That's 32 louder, innit? Look at these numbers, right across the board, 64, 64, 64, 64. Most blokes will be playing at 32. Not me. I go to 64.

LOL!

Marco

Well, the user base isn't homogeneous. Some people want one thing, some another.

-Rob

LOL!

Thanks John, I feel better now about going to work. I was going to telecommute.

Rob

Thanks Spot,

we were spinning in place here.

Rob

12? What sort of system was this running on?

rob

The demo was very, very short, but very impressive. It was a tech preview, really. They mentioned a Fall date, I don't remember if that was beta or an announcement of the new version, but it's safe to say it'll run just fine on AMD or Intel 64 bit chips. I also believe MS will have a perfectly capable 64 bit version of Vista, and those of us who say "I'll never upgrade" - I heard that plenty of times with XP, and no one seems to remember that.

Those who say they'll never go to Vista will indeed move to a 64 bit Microsoft OS post-XP, if they stay with MS. Likely it will be Vista.

This is a far safer bet for the last $20 I have while in Las Vegas :)

Personally the constant whining and nay-saying is getting old. I'm not referring to healthy debate. You decide which camp you're in :) If you want to switch, fine. Switch and go complain on someone else's forum. Everyone knows what Adobe and Apple are doing these days, and if you need that now have at it. </soapboxOff>

Sony and the Madison guys - who, btw, were in charge of the demo, which leads me to believe that there is still a core team of SF folk helping to guide future development - these guys and gals have shown us their roadmap for the near future, and this announcement was not for the minutia of "Feature A, Feature B", etc. It's too early for that. This was to say "we're rebuilding the foundation, and here's a sneak peek". And once you have that 64 bit foundation the possibilities are wide open.

WOW! Go David! Sounds like an email I sent to my boss recently. haha You want me to wire you some sheckles to Las Vegas? :o) All those massages and hot tub suites don't come cheap! Derek

I have pretty high hopes, but I don't think that once you have the 64-bit foundation that the possibilities are wide open. The wide open possibilities have to be planned for before the concrete is poured.

There are certain things that Madison will probably be able to say about their plans after NAB, like what happens to 32-bit development (They can't possibly think that all current Vegas users will want to upgrade to a 64-bit OS). Will it still be based on Video for Windows? Should we be thinking about certain types of hardware?

It's obvious that some things have to be done but it'd be good for them to say it. BD and HD-DVD authoring is a major question mark and it doesn't hurt to say "yes, of course we're going to provide this"

A reality check here. V7 was released last September, 17 months after V7. If V8 is actually released by the end of this year that's a 15 month cycle, if by NAB of next year that's 19 months. It's in the ball park but I think that the existence of Vista (regardless of 32 or 64-bit) gives them good reason to get a release out sooner rather than later. Getting something out later this year probably means that there will be more Vista adoption (for better or worse), an SP1 service pack, a certain amount of bug smashing in Vista, and probably a concensus to turn off Aero (my opinion, I always turn off the XP look).

Later in the year also allows other hardware developments to happen. It's more on track for better graphics cards, better drivers, more HD disk burners, stream processing on both ATI and nvidia cards, motherboards with more PCI express lanes and slots, some sorting out of HDMI/HDCP/DRM (at other people's expense).

Are they going to lose a little share to Adobe or Apple? Maybe. Apple appears to be supporting multiple seat facilities with their server product. Adobe doesn't have this but they have product interdependence which looks good but I dare say you could get most things done faster in Vegas even without the interdependence.

Madison could actually provide some nice server functionality. They've
already got a few of the bones: network renders, a media cataloger that uses a service.

Interactivity with other applications? Besides expanding their own capabilites between Sony apps, they could export sequences to other compositors. They've got some bones there too in the form of nested project files. The key seems to me to be able to define and create a nested veg file from within your current project, and then send that out to the other application (maybe in AAF format) and then at the very least bring it back as a take. Not quite as automated as the Adobe round trip but serviceable.

Importing layered PSD/PNG/PCX/TIF/XCF files? Well, if GIMP can do it for free I think Sony ought to be able to manage it too. Again, I think the nested veg approach could be useful here if it is tuned up to work well.

Mainly, they need to make these things work well while leaving Vegas nimble and spritely. This last is probably the best feature of Vegas.

Rob Mack

I'm still in Las Vegas, but I'm about to leave to go home, so I don't have a lot of time for this post.

I hung around the Sony Creative Software (SCS) booth quite a bit and did the "fly on the wall" thing. I overhreard a lot of talk, a lot of which I probably shouldn't have heard. First of all, it was obvious to me that Sony pays a LOT of attention to what goes on here on the forums. There are several feature requests that come up here over and over. It sure sounded to me like those issues are being worked on and will be incorporated into Vegas much sooner than later.

For those of you that have been saying that the "higher-ups" at Sony don't care about Sony Creative Software couldn't possibly be more wrong! I saw some folks from Sony's professional division hanging out at the booth. I saw Bob Ott there several times as well as Leigh Herman, the Sony Pro A/V product manager. They both seemed to be very interested and involved in SCS. I overheard that Sony Creative Software's sales increased 248% last year. I also noticed that Vegas was being used in several other booths, not the least of which was in the SSL booth to play back video and multitrack audio to demonstrate their high-end digital audio mixing consoles. There were also signs in their booth stating that they were using Sony's Vegas. I saw some folks from top-end post houses at the SCS booth, I talked to a few of them and they were both surprised and impressed by what they saw.

