My point is not what editor FCP Avid or any other editor is the best or worst compared to Vegas. Nor do I want new refinements to Vegas overnight.

My concerns are with relying on Vegas for the future of my business.
In the next five years would I be better off investing in a different system?
So it comes down to what is the future for Vegas?
So I ask: “Deal or No Deal?”

DSE what is your gut feeling on the long range future of Vegas?
DSE or anyone that has some commutations with Vegas management / development – what do they indicate about the future plans? (Not fishing for the new features but overview strategic direction)


Leslie you used Em2 as in “Editing Machines Corporation”?
If you did I also used EM as my first NLE.
I had real time editing on 88 MHz one drive PC!

Logan5

It wouldn't be appropriate to comment on any conversations that I may or may not have had with Sony and their engineering or marketing teams.
Suffice it to say that I'm quite satisfied with where I believe Vegas is heading, and plans to continue development of the software. I think that folks are simply too caught up in either the religion of NLE's or the fact that Vegas didn't announce a new version at NAB. Please bear in mind that Vegas has been the only NLE that has had a yearly release schedule. I for one, am glad that Sony's engineers decided to not release 12 months after the last release. Acid 6 was also delayed from their normal schedule, and look at how powerful and advanced that release is!
Our business is very tightly tied to Vegas, even though we also offer Avid, Adobe, and Apple editing to our clients, or as means of receiving projects. But we have not made, nor anticipate making any changes in how we do things here at Sundance Media Group or VASST. Vegas isn't perfect nor completely mature as an app yet, but it does most of what we need, and we can work much faster in Vegas than in other apps for most of our work.

I'm glad they didn't release on an artificial schedule either. I will eagerly buy the next upgrade, but having just upgraded to Vegas 6, then Acid 5 and now Acid 6 plus spending money on other add-ons, with my limited budget I'm very happy where Vegas 6 is now. I think the last release was especially ambitious and a little buggy but I have a feeling the next release will be a little more robust.

Buggy or robust, however, I always have confidence in the Madison folks. With the latest release there were problems with Media Manager but those seem to have been ironed out and I'm happily using it now. I bet they're allocating a lot of time right now to Cinescore to make sure that rolls out smoothly and that's a program I'm looking forward to.

DSE I’m glad to hear you are satisfied with where Vegas is heading; your words have weight with me.

It’s my hope that Sony gives importance to concerns raised here in this forum.

Logan5

I don't know who in Sony reads these forums, but I would be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts quite a few developers do, as well as product mgmt.

I've never really asked any of the guys I've talked to if they read the forums, but I bet they do.

Dave

>>>>and we can work much faster in Vegas than in other apps for most of our work.<<<

That is the bottom line for me too. I see nothing wrong with Vegas' editing capabilities, and I also use it for multitrack audio recording ( try that with FCP or Premiere ).

Fusion and XSI for everything else ( Hmmm.... Toronto and Montreal, and Vegas team is almost in Canada too ). But Vegas alone would be enough for video related stuff in 95% of cases.

logan5 (you're not on the run are you?)

yes, emc, the clunky corporation... we used it for film - worked for cannon, the ultimate cheapskates. transfered film to vhs with burnt in tc, edited nle (between crashes and software updates), then it went back to the neg cutters....

didn't have to wear gloves!

then along came avid and something beginning with m, name escapes as does the few months i worked with it.

i used to run an es7 / avid shop. now retired (huh!) and cutting doco's commercials, etc., on vegas.

if you've been around this long, why have doubts? if it does what you need, why bother looking elsewhere. if, like incite, its a company here today, gone tomorrow, then i wouldn't have bothered with it in the first place. i have friends with nearly every nle system there is, and they all swear by theirs (that is, if they bought it! - if not they always think the other mans grass is greener - in patches).

i say, smoke the grass and be happy....

things 60's

leslie

i think theres a misconception here...

Those who speak of avid, fcp, premiere pro (myself included) are not religiously bound. We are vegas users. An Avid zealot would not be on this forum and would not even think twice about Vegas, FCP, Premiere etc. They would snub the rest and think they are the best....

Thats not whats happening here.

Avid is a standard for a reason. It has a really good keyboard workflow, cutting interface and media management. Vegas is great but it lacks these things. Things that people are used to, an entire industry...

Frankly i think Vegas needs a new UI and needs to become more like a video editor, while retaining the very uniquely Vegas way of clip manipulation on tracks.

I showed Vegas to a friend of mine who is an FCP/Avid film editor and he was impressed by Vegas. He even commented that he occasionally hears good things about Vegas from various people he runs into. But he's used to working in HD, 10bit color with black magic hardware etc. It's not that Vegas isnt impressive, its that it needs refinement in some key basic areas.

