compared to the rest of the DAW tools today, it had some effecient editing features.

My example: The first part of the commercial production is to edit your music track together that will act as a bed behind the voiceover. Radio commercials are 60 seconds long. You grab a CD of canned music off the shelf and it's 31/2 minutes long, so you need to edit that down and make it sound like it was meant to fit in the 60 second spot. To do that you usually take a very short part of the intro, cut that into the body of the song, and then at the end you slap on the outro, or stinger to give it a kind of grand finale ending. So you cut off the top "split feature", then you start a "loop" around that edit point where I want to "slip edit" the "tail" part of the song that is less intrusive, so it won't interfer with the voice over part and make sure everythings musicaly on time. Then when it get's close to a good edit I use the "nudge" event to move the edit in 1 frame at a time (ie num keys 1&3) Sometimes it doesn't work out perfectly so you need to use the "automatic cross fades" feature along with the "edge trimming mode" to make it less obtrusive and put a little fudge factor in there or you move back to the intro and slip edit the "head" of the music in just past the intro to make it fit better. Of course, when I'm doing that I'ld like to increase/decrease the crossfade factors for the fudge edit to make it less noticeable. So then if I'm lucky after this the music won't do any crazy movements for the next 55 seconds, but if it does I can easily do another split and "slip edit" that part out until it reaches a non obtrusive part. Then I "locate my cursor to 58 seconds", where I do another "split", then locate to the end of the song and move back 2 seconds to "split" the stinger off, and "delete" the part inbetween 58 seconds and the 2 second stinger. Then I move the stinger onto the tail of the last edit "ie event snapping". Then I try to make those sound musical. What I usually do is make a cut on the head event just before the "1", then I the tail stinger I cut it so it hits on the "1". So when I snap event them together they're musically correct. The problem is that edits on the "1", sometimes sound too abrupt because of musical transistions. So what I'll do then is leave the events where they are and move the edit point off of the "1" and closer to "4" or the "&" of the "4". So that would be the move edit point feature. Well, I finally get that all done and my music edit happens to be 60.5 seconds long. Now I have 2 options, use the event fade feature to do a quick fade of the stinger, or I take my entire edit and "group" ALL the events and timecompress them all together for a perfect 60 second edit. Now I'm done with that edit and we want to make 6 versions of that commercial for 6 different regions of the country it's playing in. So I copy that group, and now I can move all those edits together and copy and past them later on down the timeline.

So anyways in that one simple edit example I've utilized quite a few edit features that are in Vegas now, but weren't in v1.0. 1. I'm able to slip edit on either side of a cut point 2. I used the automatic crossfade option and then am able to increase or decrease that crossfade amount through both events. 3. I slip edited parts out that I didn't want 4. I moved the edit point, while leaving the musical timing. 5. I did multiple loop playbacks around an edit point and slip edited while looping around that edit point. 6. Used the Group feature and simultaneously time compressed multiple events. 7. Used Event snapping feature. 8. Used the nudge event feature for fine adjustment editing 9. Used the event ASR 10. Used the repeat paste feature 11. Used the event edge trim mode option.

So along with those details of what I needed, I gave a real world working example, showed how I wasn't able to effeciently accomplish the same thing with the current features, and gave further details of how the feature works, so they could better understand what I'm looking to accomplish.


It's just that simple :-)

I went to AES the winter before last, and the guys from Samplitude where showing me all the great editing features in Samplitude 7.0. Within 5 minutes, I pointed out 4 editing features in that simple edit example above that their software still couldn't do and I gave them the real world application for it. They frantically grabbed their pens and started writing them down. They couldn't timecompress multple events, they couldn't slip edit on both sides of the edit point, they couldn't move the edit point between 2 events, they couldn't do a trim mode nudge and they couldn't put CD track ID's in a project. They told me, well no one has those editing features yet....I said Vegas does...they said "Vegas?"...I said Yeah...right.

I'm backing Rednroll on this one, he knows what he's talking about. He was the first to reply when I had a question, and always had the answer. It's well worth the $150 to upgrade. I know, I've been using 2.0 and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and when I got the offer to upgrade, I was wondering if I needed the new features. I emailed support, and they said it was up to me, but to at least download the trail version, and give it a try. It didnt take me long to realize I could really use 5.0. I'm just a regular working musician with a mortgage payment, a wife & 2 kids, $150 is hard to give up, trust me, I know, but it's well worth it.

Outstanding approach! This will get our attention.

Red is right in that the "Suendo" does this, or "LogicTools " does that is not a compelling argument. We are - or at least I am - very aware of what the other guys are doing. There are MANY things this other tools do that are outstanding and that I would like to see us approach. However, we have never been about keeping up bullet item to bullet item. Just doesn't make for good software IMHO.

The only thing else I would add to what Red states is that language and detail are important. Never assume we get your particular workflow or needs. There are so many ways to do the same thing and what one person calls one thing is entirely different than what we or somebody else calls it.

Also, while the convention of hardware is important, it is not a driving force. We strive for a happy middle between the old school hardware approach and the flexablity of the software approach. I personally love standards and in many cases making things comfortable for those that are use to a 24 channel mixer and 24 tracks of tape is a solid approach, realize there are many who don't even own a mixer and have little or no experiance with patchbays, preamps, or the other things we old farts take for granted. Software DAWs are stuck in that they have to follow old paradigms and develope new ones, risking both the old and the new from hating how it is done.

