. . . how much does Sony really want or need us?Actually, Tom, I'd be a bit more specific and be asking how much does SONY Cameras - all of it - need us?

Elephant and Room comes to mind.

Grazie

[I]"Do't forget Vegas Pro is a pretty old code base (13 years without a rewrite). I think Adobe has done 2 or 3 rewrites in the same amount of time. So I don't see this as all gloom and doom. It's more of a course correction."[/I]

I believe you're right, Adobe have done quite a few code rewrites.
The question is why hasn't SCS done the same?
I cannot believe that the developers didn't know there were serious issues with the fundamentals of Vegas a long time ago. That was self evident from the posts here going back to V10. One way or another that is when the rewrite should have started.

Bob.

"Ulead went out of business."

Actually, Ulead was taken over by or combined with InterVideo which was then taken over by Corel which now only maintains Video Studio originally from Ulead.

In the context of the economic survival of Vegas, the eternally ongoing discussion about Vegas not being "pro", not a "real editor" etc , always left me wondering why Sony has never taken a more agressive promotional stance against these ridiculous rumors.
It would have been pretty easy to run a campaign of agressively comparative promotional clips revealing the intuitiveness and genius ease of use and the functionality of Vegas, and simply opposing these to the shortcomings and complications of other NLEs.In other words, they could and should have PUSHED and promoted Vegas - but I can't help feeling they never as much as attempted to do so. Why?
Is it that Sony never knew about the attitude that the "pro world" had been cultivating in regards to Vegas? Or simply ignored it? Is it a Japanese cultural codex thing?
It always made me kinda sad that vegas has such a bad rep in the editorial scene, and that most people I talk to have never even heard of it.

I do understand that VP needs a complete rewrite of code but why change the interface we all love so much and which very intuitive? Catalyst Edit is a far cry from that.

Yeah. And still pretty6 much the only platform where you can mix and match almost any media on the timeline !

geoff

What I like most about Vegas is its ease of use. I work at a community college and regularly deal with students who have never used an NLE in their life. An hour or less with Vegas Pro and they're editing on their own. To the best of my knowledge you can't do that with any other editor.
I work with a guy who has used most of the other biggies (Premiere, FCP, Avid) and he keeps coming back to Vegas because it's so intuitive.

Mike

When they say that Vegas needs a complete rewrite what does that mean technically? To adapt to other software? To 4K? To 8K? To Windows 10? When something is old and it works why mess with it? So that means UNIX is no good also because it's 1950's Bell Labs creation? Tell it to Apple.
JJK

I agree with OldSmoke.

Why change the interface from Vegas to Catalyst so much?
Now I have to admit I haven't actually tried Catalyst but from what I've seen and read it doesn't look at all like Vegas. A learning curve, steep or otherwise, will keep me with Vegas for a long time. If Catalyst were close enough to Vegas where I could just jump and and start working I'd be much more inclined to jump ship.

So, is Catalyst actually going to be the next prominent iteration of editing software from Sony? It seems we're all guessing and in the dark. I'd like to think that Catalyst, for all my lack of familiarity with it, will get a lot of effort from Sony to make it catch up to what Vegas offers and surpass it since we won't get Vegas 14.

Sony should have keep the Vegas Pro interface for Catalyst Edit. CE interface is far to difficult to understand and hard to learn and confusing, at least to me.

> "When they say that Vegas needs a complete rewrite what does that mean technically? To adapt to other software? To 4K? To 8K? To Windows 10? "

It's kind of hard to explain if you're not familiar with software architectures and how software is built but it's done to take advantage of newer technologies and frameworks that weren't available when the original was built. Essentially it means throw away what you have and start over using a new architecture and approach.

If I use an automobile as an analogy: you can keep fixing an old car, you can replace the parts to a point. You can even upgrade some of the parts to better ones. Eventually you get to a point where new technology doesn't fit. Does it make sense to try and retrofit an anti-lock brake system or a computer system on a old car that it wasn't meant for? At some point you realize that you need to buy a new car based on new technology.

Vegas Pro as based on a software architecture designed back in the days of Window 95. The Video for Windows subsystem on which Vegas Pro is based has been abandoned by Microsoft. Sony has tried to graft on new technologies like OFX plug-ins but they had to do it in a way as not to break their Direct X plug-ins. So you get code that is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. It has to behave in different ways depending on the plug-ins and that usually means that it can only support the lowest common denominator of both which doesn't take advantage of all the power of either.

Are you still using PC DOS? At some point you decided that multi-tasking was important. Microsoft tried to fake multi-tasking with Windows 3.0 thru Windows 98/Me but there was still the single task PC DOS under the covers and it didn't work very well. At some point they had to throw it all away and invent Windows NT that did true multi-tasking.

