i think the DV engine needs an speed update re rendering. Considering the fact that edius is running SW only and it offers true realtime output then i dont see why Vegas cant do the same.

Umm..
I dont like how when ur tweaking keyframes with filters it resets itself when u jump from effect to effect within a chain.

Ripple Edit should havea big Red Flashing Lamp teling us its on (ive allocated a customised button on my toolbar which makes ripple editing easy to see whther its pressed or not.. no the best, but it works for me.

Titler sucks but works for basic stuff that i need. If i need techy stuff, i just throw on Bluff or AE

Umm.. still image capture. I dont like the idea of having to blow up my preview window so i can get a full res still.

as for the capture util, i actually like the deadset basicness (is that a word) of it. i like the fact that its "dumb" as i prefer to capture tapes as they are and trim later

oh one thing i DESPISE is how when u split a clip that has a transition on it, that transition is migrated to all other clips which are split following te first split on that particualr clip. I know theyre tryin to speed up the workflow, but if we want a transition there, wed put it there ourselves..

theres a couple more but its all pedantic. I like vegas and i am yet to have any serious problems with it.

The filter controls could be a bit more graphical to give you a clearer idea of what you're doing. More feedback.

You shouldn't have to change your preview resolution to grab a still frame. Vegas should just do it. Fine with me to have a pref to configure the still capture behavior.

Preview panel could use a Zoom feature.

Prefs panel needs to change. There are too many tabs and once you get past two rows of tabs the metaphor stops working.

Vidcap is awful. The solution, I think, would be a free app that also lets you review captured footage, log it, add comments, export the logs and comments, Import a log to use as a batch capture script, etc. You could give this and the media to a PA or a client to review things. If you do that then maybe you want to add a low-res capture function so you can give a client something small to review.

Subclips. It should be easier to drag the clips out past their boudaries. Currently they just stop dead at their ends. Also, when you rename them, the name needs to persist if you drage them to a new veg file.

MediaFX need to have some indication on the clip that they are present. Also, they need to transfer with the item when you copy their bin to a new project.

Yes, the prerenders could be much smarter. They currently just prerender timeline space and people want them to prerender actual events on the timeline. Solution? Have the prerenders live on a thin little prerender track and have them subject to ripple edits just like everything else. Display of the prerender area could be the same except you think of them as being on a 4px high track of their own. It's a conceptual change.

Cursor behavior. Cursor should stop moving to whatever spot you click on within the track area. Have specific areas above the tracks to click to move the cursor, and allow a key combo to click in the track areas and move the cursor. Or at least allow this as an option.

Deadman's key to temporarily turn off Quantize to frame or event grouping.

Grouping. There should be a difference between the grouping of A/V pairs and custom groups of events. If you ungroup a custom group it should leave the A/V pairs intact.

Vegas could use an optional overall project file to manage sets of Veg files and common presets for a project.

Okay, very little of that was things I actually hate, but they're peeves. In contrast, we're enduring an install of three axio systems at work and we keep finding things that don't work well. Every time, I know Vegas can do it. It just doesn't have hardware support or 10 bit processes so it's out of the running. I just keep my mouth shut.

Rob Mack

My least favorite thing is the VFW pipeline. I've got this great graphics card GPU which could be used for previewing video, adding effects and to speed up rendering and all it's doing is sitting there unused. If this isn't changed in the next version of Vegas I'll probably jump ship and get Premier Pro.

Rob, that's why I like Subclips. That's what they do! - G

...and that was the 38,143rd time a user couldn't figure out the capabilities of Vegas by reading the manual.

The manual didn't even make my <brown>list, because it is so bad it is generally unusable.

Just get what information you can from the online help, search the forum here, ask around if somebody else stumbled upon the possible feature that wasn't findable in the manual, and experiment to figure out the rest.

I still like my idea of an industrial version of the manual---look up the action you want to perform in the index, then a block with text in it that says "open Vegas" , then an arrow to the next block "highlight clip", etc.
This could be set up on an extremely simple basis like the first block "energize computer" for first timers or an "assumed familiarity" manual for professionals. This would be so kool for hard to remember sequences and really complex projects.
I used to work maintenance at a large chemical company with I believe had over 30 different computers and different manufacturers and maybe having to use one of them once per year so remembering how to operate them would have been a nightmare. They are all set up for programming them on a first time basis of familiarity with the block diagram syndrome. One of them was an Allen Bradley $140,000.00 batch control computer with 21" color CRT monitor and color coded keyboard that went "click" every time a key was pushed. There were two other Yamaha $8000.00 pen recorder computers with very complex temperature control algorithims programmed into them.Very complex stuff compared to Vegas made easy.

