NAB REPORT: VEGAS VS. OTHER NLEs

Comments

bakerbud9 wrote on 4/22/2004, 11:59 AM
Rosebud,
I appreciate the skepticism... I certainly wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. But don't take my word for it... ask SonyEPM or one of the tech guys over at CineForm.
Both of these demonstrations are clear indicators to me that too many people in this forum don't even know what they're talkin' about when they complain about Vegas.... they have no idea how powerful the software really is.
-nate
bakerbud9 wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:05 PM
vitamin_d
the thing thats so rediculous about your whole argument is that vegas HAS improved its core editing abilites. vegas is the only NLE that i've seen do 25 tracks of realtime dv without a hiccup, or do 3 tracks of 1080p HD with page curl transitions. the only other software out there that can perform at that level are $120,000 discreet systems. so for cripes sakes, i think you don't even have a clue as to how powerful vegas has really become.
-nate
busterkeaton wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:09 PM
bakerbud9,

Which is probably why Vegas just won a "Pick Hit Award" from Broadcast Engineering for an innovative product.
Rosebud wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:14 PM
SonyEPM, please confirm !!

(btw, why I cant get similar performance with my PC ?)
JonnyMac wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:19 PM
I'd be so happy if they'd just let the other foot drop and assure us that media management is on the way.

Why would Sony tip its hand to any competitor [about anything it's doing] just to make you feel more comfortable about your previous purchase? It makes no business sense whatsoever.

That said, delivering customer desires also makes good business sense and I feel quite comfortable that you will ultimately get what you want. And when you do, it will work AND it will be stable. You don't always get that last part from the other guys....
bakerbud9 wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:29 PM
I don't see why, given the right hardware resources, that Vegas couldn't be used for realtime editing and compositing of 2K film resolution footage. If this is true, then Vegas has truly reached a new panacea; quite possibly tapping into the high-end post and finishing market.

If that is true, Sony is truly going to be the innovator that other companies will all be trying to catch up to... perhaps even discreet. I mean, how will discreet be able to continue justifying a $500,000 price tag for an inferno* system when a $500 copy of vegas running on a $60,000 SAN array can give similar perfomance and features???

-nate
Rain Mooder wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:36 PM
>the thing thats so rediculous about your whole argument is that vegas HAS >improved its core editing abilites. vegas is the only NLE that i've seen do 25 >tracks of realtime dv without a hiccup

The ability to do 25 tracks realtime with a special hard disk array is mainly
useful for compositing. This isn't a "core editing" feature in the same sense
as a better media pool or nested sequences. If you are editing long form
stuff rarely will you have 25 tracks at once. I do 8 hour long shows with
titles, lower thirds and nice graphics and I only use 4 tracks most of the
time.

It would be really neat to have a media pool that I could use to
actually manage upwards of 450 source materials. It would be really
useful (as in save tens of hours of work) to make some of the complicated
composites (like my intro titles and exit titles) into sub-sequences that
I didn't have to work with on my main timeline.

The point is, with better "core editing" I don't have to run 25 tracks at
once nor do I need to clutter my workspace with all those tracks...

The "core editing" stuff only makes sense to people who have worked
on projects with more than a couple hundred events. Next time you
edit an 8 hour documentary,you will know what we're talking about.

>SonyEPM, please confirm !!
>(btw, why I cant get similar performance with my PC ?)

Running 25 tracks at once can be done with V4 or even (probably)
V3...IF you have a storage-area-network. With a massively parallel
hard disk array you can feed all those bytes to the processor
with no problem. You can't do this with off the shelf cheap disks like
most of us have to edit on.

Also, you probably don't want to have many effects on those 25 tracks
as it will definately slow down. Nobody's breaking the laws of physics
here. I wish I could composite 6 tracks with a few effects in realtime
but it ain't gonna happen. That's why we need network render for
previews and not just the final output...
johnmeyer wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:37 PM
The real issue isn't whether Vegas is better/worse than other NLEs. That has been debated many times, and even before V5, anyone on this forum has, by definition, picked Vegas. Vegas is the best overall editor.

Instead, the real issue is whether Vegas can live up to the expectations each individual has for this incredible program. Ah, there's that word again:

expectations

Grazie had it exactly right in his earlier comments when he talked about managing expectations. The real "sin" committed by Sony wasn't that they failed produced a fantastic upgrade (which I'm finally going to get to install this afternoon). In fact, by almost any measure this is a spectacular upgrade.

