I've just recently purchased the product and when I checked for the latest updates I see that there haven't been any since Oct of 2008. Is this product no longer being updated?
"I've not used it (MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 16 Plus) so I can't compare it to VMS" - I can. In 2008 VMS was the clear leader. Currently, in terms of features, AVCHD playback, price and editing speed, MEP16+ leaves VMS for dead. VMS still does a few things better, and I'm hoping VMS can regain the lead with version 10. Just a comment on the number of tracks - MEP doesn't care if a track is audio, video or both, so 6 tracks on VMS sort of equates to 12 tracks on MEP (usually enough, so for me wouldn't be a deal breaker).
When I talked to Sony in the past, they (at least the person I talked to) indicated they don't offer upgrades on the consumer level (MSP) stuff. It is only at the Vegas Pro level they offer upgrade discounts. That may have changed, but that was what I was told a year or so ago.
mikey, read my earlier post regarding the upgrade promotion discount for vms9 in 2008. I've upgraded from 6 to 7 and to 8, each time there was a discount promotion email that was sent to registered users. I expect v10 will be the same.
Added: Actually, they have the discount promotions listed in the Newsletters, while emailed, are also available on the Newsletters page for all to see:
I haven't downloaded the trial version yet (I expect a "first-impressions" report soon by somebody that has, though). Here are a few highlights from the official press release (that show that our more optimistic speculations here were more or less correct):
Image Stabilization: Users with "shaky" video footage, commonly shot from handheld, pocket and mobile phone cameras, now have the ability to quickly stabilize their files using several optimized presets. Image Stabilization uses technology from ProDAD, a leading provider of video effects plug-ins.
Increased Number of Tracks: Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum now allows up to 10 video tracks and 10 audio tracks so content creators can utilize more tracks for organizational options, or to embrace more complex projects and compositing techniques.
New color correction tools: These tools provide users with the ability to rapidly fix video originally shot with incorrect color levels. The new White Balance tool can be used to determine what "white" should look like within a video clip. The entire clip is then automatically color adjusted to match. Seasoned editors can also use the Secondary Color Corrector tool for more advanced color modification.
GPU-accelerated AVC Rendering: Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum can now use the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in equipped computers to improve AVC rendering performance and speed, which allows final projects to be published faster than ever before. Users with a CUDA-enabled NVIDIA® video card are able to encode to the Sony AVC format using GPU-accelerated rendering.
Both Platinum 10 versions include DVD Architect Studio 5.0 software, which:
With DVD Architect Studio [5] software you can easily create and burn professional-looking DVD and Blu-ray Disc projects.
So, there is GPU accelerated AVC rendering, but only with suitable NVIDIA graphics cards -- but not with any ATI graphics cards! What the @#$%? Now, that's a pile of complete dogcr*p. (Why didn't Sony Creative Software utilize OpenCL, which is GPU agnostic (i.e., the same programming works with both NVIDIA and ATI GPU accelerators), rather than using one vendor's proprietary interface? Very, very bad design decision.
Incidentally, the Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum system requirements doesn't mention anything about graphics card requirements. (But discusses every other requirement.) The system requirements should mention that specific NVIDIA graphics cards are required for GPU acceleration of AVC rendering.
Another thing I never saw mentioned anywhere was whether there is any support for creating AVCHD DVDs, whether in Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum or in DVD Architect Studio 5.0.