Peter

Yeah red mate, I know the routine, I’ve beta tested more audio apps than I could poke a stick at and I’ve always had excellent communications and relations with the companies involved.

In comparison this place always seems to me to be more uptight and defensive than it needs to be...like I say, just an observation, not an accusation.

I feel like there have been plenty of times that I’ve carefully layed out my approach to a Vegas topic. Generally whenever I do that I feel that my question or issue gets ignored.

...I’m quite sure that if my initial post in the ‘first impressions’ thread had been non-provocative it would have been ignored...just as my second post was.

"Never assume we get your particular workflow or needs."

Exactly, and I see that all the time in these forums. A prime example is over in the Vegas Video forum in a post titled "storyboarding". There's a gal overthere insisting she can't live without storyboarding in the way she works, to her it's an eccential editing feature. Now, I'll be the first to admit I'm no Video editor, but I have worked with a few Video editors in my time and I have a totally different perspective of what "storyboarding" is. So I'm trying to relate that too, what she's asking for in Vegas. Then with the way I'm picturing storyboarding, I'm having a hardtime understanding why she can't already achieve that. So I posed the question, "what is storyboarding". I even gave an analogy of what I was picturing she wanted. Now this gal posted a good 15 messages saying how she needed to have this feature, and not even once did she give a description of what it is, even after I posed the question.

Maybe Peter has a better idea of what it is she was talking about, I have no idea?

you gotta love a thread like this. Hmmm, is $150 worth the upgrade? Definately a question of principle and not money I think. For those of us for whom Vegas runs smoothly this is one of the silliest questions out there. But for those of us for whom Vegas only runs so-so, it's a good question indeed. I think we all agree that no two Vegas users get to run Vegas the same way with the same performance, there's too many variables. If a system has monitoring problems that someone like kylon is noticing, the problem is probably legit on that system. Such a basic feature like monitoring not working right for a user can taint his/her view on everything else.

BillyBoy - awesome posts just like Rednroll. And I think someone was questioning Red's opinion on bedroom studios, you can drop that line. Red has given me a lot of help/advice on and off this forum that has put my work into a whole other space. And I have no gold records..just some black ones. Just put on your thick skin and deal with it. Knowledge is power.

too much politics...

Engineering is about science


A TOOL is what the operator makes of it.

Cosmo... I'm not having trouble with the monitoring; I was just talking about relative feature importance. Too me, even when functioning properly, the delay of software monitoring is just too long (after a lifetime of hardware monitoring); ASIO direct monitoring seems to work better.
But that's beside the point: If even one person finds it valuable and loves it I'm happy for them and it's a wonderful addition.
I'm basically just letting my inner curmudgeon vent: I'm pissed that I have to keep using Sonar for projects that come in OMF format and anytime I need to use a combination of live audio and softsynths. And that I don't positively know that Vegas will *ever* support Rewire and OMF.
Just being a selfish bastard. :-)

"I have no gold records..just some black ones."

Oh man, that RULES!

As long as there's vinyl involved it's all good.

scratchity scratch. kylon - I'm a selfish bastard too!!!!

Believe me...I understand what it's like to have to keep going back to Sonar for Rewire and VST or whatever. I fall back on Cubase the same way. Yesterday I installed MIDI Yoke and successfully synced Vegas and Reason, really easy to do. BUT - after I got it working I started thinking about the differences between Rewire and MIDI Clock sync. HUGE difference. Sure, the programs lock but you get so much bi-lateral control over devices etc with Rewire. I love Vegas to death and have since the first time I used it. It's just been sad at the same time because I can't really use Vegas because Cubase is sitting right there with Rewire.

It's like....once you have a microwave you wonder how you lived without it. Since I started using Rewire I can't imagine writing and recording my music without it. Just can't do it.

Me neither. Between the co-renders, the perfect sync -- no delay on start or stop or the occasional mis-positioning that happens with midi clock, and mainly the ability to create sounds while listening through the same monitor chain and using the same effects as the live audio, I could never go back. So I put up with the idiosyncratic and inefficient Sonar conventions and curse the gods who, for some reason (no pun intended), shuffled Rewire from the top of the "most wanted " list to the bottom of Peter's "to do" list.

Simply put , Rewire is just about as essential as the record button!

won't get any argument outa me there...!

I'm glad you two understand my frustration. It's why I consider -- unreasonably, no doubt -- everything else on the new feature list to have been a misappropriation of resources, an absurd juggling of priorities, and why I started the unspooling of this perhaps regrettable, whining thread...

Understand that it is not just my to do list that matters. While I am directly involved in all things audio, there are other things that I must listen to.

I am not disagreeing, but like any development process there are compromises that get made.

I can assure you that these issues are not being ignored. You have to decide whether you believe in the direction we are taking or not. I would think that Vegas 5 clearly indicates that we are not ignoring audio for video.

Peter

Yours is a herculean task, I understand; you're doing/have done fabulous work.
(I once wrote an article for a Swiss art magazine which, among other things, posited the opinion that no once was likely to use modern music software programs to create art as elegant and interesting in form and structure as the programs themselves.)
And I'm not generally comfortable in the role of squeaking wheel: there isn't time for it.
But you can't even map the scroll wheel to "zoom" in Sonar...
(See what I'm up against?)

I think trying to figure out what the direction exactly is is a confusing part