Is There Any Hope Left for VEGAS Stability? Considering Leaving VEGAS

joshua-noesser wrote on 12/4/2025, 6:21 PM

Hey everyone,

I’ve been a long-time VEGAS user—going all the way back to version 12—and for many years the software was rock-solid. Back then, it felt stable, fast, and reliable: no lag, no crashes, no strange glitches. Unfortunately, things started going downhill around version 14, and ever since then it feels like each new release brings more issues instead of solving the existing ones.

Over the years I’ve dealt with constant lag, random crashes, timeline slowdowns, and overall instability. I’ve had people from the community and even folks connected to the company help me tweak settings and optimize my setup. I’ve invested in very high-performance machines—multiple builds, different GPUs, tons of RAM, fast drives—you name it. But at the end of the day, none of it seems to matter. In fact, some of my laptops run VEGAS just as “well,” which tells me the hardware isn’t the bottleneck.

At this point, the problems have practically stopped me from making videos. The longer the project gets, the worse things become. Once a timeline reaches 30–40 minutes, the lag and crashes make it nearly impossible to finish. And every version seems to inherit the same issues. Support always suggests upgrading, but the upgrade never actually fixes the core problems. I’m currently on VEGAS 22, but from what I see in the forums, 23 has the same complaints: crashing, lag, performance drops, and so on.

I’ve heard every explanation over the years—“It’s your camera,” “It’s your settings,” “Use proxies”—but none of that changes the fact that the software itself struggles. Meanwhile, my hardware sits mostly idle during playback or renders, even on high-end systems. I’ve also opened several support tickets and many never even received a response, so I’m honestly questioning whether real support still exists.

I’m now building a brand-new system with all M.2 storage (around 64TB onboard), but I’m hesitant to keep investing money and time if the software simply isn’t going to work reliably. I keep seeing the same reports version after version, and it feels like more time is spent adding new features rather than fixing long-standing problems.

So I’m at a crossroads:
Are these issues ever going to be truly addressed?
Or is the plan moving forward just to continue adding features without stabilizing the foundation?

As a long-time user who has stuck with VEGAS for over a decade, I’m honestly wondering whether I should finally move on—or if there’s still hope.

Thanks for reading, and I’d appreciate any honest insight from the community.

Comments

RogerS wrote on 12/4/2025, 7:16 PM

For what it's worth the past few years haven't had so much in the way of new features as the focus was on the process of rebuilding the program's video engine, which is all about addressing long-standing problems with an architecture never built for modern GPUs and high bit rate, high data rate media. Every build since 208 of VP 21 is in this new path with the promise of better stability and performance.

You likely saw MxCompound replace so4compound as the decoder for AVC and HEVC, and checking legacy now generally worsens performance. If you're an NVIDIA user the decoding speeds are way up. As of 23 there's no longer any pauses during the renders with NV Encoding.

That process isn't complete however and while the most common media is working well for most users certain media and Fx are still problematic from a performance and stability standpoint. VEGAS only deemed the engine complete enough to call it version 1.0 with the release of 23.

I'd suggest waiting until the next patch of 23 is released and doing a trial to see for yourself. For me I have VP 16-23 and currently use VP 23 and as a backup VP 21.208. You can see my hardware in my signature as well as benchmarks.

For support make sure it's to VEGAS vs Magix as the latter seems less responsive. It still exists.

Gid wrote on 12/4/2025, 7:40 PM

@joshua-noesser After trying the other software over the yrs, I had Adobe for a couple of yrs & I have free DR but I decided to stick with Vegas, I like the timeline & in general how the timeline works. VP22 is very stable for me, it does have some lag issues tho which are promised to be fixed in future releases but I have tested VP23, read the comments & decided not to upgrade from VP22.

Try VP22 on your new PC, test other software, most do Trials & see for yourself, maybe like me you get a more stable version of VP22 & can live with it's flaws.

Through my testing of other software I found they don't work better on initial play, but almost all have an auto prerender system, change something, add an fx etc & the prerender auto updates, often only after this will the timeline work fluidly. Vegas has a prerender option but it's a manual operation, after doing the prerender in VP the timeline is 100% fluid, why they can't make that an auto feature I've no idea... 🤷‍♂️ It would make such a difference.

PS, when I bought my PC I installed 256GB of RAM just for Adobe's prerender which uses the RAM for this purpose,, (I think, it's been a while) so having this amount of RAM comes in useful with VP where i can prerender long sections but like I say it would be good if it was an auto feature.