This is where Sony is with Vegas Pro. It still uses the same computer technology from 13 years ago when it was first built and some of it is not performing well against today's newer technologies. Like patching an old quilt, as some point you throw the quilt out and buy a new one. There will always be someone who keeps the old quilt. It's human nature to resist change.

> "When something is old and it works why mess with it? "

Because it is broken. Have you tried GPU support? Sony tried from Vegas Pro 10.0 to Vegas Pro 13.0 to get GPU acceleration to work correctly and you still get occasional black frames or other artifacts in your render. When that happens, the first thing someone says is, "turn off GPU acceleration" and sure enough it fixes the problem. That's broken. You can't graft on GPU support to an architecture that was is designed around the CPU doing all of the work and expect it to work properly. That's why it doesn't.

> "So that means UNIX is no good also because it's 1950's Bell Labs creation? Tell it to Apple. "

The Unix that Apple uses under OS X (darwin) is a far cry from the Unix that Bell Labs created back in the 1950's. It is a modern hybrid microkernel based Unix and Apple took a beating from their customers when they went from their in-house OS 9 to the Unix based OS X. But they made the hard decision that Unix was a better way forward into the future and they took it.

The nature of computer technology and software is that over time, it becomes obsolete. If you are still editing DV then a PC running Windows XP and Vegas 3 is all you need. If you're trying to wrangle 4K, you'll quickly find that a CPU based solution alone is probably not up to the task.

~jr

Before I possibly waste time playing with Catalyst Edit, can someone answer me how this fits into the workflow?

Specifically I cannot find any information about its functionality like we have for Vegas on the page(s) comparing what's available in different versions.

The only thing that comes close is the online manual, and just looking through that other than basic editing (various methods of cutting, trimming) it offers absolutely nothing.

No cross-fades/dissolves, cropping, track motion. Not even the most basic facility to adjust colour, brightness, contrast. Only waveform and histogram displays (no vectorscope)

No FX and no support for third party FX.

Surely I'm missing something conceptually.

JohnnyRoy,

Very, very, well said. From a true programmer's perspective, too.

JohnnyRoy:

Thanks.

JJK

@Tim

Maybe this will help you.

Catalyst Edit is not for the usual Vegas Pro User and frankly wouldn't fit into my workflow either otherwise I would have bought it. To me this all feels like a Vegas Pro ripped apart into several stand alone products. It is however cross platform capable but has plenty of issues too if you look into its own forum.

+1 David (and jr)...

So, what does everyone plan on doing here for editing in the future? There's no way I'll go with Adobe for a monthly fee, that wouldn't make sense and to me isn't showing to your customers that you can deliver good software and a good experience.

I'll still use Vegas for a while as there's nothing terribly advanced about the kind of videos I make, but eventually I'd try out Davinci Resolve, especially with the editing features they're getting. And they have a free version.

@Old Smoke
Thanks for the link - I'm out now but will watch later, but it sounds like I'm ending up with the same question as Vegas Filmmaker - what do Vegas editors do in the future?
It is true Vegas does everything I believe I need to do or can imagine I'm likely to need to do (especially as I use 3rd party products such as Hit Film for other stuff), but then again WordPerfect 5.1 did everything most of us needed to do for wordprocessing but you'd be considered a little strange if you used that nowadays.

I'm at the point where I need to replace my four year old PC. I've always stuck with PCs - I earn my living supporting Windows based networks and when they go wrong I can fix them. However if Vegas is becoming end of life, I'm seriously considering (throws hands up in horror) one of those Mac thingies with a 5K screen and FCPX!

Since I have no plans for 4K or 8K, I'll happily stay with VP13. No complaints with it so far - works with everything I throw at it.
Tom

To add a -1 to Adobe cc (subscription), I will never succumb to this model.
Interestingly I keep getting offers to join cc at low intro discount. It would appear their subsc. model may be working for them tho.
I recently attended a University of California-wide videographers conference. A show of hands of who used what edit app: 90% Adobe (mix of CS and CC tho).
Literally only one Avid user, and myself the only Vegas user. Was disappointing at best.

I too feel that Catalyst does not fit into my workflow. Sony's new Suite has been designed for large production houses where different individuals are responsible for different phases of the production (e.g. preliminary storyboard, editing, compositing, color grading, etc.). Most people here do all these phases themselves, and as such, I find it unlikely that everyone will migrate to the new product. One of my pet peeves with VP has been the lack of tight integration with a high quality compositor. Though HitFilm has tried to address this, they pale in comparison to the output that something like After Effects can achieve. For me, this is an opportunity to hunt around for a better solution.

As for those who might stay with Sony products out of some sort of emotionally based loyalty, let me remind you that loyalty is a two-way street and loyalty won't give you the features or workflow that you might need to create your productions.

Peter