All I can say is what my father told me many, many years ago - "'Tis a poor carpenter who blames his tools..." Vegas just works.

" Do you feel like you are using a toy product?"

Id rather use a toy that has my features in front me, reacts when i want it to, does what it says its going to do and helps me create a product FAST which helps me feed my family..

a toy they say... OK..

I used to beta test liquid until L6 nuked my system, file extensions, icons and pretty much trashed my registry..

Its NOWHERE near as efficent as Vegas

Well if you've ever seen a Russian reactor compared to an Amercian designed and built one I sure as hell know which one I'd prefer in my backyard!

30 years ago I interviewed a nuclear power plant engineer in Sweden. One of my questions was, "In your work, have you ever felt any serious fear for your life?"

His answer was, "Yes. When I visited nuclear power plants in the U.S. They have really sloppy safety procedures, so bad that it made me fear for my life every time I visited these plants."

I think the many subsequent major problems bore this out...

Now Russian nuclear power... Was it worse at the time? Perhaps structurally or procedurally not. Stuff happens, and when the overall system is not resilient enough to cope with even one minor problem, you get a big one.

Newt Gingrich has been speaking very positively about nuclear power lately, as a way to save the environment.

All correct, except for the not so minor question of what to do with the nuclear waste. No state here wants it, and sending it to the third world like we do with our electronic and hazardous waste, is not attractive because this waste can be concentrated and weaponized.

in regard to photoshop.. if you want the near power of PS, check out Photoimpact12. IMO its faster, alot more stable and doesnt require stupid amounts of system resources. In fact i use it for most of my PP photographic wok (layers and PS plugs and all.. this supports them.. ) and only jump into CS3 when i seriously need PSD's

Personally I really like the Vegas UI the way it is, and hope it doesn't get changed to some charcoal-grey glass pro looking interface... because Vegas' interface is fast and easy to use, very very time efficient and works great. Thats' the main reason I still use it all the time, is it's ease of use and efficiency.

If it got all glass-button look or charcoal-grey AE-type interface I think it would be harder to navigate and use. Agree though that it would be nice to have Quantize as a menu icon on/off, and also to have 'skins' for choices of themes/looks, for those who'd like some flexibility in the GUI.

But I like Vegas just fine the way it is, very easy to use and light-colored, easy on the eyes, no eyestrain even after hours of editing work, so it gets a thumbs up the way it is, from me... dark colored GUIs /contrast causes eyestrain... it's best to have a light neutral color the way Vegas is currently.

-k

John, you do know you can turn down the Brightness of the icons in the preferences right?

Options>Preferences>Display (Vegas 7)

Icon Color saturation
Icon Color Tint

Also to change a lot of the look of Vegas change your Windows colors. Spot has posted a few themes to change your windows/vegas colors to that silver/smokey grey look that editors like.


That dreaded "Quantize to Frames" thing is hidden in a menu and yet it's a mission critical setting. It should be a big bold icon that's dead obvious to tell the state of.
You know you can customize the toolbar right? Also wasn't on the toolbar as default until Vegas 7? I guess people complained that they never toggled it.

Yes, that's the purpose for it. turning it off allows you to cut audio between the frames. Useful for removing a lip smack or other little noise, for example.

Rob mack

???.

I was using Photoshop 6 daily for several years, then CS, then CS2, and never had a problem with interface changes. Not even a hiccup. very minor. Wish I could use GIMP but it just wastes too much screen space.

Rob Mack

I don't mind Vegas' interface, really. The real test for me is how easy the program is to use, and in that respect Vegas is light-years ahead of PPro CS3, the other NLE I have on my computer. I haven't used Liquid, so I can't comment.

That said, I do think Vegas could use a more modern-looking interface... not any change in the basic layout, mind you. However currently, the buttons and colours almost make it look like a Win3.1 application. While I'm not as fond of the UI in PPro, its colour scheme at least looks fairly contemporary.

I also like the Vegas interface just like it is; enough so that I purchased the last 5 versions (4-8).

Now Russian nuclear power... Was it worse at the time? Perhaps structurally or procedurally not. Stuff happens, and when the overall system is not resilient enough to cope with even one minor problem, you get a big one.

they all were (everywhere) just as safe in safety procedures as anywhere else. Chernobyl just had a bad (safety wise, but efficient) design. three mile island would of had the exact same thing happen if it was designed the same way (chernobyl had the water cooling going vertical so when the reactor overheated & they tried to cool it the water vaporized & kept heat up, both in temp & direction. Really simple explanation here, but that really didn't help). Now is a different story.

What to do with the waste? Up till the 70's it went next door to me. :D (seriously. My place it behind some trees near the top of the image.)

With The Gimps UI the hardest thing I deal with is the freedom. Nothing's locked down so I move things around when I adjust window sizes. If I had a second monitor it wouldn't be an issue. The really really nice thing is though I can have something opened in the background (IE word doc, website, tutorial, etc) & see it while I'm using the program because there is no main docking window like in PS. But every person I know who uses PS hates updates because of the UI changes. Even my dad now uses Gimp because he got tired of the changes from his version on his laptop (5 I think) & the one at work (6). I can do things much faster in gimp then in PS. Not because I know Gimp better: I used PS 5.5 for ~6 years & Gimp for ~2 or 3. It's because I only know PS5.x & 6,7,8.... were all different. Gimp isn't. Like Vegas.