Instead, what they failed to do was manage expectations. As I argued in a thread a few weeks back, they need to learn to provide "guidance" on their future direction, the way most other software companies do. They do not need to provide any specific feature information, but they should talk about what general areas they plan to work on (e.g., workflow, HD, MIDI, effects integration, titling, etc.). In addition, they don’t need to publish this with the masses, but instead can share it with a few select people (e.g., Spot) who can they guide the rest of us. This is done all the time in the financial community where the CFO provides "guidance" to the analysts that follow the company, and they in turn provide that information and analysis to their customers.

Thus, a lot of people "expected" something because they had complained about it, written to Sony's suggestion box asking for it, or just silently wished it would appear. With no guidance to the contrary, they got ticked off when their favorite feature wasn't included.

Sony can avoid all this in the future, and get the full kudos that they richly deserve , simply by providing guidance in the coming months about what direction they plan to steer this ship. We're all along for the ride no matter what, but the crew would be happier knowing what port we're sailing towards.

Now, finally, on with the upgrade. I've read all the whitepapers, seen all the NAB tutorials, and read lots of comments on this board. I am prepared for a really good time.
busterkeaton wrote on 4/22/2004, 12:38 PM
Do you mean plateau?

I think you can do 2K stuff with Vegas, but you have to have work around to getting it in and out of Vegas. Also you can not be going back to film because then you run into matchback and EDL issues. So Vegas is not there yet.
vitamin_D wrote on 4/22/2004, 1:19 PM
I have to say my hat's off to you both for sticking around and saying things I'm incapable of saying as succinctly or with the proper direction. Thanks!

I think these two snips are key, and worth repeating:

[Sony] need to learn to provide "guidance" on their future direction, the way most other software companies do.

and...

This isn't a "core editing" feature in the same sense
Rosebud wrote on 4/22/2004, 1:55 PM
potatophysics said:
Running 25 tracks at once can be done with V4 or even (probably)

Well, try this project in V5 (replace the missing DV file):
http://vital.video.free.fr/25tracks.veg

With my PIV 3.06Ghz, I get (firewire preview):
draft Auto > 15fps
draft Full > 10fps
Preview Auto > 13fps
Preview Full > 5fps
Good Auto > 7fps
Good Full > 2fps
Best Auto > less than 2fps
Best Full > 1 Fps

And with only ONE dv file !!!!
Rain Mooder wrote on 4/22/2004, 2:33 PM
Yeah, I'm no where near being able to support 25 tracks of ANYTHING
on my poor little 2.4GHZ machine. I don't doubt that there are ultra fast
machines out there that can do it all but I can't afford them. If my master
plus two overlays plays back at 10fps I'm happy :)
Rosebud wrote on 4/22/2004, 10:21 PM
I don't doubt that there are ultra fast

I’m currious to know which fast machine can play 25 tracks of COMPOSITED DV footage in real time (firewire preview) ???
bakerbud9 wrote on 4/22/2004, 10:30 PM
yeah, that's true. i know sony doesn't want to make promises they can't keep, but keeping users totally in the dark until next upgrade does raise issues you describe so well.
-nate
bakerbud9 wrote on 4/22/2004, 10:34 PM
it was a dual amd opteron, 2 gigs of ram, and a cerpico san.
-nate
Cheesehole wrote on 4/22/2004, 10:36 PM
How were they composited? I have a dual Opteron 248 2GB RAM.
RichR wrote on 4/23/2004, 5:13 AM
Yeah, I did the same and didn't think twice about it. Now that's a stable app!
This is a great program. I know there are many on this forum that haven't scratched the surface of what Vegas can do, yet they find something to complain about. Get to work and make some money! Then take a vacation!
Enjoy!
farss wrote on 4/23/2004, 5:40 AM
I'm rather interested in the answers to this as well. We're not just talking about something running twice as fast here now are we. We're talking something running maybe 50 times faster.
As far as I know dual Opterpussy whatevers are a bit faster tha P4, OK lets be generous and say there twice as fast. So maybe the whole things limited by disk speed and we have a disk array that can deliver data 50 times faster than IDE. But we're still limited by bus speed, getting the data from the controller into RAM and the CPU(s).
Given that every iteration of the P4 line and disk improvments yields ar best a 30% speedup, I;d sure like to know what's out there that'll run THAT fast.
As much as we all hate SPAM posts on this forum I think we'd forgive whoever makes this box from letting us know where and for how much we can buy one of these. I thing Sony should give these guys a leg up, they seem to know how to put the Real Time into Vegas!
ReneH wrote on 4/23/2004, 6:46 AM
I've done up to 40-50 racks with several audio tracks as well as an assload of transiitons and effects to boot. Vegas never locked up or crashed on me
bakerbud9 wrote on 4/23/2004, 12:55 PM
perhaps Duncan can post the full specs of the system he was using at NAB. beyond dual opteron, 2GB RAM, and cerpico san, i don't know any further details. i was absolutely astonished, and i'm amazed that sony isn't marketing these types of abilities!