I said to him "As you can see Vegas looks quite different than any other video editor..." and he commented "it looks like a sound editing workflow" and i said "yup! because it started as a sound editor..."

He later on commented "some of the things in vegas are really impressive." The problem is, i know where vegas is not impressive. Things that he couldnt learn by sitting and watching me for a half hour. I did point out the issues i have with vegas to him.

Then we both ranted on how lame Avid is with their Xpress product line :) He's not an Avid Fan and he definatly qualifies as a FCP zealot. I'm more favorable of Avid right now as a PC user because of the Avid keyboard workflow, bins etc. Not because of Avid's name. I think Avid's Xpress Pro HD line is too buggy to use. Avid is very picky about hardware issues... So Premiere Pro would be a good compromise because its the closest in cutting workflow.

But dont think for a second that i dont wish Premiere pro had some of the ease of Vegas.

And thats really what this is about. Picking the best features of the competition and implementing them just as well into Vegas because thats what evolution is about. I dont care which program evolves into the best... I just want it to be the best. Vegas has a lot going for it, and i dont want to see it fail. I just know where it could be better.

Frankly i think the ui needs a new look and it needs to be more keyboard friendly. I'd like to open up clips fast into a monintor window, press ESC to focus on that monitor, JKL my in and out without touching a mouse, then select the tracks i want it to go into and press V or B to insert, overwrite the clip into the timeline... all by keyboard. And then i want to ESC and shift focus to the timeline... where i can JKL, in/out, goto in/out, lift, etc all at my finger tips. The mouse is great because you could still do the vegas like rate stretches, slips, trims etc.. but i want a keyboard workflow that is as fast and easy as Avid.

The friend i mentioned, who uses FCP, has his keys setup like avid.

Media Management... :) It comes up time and time again... here and on premeire forums... but never in the Avid forums.... There is a reason for that.

So again i dont think its zealotry, its function. Its refinement in the hopes of making Vegas better for editors.

I may not be familiar with avids media management, but I'll tell you that it seems to me that searching with Vegas is VERY fast and efficient to me, maybe I'm crazy though, but with just a couple of clicks I can select tags, and do a "subject" "wide" search (2 clicks). When I've got my shots tagged (drag and drop tags to clips, or drag and drop several clips to a tag), it's exteremly fast, might be nice to tag as I'm capping though. Thats one area I think there could be some improvement, unless it exists and I don't know about it.

As for KB workflow - sure, if it is able to be faster I'd be all over it, but if I can work faster on my mouse than you can on your KB (with the "right" setup), then I'll use a mouse, or for that matter, I'll use a Shuttle Pro 2 and a mouse/KB. I don't care how I use it, I just care that it's fast and good. I think the real areas that Vegas needs to move into is higher than 8bit, better realtime preview (IE - Framerate, whether by BG rendering or Hardware accelleration), and perhaps some form of "Film Tools" bit that can be used to work with film specifically so we can get some bigger attention with Vegas in the movie world.

Dave

Well . . .

It would be nice if one day in the not-very-distant future we could see things like this about Vegas.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/profiles/?profiles/apple_fcs_profile-fincher_h640

Vegas has got the chops. And it blows away FCP in most respects, hands-down, and gives FC Studio a good run simply in and of itself.

But it's got to support more than just HDV and XDCAM if we're going to.

And . . .

I think it may be time to look at updating the interface -- not subtantively, because I love the way it works, but cosmetically.

If I was in charge of Vegas target marketing, I'd take a huge run at Premiere Elements and at the other lower cost NLE's and blow them all away... that's where the volume and big money is. That's why Adobe and the others have entered this market ... it's obvious there is simply not enough volume at the higher end ...no business can afford to get emotionally involved with its products ... revenues and profits are all that matters otherwise the product and employees simply disappear ... again, if I was running the company, I'd expect to lose the higher end users but make it up at the so-called "prosumer" level ... maybe not a popular view on this forum, but it's business ... and besides, it's apparent that those needing these higher end features for their work are already using the programs that contain them ...

As for KB workflow - sure, if it is able to be faster I'd be all over it, but if I can work faster on my mouse than you can on your KB (with the "right" setup), then I'll use a mouse,

A mouse ui will never be faster than a keyboard ui. A mouse can only click and focus on one point at a time. A keyboard flow is only as fast as your fingers, and you have 10 of them that can dance all over the keyboard much faster than you can precisely move your mouse to specific icons.

The combination of a mouse and keyboard workflow that is seamless and complimentary to each other, is a work of art.