I think Vegas is the best. I have tried Adobe premire, Final Cut, Ulead, Forget what a hassel give me vegas any day. I like it just the way it is. The other night I was editing a video or I sould say co editing because the video was in russain the young lady that was helping me is a big FCP fan, but when she saw how my V8 worked she was very impressed. Vegas rules. Check out the articals on vegas on the Video Guys Blog

http://www.videoguys.com/blog/

I'm pretty happy with the interface. I'd like to be able to customise the toolbar along the bottom of the screen as well as a long the top. Any maybe an area in the middle of the sreen between the timeline and preview window where I can dock a toolbar.

If they made it dark grey by default a lot of them might shut up.

Paul,

Go in the system windows display options and chose grey instead of white as the background windows color. It will do a major difference everywhere and greatly releive visual stress in Vegas in particular.

Bastien

My only experience with anything Pinnacle is with Studio version 8. It's because of that product I am a Vegas user today - I found the UI ok but the program itself wouldn't do anything for me except crash. I quickly moved to Screenblast Movie Studio (pre-cursor to VMS) and then fairly quickly to the full blown Vegas product.

I have looked at other NLE's (Premier, Avid) and find them quite confusing. In my opinion, for me Vegas offers the best workflow for my needs and the best bang for the buck for my limited budget.

In my opinion, Fireworks (Maromedia before and now Adobe owned) is a very good example of a well designed/no nonsense application interface. Everything is straightforward and logicial, just like in Vegas. The major difference is that Vegas looks rather crude and dated in term of general esthetic.

Does it really count for me in everyday work? Not at all!...

Avid interface is one of the worst piece of ergonomy i saw in all the multimedia word! I hated it the first time i saw it, just like some of these "gonzo" looking 3D editors.

I'm surprised there's so much importance given to form ahead of function.

Yes, I hope we are "visual" people, but that visual ability is best directed at what's in the video frame. We don't need the tool we use for editing to intrude upon our vision of what our audience will see. Therefore, the plainer and more functional the interface the better.

I like Vegas.

"I'm surprised there's so much importance given to form ahead of function."
Try telling that to Apple :)

But seriously, a NLE is one of the few applications where the 'look' matters a lot. If you're trying to do colour correction it's dang important. OK, you obviously must be be doing this on a calibrated monitor external to the T/L however if you keep having to look back at that T/L yor eyesight can go out of calibration and that's very important. Even the colour of everything around you matters, furnture, lighting, hardware scopes should use white not green tubes etc.
Not that I imagine too many are using Vegas for colour grading at that level but still it should be built with this in mind and it's not too bad in that respect.

Bob.

"Go in the system windows display options and chose grey instead of white as the background windows color. It will do a major difference everywhere and greatly releive visual stress in Vegas in particular."
Bastien,
This helps only in the Explorer window; everything else remains the same. But it's not such a big deal. I do spend most of my awake hours at the computer and that alone will cause eye stress. Coming to think of it, Vegas is reasonably grey for a light GUI.

Just two days ago I arrived at a point where I couldn't get my eyes to focus on the screen at all, probably due to a cold an dlack of water. I forget to drink water sometimes. Anyway, the screens were too bright for me at that point. Fine now.

Because I use a handful of programs at once, I sometimes wish i could make Vegas look a little different just so I can find it more easily.

I absolutely wish that tracks would have a color if I turn off thumbnails and waveforms. What the *$%!. You can set a track color, why not use it? To me this is an example of Madison starting to put a feature into Vegas and then never refining it.

Generally, I'm fine with the look of Vegas. I think people coming from other NLEs are expecting a more complex cockpit and this makes Vegas seem like a toy to them.

There are definitely times when Vegas could go for less. The Preset displays of VideoFX panel always make me uneasy and I wish I could have a choice of views.

Mainly, Vegas should always be improving the functionality of the interface, but it's quite good as it is. Yes, there are buttons that are "right there" that people can go for a year without seeing, and that's bad. But it's relatively minor and usually fixable.

What annoys me most is that so many filters are just controlled by sliders. Surely there are better ways to deal with an interface sometimes. Take a look at some VST plugins...some of them make a great efforts to illustrate what you're doing. This is visual feedback and something Vegas often lacks.

So here's a question: if a new version of Vegas focused solely on making the existing tools and interface more powerful and functional, would you buy it? or would you rather have totally new features?

Rob Mack

The interface colors do not bother me but I wonder why Sony hasn't adopted the color scheme of their equipment (Grey, Dark greenish blue, black buttons, white buttons) the same colors in every tv station in America.
JJK

Reply by: vitalforce Date: 10/31/2007 3:16:22 PM Final Cut Studio is the one who makes your heart beat faster. Vegas is the one you marry. Still--if she'd just try on that bikini...

Last night after reading this thread decide to play with the Mac again. I was in soundtrack pro, and only use the built in plugins. I must say there is a real joy when you are using a program that looks nice. It's sort of like decorating your office.

But today when I came back into vegas the feeling was amazing. someone on another forum put it well- He said something like "FCP is like working in the sand, whereas Vegas feels like it is made with well oiled ball bearings."

My Mac is a Quad core G5, and my PC is 3 year old dual Opteron.

I don't have much to complain about with how vegas looks. To keep with the above analogy, Vegas is sort of the cute Jeans and T-Shirt girl, where the Apple stuff more along the lines of Cathrine Zeta Jones.

The only minor quibles in Vegas I have is how it handles plugins. I think Reaper is in the same style as Vegas, but they really got it right. but if Vegas had the look of Soundtrack I think we would all be happy.

http://www.mbsdirect.com/applesoft/images/screenshot_soundtrackpro2.jpg