JJK

JJK

I don't like that "Save As" automatically renames the project's media. I would like to option of using the same names when saving off to another location.

-jerry

>>...LEAST favorite feature of Vegas...

The fact that a filter preset doesn't show the NAME of the saved preset that is currently applied when you go back in to the filter dialog to look at it; it just shows the values of the named preset. (Bet everyone forgot about this one!)

...and Vidcap. Good thing there's SCLive. As has been mentioned before, it would be very helpful if you could determine the shoot date/time from the timeline. SCLive filenames allow for this. Vegas doesn't.

Vegas is still the best though.

>I don't like that "Save As" automatically renames the project's media. I would like to option of using the same names when saving off to another location

I don't care about the renaming (in fact I like it). Its that I cannot "Save As" to the "current" directory, have all files outside that directory copied into that directory, and have all files inside that directory (or subfolders, or perhaps this could be optional) REMAIN UNCHANGED. After all, why would I want to duplicate a file in the same directory?

-No « Overwrite mode ».
-Prerender file management is disastrous

CG, ugh. Ripple feature is useless. My old toaster had this feature and it worked perfectly.

I LIKE the ripple feature, and after getting burned by it a few times I know to use it very carefully. I, too, have it mounted on my toolbar. Maybe the button should change to orange when pressed, just to make it clear that you're playing with a loaded gun here.

Using the ripple I have to be fully aware all the time and I constantly go back and forth between "full ripple---event grouping" to "no ripple---no event grouping" many hundreds of times per day.

JJK

Rich wrote:

"I don't care about the renaming (in fact I like it). Its that I cannot "Save As" to the "current" directory, have all files outside that directory copied into that directory, and have all files inside that directory (or subfolders, or perhaps this could be optional) REMAIN UNCHANGED. After all, why would I want to duplicate a file in the same directory?"

I couldn't agree more. In fact I have a few scripts that try to adress this issue, if you'd like to try them out.

cdm

As others have mentioned, the lack of 10-bit colour space.

The lack of a base broadcast legal black level. Its all very well making your footage broadcast legal, but ehats the point if, when you perform a fade out on a clip, it goes to illegal black? The workaround of putting a legal black solid colour in and fading to that on the layer below doesn't work (it sometimes causes some weird fades). And putting such a block of colour next to each clip that needs fading out is a complete pain. Fade To Colour on the track controls is no good either because the envelope gets in the way of editing, and if you turn it off then on again it forgets all your control points.

>In fact I have a few scripts that try to adress this issue, if you'd like to try them out.

Love to, CDM.

rich at clevercaboose dotty com

<I LIKE the ripple feature, and after getting burned by it a few times I know to use it very carefully. I, too, have it mounted on my toolbar. Maybe the button should change to orange when pressed, just to make it clear that you're playing with a loaded gun here.>

I think it should flash on and off, almost annoyingly

We've all learned the workarounds for the quirks. I for one wish they would improve them.
One thing I think some Vegas users are guilty of is telling newbees to the program things like:

"I love Vegas because it is so INTUITIVE" .

It isn't and that is not helpful to someone looking to get involved in the program. It requires a lot of practice and a forum of this caliber with members this willing to help to learn how to work around it's quirks. In that respect it is second to none.

John

I came from VideoSlave - believe me, Vegas IS intuitive. g

For me it's a dead heat between two of the stupidest choices of default settings I've ever come across in any application - smoothness=100 and the utterly wretched defaults for the MPG2 encoder. They really let down an otherwise brilliant bit of software.

Mark

the utterly wretched defaults for the MPG2 encoder.

I have been ragging about this forever, and while they haven't changed the actual default settings (which they should still do), a little-noted improvement in 6.0d is that FINALLY Vegas will at least remember the template you last chose for MPEG-2. So, once you figure out that Default=Garbage, and you instead choose one of the DVD Architect templates, you'll never have to remember to do it again.

on the the "utterly wretched defaults for the MPG2 encoder :"

In Vegas 6.0d, a "reasonably appropriate" render template is now stuffed into the MPEG-2 encoder based on your project settings. From there you can customize if you wish.