I don't believe there is a solution to this. You cannot open V12 files/projects with V11 - there is no backward compatibility.
It is for this reason that Sony cautioned us - the software should be used for trial projects, not commercial stuff (or, by extension, anything considered fairly important). Saves getting stuck with a project that you spent hours on and can't open anymore.
If you decide to take the leap and buy V12, the projects will of course open....

it has been stated often enough in this forum, in the release notes and elsewhere that vegas projects are NEVER backwardly compatible.

nor should (as was stated in the notes, and by many here) ANY working project be started or continued in a trial (beta or not).

Thank you for your helpful and informative answer Ushere. Particularly pointing out the number of times it's been said that vegas is not backwards compatible. I guess you don't actually know how to make 11 open a 12 files then, eh?

For your information and the others offering similar comments... I actually bought one of the first copies of version 12 last week. If you'd bothered reading my post before flaming me you'd realize that owning Vegas Pro 12 is not (and never was) the issue. Having 5 licensed version of Vegas Pro11 on different workstations is where the problem lies. Already several of my people prefer Premier.

Somehow or another my editors all need to work on the same files sooner or later. Using Version 12 to create them means none of the specialists who are still using 11 will be able to co-author version 12 files. That is a serious issue I'm sure not just my studio is confronted with when deciding on upgrading or changing programs altogether.

I'm not in the least interested in buying another four upgrades until I'm totally satisfied there is a real productivity gain in doing that. Right now it doesn't look as if there is. Thanks for your answer Ron. Always refreshing to come across polite forum posters.

Ryadia

Just save as an EDL and then import that EDL in Vegas 11.

It's not going to give you everything, but it's going to save you a lot of time saved.

Dave

Ryadia, are you exploring a sensible Test and Upgrade Working Migration Pathway to VP12 so that your editors can be assured of a way forward?

If that's the case then that's an interesting question. Managing expectations through Change is the monkey on all managers/business owners backs. I don't know of such a model that won't include issues and frustrations. I suppose what you would need to do would be to set up tasks for your Premmie Edtiors set against a knowledgable Vegas operator and get yet another member of Staff monitor their output success.

Comparison tasks could be:

1] Media ingestion

2] Media Auditioning/Previewing and Bin creation

3] Laying down initial 1st Draft Narratives

4] Remedial Colour and Audio Correction

5] MultiCam ease of editing

6] Application and manipulation of Graphics including Text and lower thirds

7] 2nd draft signing off

8] Preparation to Render Encoding

9] Rendering to a variety of outputs

10] Q&A-ing the Renders

In any of these tasks you or your staff member will need to keep copious written or method of note taking. And after this labour intensive process you'd be in great shape to make decisions.

Interesting question. Managing expectations is a task that will make you a more united company capable of taking on change, not just now, but in the future. As we develop more and more exacting ways of getting our digital narratives out there, those companies that can adapt and adopt quickly to these new options will survive. Those companies that don't plan for change will at best, be inefficient and at worse, fail.

Best regards

Grazie

ryadia - it wasn't a flame, merely a statement of fact.

when you know how to make 11 open a 12 veg then please post here - i'm sure there's many people wanting to know also...

Ryadia,

I am sure nobody was intentinally flaming you, but since you seem to have a history with Vegas, you know that it has never been backwards compatible. No one will tell you how to open a Veg file from a later version because it won't happen. If you are doing real work on a Beta version of software, you are taking a big risk. Best to isolate the Verstion 12 projects until you are comfortable with upgrading everything.

Dave T2

Vegas 12 creates project files that have information for the new features and changes that Vegas 12 has and that includes even basic information about the way events are on the time-line and so on.

Vegas 11 will not recognize those new features and changes and will not know what to do with them.

When using Microsoft Word for instance I can do a ‘save-as’ and choose an earlier format/version but with the disclaimer that some features might be lost. Trying to do this with an NLE can become a big programming head-ache at best so SCS does not do this.

There is an EDL thing that will save out the basic edits but nothing more. So that probably will not meet your needs.

The best you can do for now is an all Vegas 11 for your active projects with Vegas 12 on a test system to see if it will meet your needs. And if it does, then it will be necessary to go to Vegas 12 on all of your systems.

I would suggest you contact SCS and see if you can get a volume discount for all of your editing systems. I can’t promise anything but they might help you with that.

"Just save as an EDL and then import that EDL in Vegas 11."

I've had better results using the Vegas example scripts that Import / Export a project using XML format. More of the settings are preserved.

Have you tried finding your auto saved files from the earlier version? Just rename the "bak" extention to "veg".

Good suggestion, Mike.


I've had pretty good luck opening the file in the newer version, highlight all, and copy. Then open the older one and paste. (I know it was suggested above, but just wanted to throw my $.02 in)

That's back the front to what I need.

I'm needing to open Version 12 files using version 11. There's no problem opening version 11 files with version 12. The workaround to achieve what I want is a long way round and not practical for us although in an emergency it might work OK.