One other thing I heard in the SCS booth was a rational explanation why Premiere is still being bundled with certain Vaio computers. It has to do with Vaio being a global brand and that Premiere supports far more foriegn languages than does Vegas (currently.) From a global marketing standpoint, it makes sense to me.

I'm with David McKnight, I'm sick and tired of hearing all this bitching and speculation about Vegas. You guys have no idea what's going on and neither do I except for what I heard by hovering around the Sony Creative Software booth. Just because SCS isn't telling us what' they're up to (Sonic Foundry never showed their cards early either) but this doesn't mean that Sony isn't serious about Vegas. FAR from it.

OK, I'm checking out of the hotel and heading home... It was a great show and I am more commited to Vegas than ever and so is Sony corporate.

John

That's good to hear, John - because V8 better get it together, and offer significant feature improvements, or it'll lose remaining market share to the more advanced NLEs out there..

so far V7 is almost the same as V4, with minor improvements, nothing major. Let's hope V8 integrates the hundreds of feature requests we've all been making, for years, on the forum.. or else Avid/PP etc will make vegas irrelevant.

ken

Ken,

After seeing and hearing many people tear their hair out with PP2, I doubt they're going to steamroll anyone. It's just not a worry. Sony will be selling Vegas 8 to quite a few users of PP3.

Rob

Being both realistic & agnostic, 64 bit is here -- the only limitation right now, and it's a HUGE one, is that not enough 64 bit coding has been done. Running 64 bit XP is a hassle -- running the 64 bit Vista Beta could best be described by Dante. Today 64 bit Vista is still very far from a walk in the park, but it's closer to a *big-boy* environment than anything named Windows so far. And since we're not going to see a 6 gig, 32 bit cpu anytime soon, 64 bit & parallel ops [multi-core] seem to be the only future. If there's a bit** it should be directed at the lack of software including drivers.

That said, few if any of the great technological leaps forward has been universally adopted -- far from it. We still have floppy drives & IDE & AGP, and 64 bit cpus running in 32 bit mode. Bigger concerns than Sony Creative have shown no signs of abandoning legacy environments or hardware. There's no reason to think that's going to change with the flick of a switch.

I'm still in Las Vegas, but I'm about to leave to go home, so I don't have a lot of time for this post

John, even though it might not have been as long a post as you would have wanted to do, it was one of the most useful, on-the-ground reports I've read in a long time. All very encouraging. It also confirms what I have always felt, namely that the Madison engineering staff is one of the best in the world.

I agree that Madison has great engineers, that is obvious from the clean product.

At this point, I'm sure they would appreciate, as much as we customers would, getting a clear statement from the company about the direction of the product.

What is the target market? Are they aiming primarily for broadcast, indie production, weddings, hobbyists, or something else?

Possibility A: they don't know yet.

Possibility B: they know, but haven't even told their engineers yet.

etc.

There is an old saying that is still valid: If you don't know where you're going, you'll get there real fast.

Vegas is one of those rare products in any category that people come to truly love.

A product that somehow makes our hearts beat faster and makes us forgive its weaknesses, because it has something special that is impossible to describe in words.

Like a Vespa, or a Harley-Davidson. Or a Mac, but not FCP. Or Photoshop, but not Premiere Pro. Like a Discreet Smoke or a Flame. Like a modern high-end Avid, but not Avid Express.

So I hope the Creatives at Sony figure it out and let their engineers know and us know asap!

Viva Vegas!

>>Are they going to lose a little share to Adobe or Apple? Maybe. Apple appears to be supporting multiple seat facilities with their server product<<

Windows PCs are supported. No reason you couldn't render out to Quicktime from Vegas and upload to the new FC Server.

This 64bit announcement actually gives me a lot of hope. 64bit has all sorts of connotations, all good. Sounds like my comfortable pair of old shoes might get replaced by some great fitting new ones. If they decide to support DirectX10 or write a great 32bpc color core themselves, then all issues about color bit depth will become moot.

FCP Studio 2 is riding the RED hype right now. Unanswered questions about the new release are already cropping up. The biggest deal is they now support an 'open' timeline. Something we've had in Vegas since I've started using it. But they way they are implenting it is pretty cool. Also have to think the new Color app is going to drive a lot of sales.

As far as Blu Ray, phew...has anyone seen the sales figures for Blu Ray disks? Averaging in the hundreds, some in the low thousands.
The PS3 is not driving Blu Ray sales liked everyone thought they would. That will probably change by next year, until then, not interested.

Since the IS Sony, better they wait and get it right, and do it better than anyone else.

"Since the IS Sony, better they wait and get it right, and do it better than anyone else."

That sure held true for Sony and DVDA now didnt? Encore was kicking DVDAs butt from the start. Everytime Sony caught up somewhat, Adobe had something better out a month later. This is just a continuation of the same.

Yes, but you still had to deal with Premier. You really can't say this is more of the same, until products are released. I think they realize what they have to do. Whether it gets done, well, wait and see.

And most people don't need higher than 8bit per channel color for the near future. People like us are in a very small minority for the short term.

Personally, I think they need to fire their marketing staff and hire some good ol fashioned product evangelists. Maybe clone Jim Jannard?
I miss the time when Spot was out here getting us all excited about the upcoming release. But duhsonymen shut that down or there isn't much to get excited about anymore. hehehe.

Hanging in there, RED rez holder who is not really wanting to go to FCP or Premier damnit.

p.s. i just found yesterday the max bit depth Quicktime can handle is 16bit integer.