Wow, I read your post and if you substitute the word ProTools in for Avid,and the word Sonar in for FCP and the letters D.A.W in for N.L.E, you make about the same points we have been on the audio aspect of Vegas and Acid. Be careful though, don't expose too much of the truth of industry viewpoints of the product because you'll find your post with a lock on it too.

Reference audio discussion

Summary is, Vegas is a "multimedia" piece of software, so while it's behind the competition in the NLE area and the DAW area, it has the best audio features of any NLE, and has the best video features for any DAW but completely satisfies neither group.

Personally, I dont want Sony to merge with anyone. But man, Avid media management is second to none and the support for DV 25/50/100 and matchback will always keep potential editors away.

No way Sony takes over Adobe and even less chance of Avid. I have a feeling whoever offers the best to HD-DVD/Blu Ray distribution will further themselves from the competition. Make no mistake that when hi-def players hit the market this Christmas, it will boom for HDTV owners.

The onyl major suggestion I would make for Sony would be give the end users something that lets you compete with Hollywood on a more even playing field instead of playing catch up with the big boys. You put XPRI functionality in Vegas and you will start toc ut into Avid's market and get something similar to Shake and Motion, and you cut into FCP's market. I understand Sony doesnt want to lose revenue from XPRI but the more Vegas users they have, the more they will benefit. Avid is successful because of this very fact.

I still think the Vegas boom will happen once someone produces a blockbuster and cuts it on Vegas. Until then, we will be viewed as hobbyist by the rest of the industry.

"Put Xpri's functionality into Vegas????" Patrick you NEED to spend time with the Xpri boys. They make that statement exactly 180 degrees from what you just said. Other than motion tracking, there is very, very little Xpri can do excepting real time, over Vegas. Flip that statement, Vegas can do a LOT that Xpri simply can't.
Regarding the rest....good things come to those who wait. NAB is like NLE Christmas....Not suggesting that any of your wishes are coming true or not...just that the question is a little ill-timed.

Wow, I thought XPRI was supposed to be top notch. I shouldnt believe everything I hear.

Spot, in your opinion is Sony trying to bridge the gaps in professionals between XPRI and Vegas?

For some strange reason, I have this feeling that Vegas 6 will be huge (V5 was a little let down but still a solid release) If the little things I have heard here and there prove true, Ill pre-order it right now ;)

For openers Avid fills a very different space to FCP. If you were a FCP user you could well be asking much the same question, 'when will FCP be regarded as well as Avid' and in reality it's a pretty silly question. Just look at the amount of dedicated hardware behind high end Avid systems, you're talking very serious dollars there, even compared to a FCP system with all the bells and whistles you could throw at it. Then also look at how restricted you are in what you can do with a high end Avid system, they do what they do extremely well and very quickly, they're built for serious production where time costs a huge amount of money, in that environment $1M for an edit suite is small change when you have deadlines measured in seconds to meet.
Vegas versus FCP is a more realistic question however I see PP as being more of a competitor ot FCP. One reason for that is they're both based around much the same paradigm which goes back to the days of linear editing. Just about anything can be done quicker and easier in Vegas than either PP or FCP, there's an aweful lot that can be done in Vegas that cannot be done in either of those however in some ways this works against Vegas in a hardcore production environment. I can add any kind of media on the one T/L, HD at 50I and 60i, WMV and QT all on the one T/L and for sure Vegas will render out a wonderful result. Can't do that in FCP. Apple insists you get all your media in a consistent format beofre you put it on the T/L. Is that a good or a bad thing. Depends what your needs are, if you want to play out a project for a client to preview it makes a lot of sense. If you're not doing supervised edits then Vegas will get the job done much quicker, if you're working in a serious production envirpnment that charges by the hour and the client expects everything to look like it's going to then the FCP approach makes sense.
I think you'll see over the next few years quite a shift towards NLEs like Vegas. Not because you'll see it in high end production facilities, what we're going to see is the demise of a lot of high end production facilities as the demand for lower production costs kicks in, just look at how many recording studios are left and Vegas propably played a big part in their demise.
Bob.

