Indeed, the sharpen filter NOW actually "BLURS" the video. Almost like one of the programers was working on April 1st this year.

Welp, looks like we, the buying public are beta testers. I love Vegas and support it on many forums on line to no end- but I really do feel disapointed so far.

Bummer! In four years of using Vegas, I've never used the sharpen filter.

Not to mention the Film Effect bug.

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=380482&Replies=6&Page=2

Noticed how the Sony folks have quit commenting on these issues...I bet they are overwhelmed with the release issues.

In some photo applications sharpen does not sharpen the image, but unsharpen it. This is counterintuitive, but maybe with all the other profesional changes sony has made this to be in line with that. I don't know how other NLE's work, but maybe they are the same.
Cheroxy

oops - see my post below

Nope...its broke....The NAB must have created tunnel vision with Sony...they had to release it no matter what. I realize all software will have bugs...but in this case this should have been caught in beta

Is this really true?

Sounds weird - using this logic, do we blur when we want to sharpen, and increase brightness when we want it darker?

Well perhaps if they have to release a patch they can include the MXF support while they're at it :-)

I went back and looked at my PSE 3 and it looks like I may be a little off here with my previous post.

The counterintuitive name is with the unsharp mask. It is a tool that doesn't blur your image as it sounds like but rather makes it sharper. It is named that because your image is unsharp and you want to sharpen it. On the other hand the sharpen tool DOES sharpen the image with the change in the light and dark pixels that occurs.

So this is probably a mistake.

Sony really needs to get its head out of its A$$!!!

Why is it that they don't have two easily defineable apps for either a audio user and a video one? Why must each release have only 1/2 of the user base happy? What the hell kind of freakin' audio upgrade was this?

They didn't even fix the long standing audio issues of 5 for this release except for the "metronome bug". Idiots! I can't believe I'm saying this but thank GOD I own Sonar. [sigh...at least I can connect THAT to acid 5]

I honestly thought that under the sony "budget" for r&d we would see a more even distribution of features that would at the very least keep audiophiles content. I understand that sony is competeing with PPro/final cut/avid/etc...instead of sonar/cubase/samplitude/logic/etc...but this is just dumb.

Why did a sony engineer hint at having Fx freeze or spot on his impression of other audio features still not advertised. It made me feel as if on the release date I would see more than vst fx and that BS "tape scrub"[second only to that useless Dim output switch]. What a let down.

I was the earliest advocate for rewire in vegas so that I can connect acid to vegas for the obvious reasons. I've also been pushing for acid to have all vegas audio features to it. But no I forgot we all don't know what we want and sony really does.

The whole "some of our users will get what they want while others" attitude needs to be addressed. Neither side should feel so disheartened per release.

How about a poll per development cycle..."The big three" or something. In every release users always state the hey I got "this,this,and that" feature so I'll upgrade. It could iron out the HUGE gap in user horror per upgrade.

Still shaking my head. I need to take my dog for a walk to relax and contemplate what my next purchase will be.

Ed.

So far, so good. For some reason, I had a lot of trouble installing DX9c, but once I got it working (I had to install from the "redistributable" DX9 package, rather than the "runtime" version), V6 installation went very smoothly.

I really like the nested projects, although Spot's description of a "quick render" didn't prepare me for a 5-minute wait while loading a 20-minute .VEG file. I wonder if this initial render would be faster if I were loading a V6-version veggie? Once Vegas did the pre-render, the nested project worked very well, and acted just like a media event. A quick right-click and another instance of Vegas pops up and you can edit the embedded project, with all changes automatically updated. Very, very nice indeed. I can probably throw away my old copy of After Effects 4.1 now, which I kept around just for its handling of nested compositions.

Media Manager is a godsend. It is a bit disconcerting to discover that you have over 5,000 media files on your various hard drives after doing a full system scan! But, oh my! How easy it is to sort and tag files, and the search engine is FAST! I'm experimenting now with the best way of incorporating Scenalyzer Live tape index files into the media database. If it works, I'll have a complete database of ALL my files, including those stored on DV tape. I'll report back when I've figured this out.

The VGA/DVI preview is interesting, and I can certainly see its application with HD files. I was hoping to be able to use a laptop set up as a secondary monitor with MaxiVista as a preview monitor, since it's the only LCD screen I have. Unfortunately, Vegas doesn't see the MaxiVista monitor, even though I have the Windows desktop extended on to it. I guess this is because MaxiVista does not support hardware acceleration. But on both my 17" and 19" CRT screens, the image quality is excellent. I can't wait to try it out with an LCD projector! It's also very easy to switch external monitor modes between OHCI firewire and Windows Secondary Monitor. This will be very handy when reviewing final edits to see how they look on different types of display devices.

That's about all I've had time to do. So far, I'm convinced I got my money's worth.

Brian :
When you nest a project it actually renders out audio.
If you nest a project without audio in it it won't prerender and i'll be much faster. So it might be a good idea, when possible, to avoid working audio in the nested sequences and doing it in the master file instead.

Is there a way to prevent the new media center from including media files when it autoscans? I have a number of family photos and avi on my machine that I prefer not be included.

Good tip, Nat. Thanks!

You tell Media Manager which folders you want to scan. So, if all your family photos are in one folder, just leave it out. You can also set up multiple media libraries and open them as you need to (i.e. "family," "video projects," etc.)

All in all, a terrible update - several broken FX (not that we have the option of using premiere style alternatives - should have been a priority that the internal ones work)

If there is a speed improvement - we're still waiting to notice it. It runs at a significant speed penalty in render and opening on a 3.2ghz HT system (so much for that optimisations thing)

Media Manager serves little of any purpose as an asset manager given that it's documentation is not so extensive right now. Hopefully will improve with the next release.

the audio end was completely ignored and plugin inserts now cause buffering errors when disabled and left in place.

bus problem from 5 is still very much the same - something that was promised for 6

We've put an freeze fx of our own on upgrades until Sony stops shipping betas as commercial products

You might be suffering speed penalties on render and launch because of defaults -- if you've got media manager set to load at launch, it's a "big" hangup relative to vegas without it. Then again, I can't say I know how to disable media manager off the top of my head. edit: looks like you can only disable media manager while working in/with other apps, but it auto-launches when Vegas is launched. Hmmm...

Renders, too, seem slower by default settings -- but tweaking gets them back to normal (ala v5 speeds).

Any chance you'd be willing to get a bit more in depth with the bus problem? I'm not familiar with it and I'd like to have a better grip.

From the looks of it, render times are significantly increased for SMP machines only -- I'm seeing 40% on average across the board, going from AVI to MPEG2 and MOV for starters.

- jim

You can disable media manager in Preferences.

Ah, I see it now. Cool. Looks like it launches as fast as V5 with it off.

- jim

Pretty much everything SHTUNOT said was spot on.

Sony’s treatment of their audio users has been absolutely disgraceful.

In audio terms this is Vegas 5.01

One thing that has occurred to me. Many people are complaining that Media Manager slows down Vegas loading. I haven't noticed this. I am wondering if it is because people are perforiming full drive scans?

The way I envisage using the Media Manager is to only scan the folders I need during a project, and then ditch those bins when I don't need them anymore. If people have 5000 media files on their machine and Vegas is having to load up all those thumbnails each time it boots, it's no wonder it takes a while.

Does anyone here think that might be the cause?

Simon, I'm sure you're right. I did do a full system scan in Media Manager, and came up with over 5,000 files. My plan is to break these down into smaller, more manageable libraries. I'll bet when I've got a smaller group together, opening Vegas will speed up.