Liftoff: Vegas 7 launch (press release)

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JJKizak wrote on 9/9/2006, 8:45 AM
I would like to hear the programmers side of the story on the titler portion of the program. I'm guessing that it requires a complete redesign of Vegas and the cost is not warranted when third party stuff is available. Just a guess after reading Adam Wilt.

JJK
David Jimerson wrote on 9/9/2006, 9:51 AM
I think a lot of people just don't get the philosophy behind the titler as-is.

It's really only meant to get your text onto the screen. After that, what you can do with it is almost unlimited.

And the control you actually do have over it in the titler itself is more than most seem to give it credit for. You can create scrolls and crawls with ease; you can keyframe typewriter-style appearance of individual characters; you can keyframe background changes and position changes; you can do a whole lot more than that, too.

I think comparing the titler to other titling apps which are constantly brought up is like complaining that a helicopter doesn't have tank treads. They're just built for different things. Focus on what it's supposed to do as opposed to concentrating on its limitations, and you'd be amazed as to what you can accomplish with it as-is.
rextilleon wrote on 9/9/2006, 9:51 AM
I think that one of the problems is that since Sony took over, there is very little communication between the users and the developers. I mean just look at the arc of this release. Look at the almost total absence of Sony employees on this website. Wouldn't you love to know why the refuse to add the titler that practically everyone has been requesting over the last five years? I think it would be neat to know what their thinking is.
p@mast3rs wrote on 9/9/2006, 10:00 AM
"I think comparing the titler to other titling apps which are constantly brought up is like complaining that a helicopter doesn't have tank treads. They're just built for different things. Focus on what it's supposed to do as opposed to concentrating on its limitations, and you'd be amazed as to what you can accomplish with it as-is."

Son in your words we should just accept a tool that doesnt meet the needs of MANY users simply because its not intended to meet those needs? Thats great business sense....<note sarcasm>

Even easier would be to improve the titler and its functions for users so they dont have to resort to other programs or increase their workflow time tweaking something that is easily done in another app.
David Jimerson wrote on 9/9/2006, 10:16 AM
No, in my words, it should used as intended, as opposed to trying to use it like other titlers work, and getting frustrated because it doesn't.

Heck, that can be applied to Vegas -- many think Vegas is a weak app in toto because it doesn't work like Avid or FCP or Premiere. Is it?
p@mast3rs wrote on 9/9/2006, 10:27 AM
Ok, understood. My point is not to get Vegas to work like other titlers but more so to get Vegas to allow us to do things in its titlers so we dont have to spend more money on other apps to overcome Vegas' shortcoming when it comes to titlers. Its just silly that something that is used often in NLEs seems to get overlooked with every release.
David Jimerson wrote on 9/9/2006, 10:48 AM
Well, what is it you're wanting to do but can't? It doesn't do 3D-style text like bevels, etc., and write-on script text is impractical. But let me know what you'd like to do, and there just might be a way to do it.
Coursedesign wrote on 9/9/2006, 10:48 AM
1. The easy argument here is that if you work with video, there is a 99% chance that you have to create titles.

2. How did Microsoft get so wealthy? By bundling the tools that people commonly needed, so that they don't have to go shopping all over town to meet their basic needs. "Microsoft. That was easy."

The Vegas team has picked up so much good MS stuff on the technical side (standardized UI, etc.), now how about looking at what made them so commercially successful?
bStro wrote on 9/9/2006, 11:11 AM
Regarding ways to spruce up titles in Vegas, don't forget video FX -- and keyframe 'em while you're at it! ;-)

Rob
bStro wrote on 9/9/2006, 11:16 AM
How did Microsoft get so wealthy? By bundling the tools that people commonly needed,

Well, Sony did bundle Boris Graffiti LTD with Vegas. I never use it, but it's there if I want it. Maybe it would help if Vegas included a standalone titling app and included a plug-in to make it "live" in Vegas. Assuming that's possible.

Rob
David Jimerson wrote on 9/9/2006, 11:23 AM
"Regarding ways to spruce up titles in Vegas, don't forget video FX -- and keyframe 'em while you're at it! ;-)"

That's my point -- the titler is there to get your letters on the screen. THEN you use all of the FX tools vegas has in its considerable arsenal to make them great.

You can do 99% of what you can do in 3rd Party titling apps -- just not all inside Vegas's titler itself. Some of it -- even most of it -- you do on the timeline.

Like I said, different philosophy, different workflow. The amount of time spent on it ends up being pretty much a wash; the difference is WHERE in Vegas you do it.
SeaJohn2 wrote on 9/9/2006, 7:10 PM
One of the big selling points of Vegas back when I bought version 4 was how easy it was to use - tasks that took multiple steps in other editors were implemented much more logically and intuitively in Vegas. You could 'fly' through your workflow.