"V5 was a little let down but still a solid release"

Exactly, and you know the irony of that statement? V5 was one of the best Audio update releases since v2.0. I will predict V6 will be a significant NLE update, and many will be happy in this forum. I will further predict it will be a "let down" for audio users. Multimedia users will be the happiest of all, but unfortunately won't fully take advantage of advanced audio features or video features.

This of course is all predictions, we'll see come NAB time.

Thats one thing I HATE about Avid is the hours of converting my media to OMFI files.

Maybe Im just concerned about the respect of should I say lack of respect that Vega users get. Certification would definitely be nice. I thought someone said not too long ago that certs for Vegas were being discussed or developed but I cant seem to find the thread.

I'll make the same point here as I made in that thread. I don't believe it's technically possible to build a NLE that satifies all the needs of a DAW and vise versa. Despite what some here would have us believe audio and video are not the same thing, the granularity is vastly different for one thing. I can freeze a frame of video, never worked out how that can happen with audio. I can change the BPM of music but what should happen to any vision that's locked to it?
Bob.

"What I mean is at what point if ever, can we expect Vegas to compete on the same scale as Avid and FCP and offer the same functions that those systems do?"

Unless a majority of Vegas users want to take out a second mortage just to have a pumped up version, Vegas is never going to "compete" toe to toe with the ultra high end editors. Many think Vegas already is equal to or better than FCP and I think Vegas left Adobe P thing in the dust long ago.

From Sony's point of view, why should they create a super expensive version, just to have some extreme features less than 1% of its customer base asks for? When Sonic Foundy first developed Vegas it filled a nice nitch. It still does. Vegas is neither cheap or super expensive. Its feature set is rich. Out of the box with little effort anyone can make decent videos. Invest the time, learn all the power Vegas has and you can be as professional as you want.

I agree with Spot. Here we are close to the eve of version six getting released and the same crowd that bemoned version 5 and version 4 and version 3 is once again worrying about version seven and beyond BEFORE they even see version six.

A casual observer passing through the forum might think there are several here that suffer recurring panic attacks, and have a budding inferiority complex. Oh if only Sony would rename Vegas, that sounds so yuck, oh if only this that or something else. So many chicken littles. ;-)

I'm sure no industry expert but... I think the lines are pretty clearly drawn. There is no way anyone is going to be able to compete with Apple on their turf & it's only a matter of time before Apple starts going after the PC crowd. I'm pretty sure Avid is considering dumping the mac platform and I bet if Apple comes out with something that competes directly with Photoshop they will also go PC only.

This is all conjecture but Apple already has the Mac market all sewn up - there only way to expand is to go to the Windows side and start taking market share away from Avid and Adobe. This would make things REALLY interesting...

As much as I hate to say it Vegas is the perfect tool for the prosumer space - the program is bombproof and runs on almost anything. I imagine support costs are kept low by not having hardware options & the eventual bugs that follow. Also Vegas is a great finishing system for the one man band operation - you got your audio and video in one tool. I'd love to see Vegas "compete with the big boys" but even Sony doesn't want it in the same market space as it's XPRI. that being said...

Now that everyones going hi def it will be VERY interesting to see how companies position their products. If Vegas had some more hardware scalability...which I have a strong feeling is coming....then it could be a much bigger player. I guess we'll see in a few weeks...

...it was funny I read on an Avid message board somebody said "Vegas is the NLE with the most potential" - I'm inclined to agree:)

The one thing Protools users hate is it'll only render out in real time, ain't called Slowtools for nothing, they look longingly at the speed of Vegas.
Had that discussion with a serious Protools user last year. Needed to output 20 hours of audio as both 16/44.1K and mp3, time to render 40 hours! They passed on that one, remdered to mp3 and broadcast from that (shudder).
Bob.