Render the .veg file and open it as you would any other video file. Far from eloquent and certainly not making our workflow faster which is what version 12 offers.

Ryadia

Someone on the Movie Studio figured how to hack the project file headers to fool it into thinking it was from an earlier version. Some features undoubtedly would not work. I don't have any further information on this.

I agree with you there Gary. XML is after all just text instruction on how the file should be processed when opened.

The only reason for a busy studio to invest in upgrades is to make the process of producing video products faster or easier. When you need to export a file before you can then import it into another program, any time likely to be saved in rendering is lost. Any potential saving made by upgrading is also lost.

I'm pretty sure everyone reading this forum knows full well that producing a documentary video (a wedding or product demonstration video for example) is 40% camera work and 60% editing.

We've spent the past year working on ways to avoid or minimize post production editing. Vegas 12 does run faster than 11 but the problems it creates in multi-user studios may very well destroy any benefits likely to be found by upgrading.

Thanks for your input.
Ryadia

Yes. We are exploring migration. On the surface it looks like a no brainer. All our archives can be opened with future versions but it's the backwards compatibility that as you said is the monkey on our back. I think it was Bill Gates who said "it is retaining backwards compatibility that prevents real strides being made in computer software".

We went through this with InDesign, even Word Perfect in our publishing department but there is usually a fairly easy way around with paper publishing.

It's news assignments and documentaries (weddings and location shoots) where you can't do a second take that post shoot editing can't be avoided no matter how many cameras you use.

I've pretty much decided that we either buy the extra upgrades or change our programs to something more backwards compatible. (If there is such a thing!)

Ryadia

New features are added to Vegas with each new version, therefore, the information contained in the .VEG file changes in each new version. Newer versions of Vegas can open .VEG files from earlier versions, but an earlier version can never open .VEG files from a later version. There is no way that this is going to happen, ever. This will be true of any NLE, not just Vegas.

Try this:
In V12 Save As "Edit Protocol Compliant AAF".
You should be able to open the .aaf file in V11 and find all of the edits intact. You will loose all FXs, Generated Media and Busses.
I haven't tested this between V12 and V11 but I did just test it between V10 and V9 and it worked, with the above limitations. I also found my audio envelopes were carried over.

As I was also reminded in the process of doing the tests, even between V10 and V10 you can have "issues". If you open a V10/32 project in V10/64 and your project called 32bit plugs. Nothing too drastic goes wrong, just an intimidating error message that could freak out an editor.

Bob.

just an intimidating error message that could freak out an editor.

and boy, are we editors easily freaked out!!! ;-)

But it's not 'backwards' compatibility you're asking for - it's 'forwards' compatibility. Isn't that impossible? Can Word 5 open the latest version of Word file? Can older versions of Premiere do this? I don't use Premiere which is why I ask. I honestly can't think of a piece of software I've ever used that could do this.

"I honestly can't think of a piece of software I've ever used that could do this."

All the Microsoft Office apps can although in some instances you may need to save in the old format. I develop Access apps, in 2010, they still work just fine in Access 2000. Come to think of it I think we still have one site running Access '97.

Photoshop back many versions, a graphic artist client of mine suggested that's a reason why Photoshop has been so popular.

Operating systems, just imagine if you couldn't read a disk formatted under Win 7 with Win 2K, in fact the first verion of MS DOS could read it if you chose FAT 16.

Bob.

Microsoft faced a HUGE backlash when they started introducing new file formats with Office 2000 which couldn't be opened by older versions. One major problem was the perception that they were doing this to force millions of corporate users to waste billions of dollars upgrading merely to be able to trade files with the few who had upgraded, even though those millions had absolutely no use for the newer version features. Many in the corporate world were ready to ditch Microsoft all together and move to free, open source solutions that read any of the versions' files.

Microsoft finally relented and offered free utilities that either performed file conversions back to old versions, or in some cases updated the old versions to let them open the new files directly. They may have lost some potential upgrades this way, but they also saved their customer base.

Heck, i'd still be happily using Office 6 (who's *ONLY* feature above Office 2 that got me to switch was the long file names) if someone hadn't given me their extra copy of Office '97. Honestly, no new version of Office since 6 has contained even one single new feature i'd ever find useful.

As far as disk formats being backward compatible, this is a bit of a misdirection. Sure, you could format a floppy or a small (read wee itsy-tiny!) memory stick* as FAT 16 in Windows 7 to keep it compatible with your old DOS 3.3 system. However, FAT 16 simply can't support a 2TB drive. You'd end up with 30,000 32MB partitions, and you've only got 31 drive letters available in DOS. NTFS wasn't an arbitrary choice to support the software company's new features. It was a necessity dictated by larger storage systems.



I was looking through my previous boss' desk a couple days ago to find some information about an old customer and came across a baggie full of 16MB SD cards. Wow. I could store two or maybe three pictures from my Nikon DSLR on one of those!

Has anyone considered converting all your files to AVI uncompressed and then copying the entire timeline in 12 to paste in 11? It won't paste everything but it's almost there.