Over the years there have been many posts (including my own) about how poor the titler is, and how it doesn't adhere to the Vegas "easy to use" philosophy. The replies to these complaints are typically something like " make your title, then apply this affect, and then duplicate the title on a child track and add this affect to it, etc. etc. etc." Yet other apps' titlers manage to do much of this inside the titler itself; many effects take just one or two steps, compared to multiple Vegas steps.

That's all we're asking for - make the titler intuitive, powerful, and easy to use. The amount of time spent doing it Vegas' way is NOT a wash, in my opinion.
InformationSponge wrote on 9/9/2006, 7:36 PM
"jbjones, not sure if you knew this already, but the latest Adobe Premiere Pro uses a very dark color scheme, even on Windows. Click here or here for a screenshot!"

In the options you can tell it to use Windows standard grey colors or you can adjust the slider to make it is dark or light as you want.
ken c wrote on 9/10/2006, 4:21 AM
Sony obviously doesn't support Vegas the way it should.

Their developers and forum support here is pretty much nonexistent. Compare the lack of Sony's support here, to the terrific support on other video product forums; eg great job at Serious Magic and Digital Juice; they're involved with, and care about their customers, and are responsive.

Sony is missing the ball with Vegas, and we're all disappointed. They've barely added any new features release-to-release, and still can't even get a decent titler integrated. Agree re heck if you're that lazy Sony, at least go buyout Bluff and integrate it.

After Sonic Foundry sold Vegas to Sony, Sony has treated the application (And us users) like neglected stepkids, and (as with the bumbled PSP3 release sans dualshock, late etc), is disappointing everyone.

What's the answer, Sony?

They don't even appear on their own message boards to help us. Very sad.

For a company that cared about quality in their hardware, they sure are screwing up re software support, that's my honest feedback.

Ken
rextilleon wrote on 9/10/2006, 7:44 AM
Wouldn't it be neat to be able to poll the members of this forum and see if they intend to update. I would guess that at least half are not, which doesn't bode well for a mature product that has a pretty established user base. By the way, just for the heck of it, are you going to update (our own little mini-poll). At this point I would say no but I want to fiddle with the demo before committing.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/10/2006, 9:14 AM
> I would guess that at least half are not, which doesn't bode well for a mature product that has a pretty established user base.

Actually, that’s an unfair statement because the industry has moved to HD and Sony has moved with it but not all users have moved yet. I would bet that 100% of HD Vegas shooters upgrade to Vegas 7.

~jr
David Jimerson wrote on 9/10/2006, 9:23 AM
I'm strongly considering not doing it, John. For one thing, it doesn't do anything to enhance support for the type of HD I shoot. So, on THAT score, the upgrade doesn't give me a whole lot I don't already have in 6.0d.

If I do, it'll probably be for a reason other than actually wanting Vegas 7 . . . I'd like to have DVDA4, and it only comes with V7, so that would be a reason to do it. Or, I may have valid business reasons to upgrade, but again, it won't be because of the functionality offered.

But hey, no reason not to download the demo and see if there are any surprises.
ECB wrote on 9/10/2006, 9:28 AM
"I would bet that 100% of HD Vegas shooters upgrade to Vegas 7." From what I have read the editing choice is Cineform with the additional colorspace and no loss in quality. The Vegas 7 HDV improvement listed so far is m2t performance not Cineform. What is the motivation to upgrade for HDV?

Ed
DataMeister wrote on 9/10/2006, 11:11 AM
When I heard that Vegas 7 would be released 18 months after version 6 I was imagining an extremely big upgrade. Especialy considering the 12 month period between v5 to v6. The spec sheet doesn't look like 18 months of improvement at first glance.

However, I imagine that the 18 months spent on this upgrade was a rewrite of some of the main code to get the "improved memory handling for HDV 1080i longform projects" and "Multithreaded audio engine maximizes real-time audio playback and rendering performance — more tracks and effects with lower latency".

Then they had to syncronize all their stuff with the Cinescore programmers
Figure out the XDCAM interfaces.
The Gracenote database interface.

Then of course there's all the smaller stuff like
"User-definable default smoothness values for Pan/Crop and Track Motion keyframes" . That will be nice to have.


ken c wrote on 9/10/2006, 11:33 AM
And don't forget the shiny new vegas 7 will even "output to PSP" video format - wee!

disappointedly,

-ken
Wolfgang S. wrote on 9/10/2006, 11:56 AM
"From what I have read the editing choice is Cineform with the additional colorspace and no loss in quality. The Vegas 7 HDV improvement listed so far is m2t performance not Cineform. What is the motivation to upgrade for HDV?"

Well, that will be an interesting discussion in the next month, if that paradigm is still true or not. In some cases, yes. In other cases, I think no.

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