the 25 dv clips were arranged by a script into a 5x5 moving video wall. so each clip had a scale and translate transformation. additionally, duncan adjusted the opacity of one of the clips in realtime just to prove to the audience that it wasn't a prerendered effect. that certainly caused some "oooohs" and "aaaahhhs".

-nate
Cheesehole wrote on 4/23/2004, 1:01 PM
Thanks nate, I'll get around to trying that this weekend. I don't have the disk I/O, but I can at least verify the compositing capability. I'm pretty sure they were using a similar system to mine aside from the SAN...
johnmeyer wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:25 PM
One possible explanation is the trick I saw in that multiple cat demo that chaboud linked to in another thread. If you download the whole project, you will find that he set the project properties to 360x240, i.e., one quarter resolution. You will find that if you do this, your preview speeds up tremendously. It is actually a pretty neat trick if you think about it: Do all your editing with the project properties set to low resolution, and then, just before final render, bump it back up again.

I am not saying that is what was going on, but it would account for at least a 4x difference in speed.
riredale wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:32 PM
What a terrific idea! I never would have thought of doing that.

I came to Vegas from Studio7, and one of the things I really enjoyed about that program was the ability to capture in low-res mode, do the entire project in low-res mode, and then tell the program to go back and pull in just what it needed (in high-res) when doing the final render. It made a lot of sense when all you had was 8 or 15GB of hard drive (~2001).

This situation is different in that we have all the disk space in the world and can capture in high-resolution mode to begin with. But it's easy to choke the CPU, so artificially reducing the resolution by 50% vertically and horizontally makes a lot of sense for most projects. Things run 4x faster, and at the very end you can tell Vegas to crunch away on the final product. Cool.
Cheesehole wrote on 4/23/2004, 4:07 PM
Okay I tried the 25 clip video wall thing.

First let me say that setting this up was quite painless - even without a script. I only had to create the top 5 squares manually, then I duplicated the 5 tracks by selecting them all and hitting Duplicate Track. Awesome. All 5 were duplicated and selected for me. I then inserted a parent track and made the 5 cloned tracks children of it by simply selecting clicking the Child button on one of the 5 selected tracks. That's right - one click.

The rest is easy... add 96 to the Y setting in parent motion and the second row shifts down into place. Then clone that entire parent/child group of tracks (just select / duplicate) and move that one down 96 more pixels. Repeat 2 more times and the 25 track wall is finished. Takes a couple minutes at the most. I was really impressed.

I put the same DV clip in every square and tested for frame rate.
Project: 720x480 NTSC DV Progressive
Draft: locked the needle at 29.97 fps
Preview: 10 fps
Best: 3.5 fps

Project: 360x240 29.97p
Draft: 29.97
Preview: 29.97
Best: 2.8

Notice the frame rate drops when the project is smaller in Best mode. This is probably the result of the better resizing algorithm that Best uses. The frame is smaller but the resize algorithm has to work harder.

Okay now the fun part. I set the res back to 720x480 draft and played with the opacity fader during play back. I see why it got oohs from the crowd. The feedback is absolutely dead on. There is no detectable lag at all. I can whip the slider up and down all I want and the frame rate stays pegged at 29.97 fps.

If I play with a parent slider to tweak 5 squares of video at once (use Overlay composite mode) I can get the frame rate down to 29.10 fps.

In Preview mode - the frame rate is about 10 and drops to 9.1 when playing with the opacity slider. 8.1 for 5 tracks at once. Even that looks really snappy - considering.

So I could see the 25 tracks of DV at 29.97fps thing happening if I had the disk bandwidth - and as long it was done in draft mode.

I'm just as impressed by how easy it was to make a 25 clip video wall - literally within 3 minutes - with no script.