seems like most businesses cycle through a process like this when changes come. What we don't read about is the 2000 more they hire over the next couple of years.
Or the hundreds of employees that they plan to move to the new TV subsidiary, or the Vaio employees who will find jobs with the new PC manufacturer.
But recall that Sony Electronics is a completely different company from Sony Creative Software. The only thing they have in common is that they are owned by the mothership: Sony Corporation. As long as SCS makes its goals, Sony Inc won't bother them.
"As long as SCS makes its goals, Sony Inc won't bother them."
As long as there are users of Vegas who stay with older versions and not upgrade, SCS may not make its goal. The last NLE I used which was Ulead's Media Studio Pro version 8 went down because not enough users upgraded for Ulead to continue to provide support for.
Vegas 12 has features I would not want to edit without especially the new way of making a mask. Instead of the old very tedious way, one can use a box or a circle to quickly create one in no time! The old cookie cutter never gets used anymore.
The Sony's render to mp4 is superior to what it used to be. I still cannot get as good as HandBrake with the very, very low bit rates but I can do 5,000,000 bps for 720p with Sony and staying in Vegas and get excellent results if I start with 1080p video. And it saves a ton of time and energy used on my computer as well!
There is a lot more stuff that V12 has that are very helpful as well.
Question, how much incentive does SCS have to continue to invest both time and money in Vegas if there is only limited returns in funds from its users? Please think about it. I would hate to see what happened to Ulead's MSP Pro 8 also happen to Sony Vegas! The alternatives are NOT something I would want to use!
however, a guaranteed selling point for future releases would be sorting out gpu and reliability / stability. with 12 i feel scs is definitely on the right track with the latter, unfortunately the former is still a dogs breakfast.
if you build a better mouse trap, people will buy it. if you make the same old one, albeit in different colours, people will not see any need to buy it.
what's important nowadays, with the plethora of quite sophisticated nle's available at extremely low cost is RELIABILITY, not gimmicks.
any pro will spend money on a tool that WORKS reliably, but equally they will see through bells and whistles stuck on an old, tired model.
During the early days of Vegas 12 I had a lot of crashes but not as many as some did. And that was on my old system which had one of those codec packs or whatever they are called that probably messed-up Vegas. Also, my system was connected to the internet and had automatic updates which also probably caused problems. Plus it had a lot of other junk installed.
My new system does not have any of those codec whatever's and it is almost never connected to the internet. Once in a great while I will connect it to the internet only for the convenience of installing a software or whatever. Even then I make multiple cloned backups in case something bad happens.
Vegas 12 is 100% rock solid and reliable on my system! It has been so long since I have had a crash that I forgot what a crash looks like!
I agree that the 'gimmicks' are of little to no value for the pro's. The lesser versions of Vegas for the consumers would be the place for the 'gimmicks' and all of that kind-of junk. But for the pro's, keep Vegas at the PRO level!!!