I'm not talking about making it a keyboard only ui... the beauty of avid is you can do it both ways, but often enough the most common thing i hear from people that try vegas is "wow i cant beleive how easy i tis to use the mouse in vegas". Thats because vegas is really well thought out when it comes to how the mouse interacts with a clip. The rate stretch, trimming, blending of clips etc... is all far easier than it is in avid... But vegas fails to even come close to avids keyboard workflow...

so combine the nice clip manipulation ui of vegas, with a keyboard flow of avid, and you have a pretty nice set up i think. And yes i've tried to do it through custom keys but Vegas lacks some basic editing features and ui workflows that make it impossible.

And again, its a whole ui issue, not just the keyboards.. but.. there is work to be done in this area.

If I was in charge of Vegas target marketing, I'd take a huge run at Premiere Elements and at the other lower cost NLE's and blow them all away... that's where the volume and big money is.
Then you'd make a good product manager, because that's exactly what Sony did, and why they're #1 in the market with Vegas Movie Studio seeding sales of the "bigger" product. For the third quarter in a row, Vegas Movie Studio has been the #1 selling app at retail in the US.

" ... and why they're #1 in the market ..."

... and to keep this market share, they're going to have to be real smart on what get's trickled down from the bigger app ... as far as I'm concerned, limiting Studio to four tracks of audio and video was a marketing blunder despite the sales lead they have ... anyway, we'll see if Vegas Studio wants to play hardball with the other lower cost apps in their next release ... if they lose the battle at both the high and low end, they're toast ...

It's a bit like Photoshop CS vs. Photoshop Elements. I would estimate that 95% of the work done with Photoshop CS could be done with Elements, but pros and people with spare money or enthusiasts often just prefer to have the "bigger" product. So the vendors are at liberty to put much of the big product in the "elements" box without loosing a lot of big product customers.

Getting back to the meat of this post it seems to me that you all bitch when you feel riped-off with the need to buy frequent yearly upgrades and then you whine when you need wait 18 months.

Just my 2c as they say.

Michael

IMO It's a good idea to push Vegas Studio and get users to upgrade to Vegas 6.
I would even give it away to high end Avid and FCP users with an easy option to upgrade. Sort of a "Purple Cow".
http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/

"Vegas Movie Studio has been the #1 selling app at retail in the US." but being the biggest movie camera seller help feeds that market and having consumer HDV cameras with software drives that market!

A lot of companies do scan the forums in form of data mining apps, using keywords and sentence structures. A lot of AI robots/spiders can be defeated using improper structure and a few misspelled words. Most AI's will disregard this type of text. Sometimes companies are tracking market rumors or looking for internal leaks or unhappy employees. Some look for technology leaks for future hiring. Some of Sony early PSP3 programming staff was "borrowed" by MS this way. A few 3nd party raiders has occur in Broadcast and BluRay. Everyone raids each other in the movie field when looking 3d staff.

" ... push Vegas Studio and get users to upgrade to Vegas 6...."

... and that's the four track limit marketing blunder I was talking about ... instead of pushing them to big daddy Vegas, they can hop to Premiere Elements for just $89 to "realize the vast creative potential of unlimited tracks" ... and let's face it, at $89 there's just not the same affinity/love or emotional attachment to the product as there is to the big buck editing apps ... the client base can goof around with two or three lower cost NLE apps and still come out ahead cost-wise ...

Leslie – am I on the run? Well… I’m just looking for sanctuary.

This is a very strange thing, I just found an old VHS tape – I turn it over and it’s the EMC 46min training tape.

After all these years this is the first time I came across someone that has used that system.

Logan5

Why did you post this link, David?

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/profiles/?profiles/apple_fcs_profile-fincher_h640

Seductive!
After viewing I'm more tempted than ever before to make the jump to a Mac.
Somebody,----stop me!

Apple doesn't use "IT" marketing.

They use "YOU" marketing.

They talk about what YOU can do with this software.

And they show the most world's respected professionals saying "this is good enough for me."

END

Sony's Vegas marketing lists a bunch of features, i.e. what "IT" can do, not what you can do.

This is a major boo-boo not just in marketing to creative people (you know, the ones who like to CREATE).

I think Madison marketing did a better job for Vegas Movie Studio, made it seem like more of a "people product," and the result was a #1 position.

Who'd a thunk?

The way to buy Final Cut Pro Production Studio (with FCP 5.1, Soundtrack Pro, Motion, DVDSP, etc.) today is to buy a 2004-2005 model used FCP, Motion, STP, etc. for a few hundred bucks and send the install disk to Apple with a check for $199, on receipt of which they send you the whole 5.1 Production Studio.

Now that's value!

(and a lot better than Adobe's pricey Production Studio upgrades, even with an NAB discount.)

A MacBook Pro will run all of it, but won't run a lot of plug-ins until later. They are really really nice though.

Used G5s will keep dropping in price by a few hundred dollars per month until Apple brings out their new Intel towers, at which time the G5s will be sold together with used clothes at garage sales.

motion2 is interesting, maybe someone could compare motion2 and boris FX8?