Respect. Schmespect. Doesn't amount to nothin'. EditDV was a highly respected editor: look where that got it. Adobe Premiere was reviled by many as buggy, awkward and incapable for releases 1.0 through 5.0, but survived long enough to get the kinks worked out.

What's the difference? User base. Premiere was given away free with practically every piece of editing hardware out there for years. Enough people got used to it, so they lived with its quirks (a workaround is always easier than learning new software) until, FINALLY, it became a halfway decent program.

Sony has the opportunity to do something similar with Vegas. Give away free copies of Vegas Movie Studio with every Sony camcorder and every Sony PC made, for starters. That should help get a broad base of people used to working in Vegas. What are now seen as Vegas' eccentricities will soon become the "must-have" features that other NLEs lack.

Secondly, put some money and grants behind high-profile projects that are completed in Vegas. Adobe, Avid and Apple have given away post-production suites as prizes in film festivals, for example. How about a charitable grant program for projects finished in Vegas?

Lastly, I think Sony needs to play up the "multi-media" angle in their marketing campaigns. How many post-production shops work exclusively in any single medium anymore? Television projects go on to have theatrical releases, films have websites with streaming video, movie theaters and microcinemas are projecting videos on a screen, galleries are doing multimedia installation art. Multimedia is where the future is. (Even if it isn't, that's what I'd be telling people if I were Sony.)

Of course, it's equally possible that as a huge, disparate corporation, Sony will never have the coordination and unified thinking to pull this off. In which case, Vegas will likely get sold again to some other outfit, or will gradually die out and dwindle away.

So far, I've been encouraged about the level of support Sony has shown to developing and improving Vegas (and Sound Forge and Acid). I just wish they'd put a similar level of effort into marketing it.

Billy,

I am not freaking out and worrying about Version 7. The reason I mentioned V7 was because anything we want thats not in V6 will have to atleast wait until then because theres no way it would make it in now as I am sure there is a code freeze.

I do know this, Ill be more satified with V6 than V5 mainly because I understand the software more now than when I made the upgrade from V3 and V4. he next few weeks will be very slow and agonizing waiting for NAB.

As the saying goes hurry up and wait. So lets just wait.
I think V5 was just a small prelude of things to come.
Jimmy

"Oh if only Sony would rename Vegas, that sounds so yuck, oh if only this that or something else."

I know you're only being factious, but I have a couple suggested names for Vegas to better suit it's personality. I kind of like "Mr. Pita" because it's the app where you will eventually find yourself between a rock and a hard place or 2 pieces of flat bread in this case, but definately you're gonna find yourself in that pita. Or as I mentioned previously, "Kamelian", because it's the app that changes it's color depending on the environment it decides to jump to. Just my perspective since I've been using it since v1.0.

Media Forge !

I wonder if there is some kind of statistic about the drop in spending on production gear the month before NAB? I know tons of people just barely controlling themselves - me included..

My vote goes for VegaMatic.

Red, then again, consider what PITA is an anagram for .... I don't think you want that associated with Vegas ;)

>>>the best video features for any DAW<<<

LOL!!! Ok - now that is a bit of marketing I would agree with!

"Oh if only Sony would rename Vegas, that sounds so yuck, oh if only this that or something else."

I know you're only being factious, but I have a couple suggested names for Vegas to better suit it's personality. I kind of like "Mr. Pita" because it's the app where you will eventually find yourself between a rock and a hard place or 2 pieces of flat bread in this case, but definately you're gonna find yourself in that pita. Or as I mentioned previously, "Kamelian", because it's the app that changes it's color depending on the environment it decides to jump to. Just my perspective since I've been using it since v1.0.
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Vegas is a GREAT name, but they should make up a slogan to go with it like:

VEGAS ...................It's WORTH the gamble.

John

Ouch!