Perhaps because SCS is a fairly small company?
Perhaps because taking the bull by the horns requires a lot of dollars?

I would bet that Adobe's marketing budget is a high multiple of SCS's.

Cliff Etzel , while I do agree with most you said, I do think Sony's waiting for the 64bit vegas with a better 3party interface before increasing marketing spending. Sony is heavily investing in HD displays while developing a massive network that can tie a truck load of customer products together. Some where in that massive marketing plan, vegas and HD products have a future working together in customer and pro world. But vegas needs more 3party apps. Personally, I think sony should sweet talk google into a partnership where youtube videos can be steamed from any sony camera or thru vegas thru sony's net(free) to youtube.

Thanks IP.

Yes - The design is a modified template for Wordpress which drives my website.

Flash video is hosted by Brightcove, although I'm looking at Vimeo as an alternative.

My workflow currently is to edit and encode as an AVI file, then utilize the Brightcove Publishpod to downsize to 480x270 High Quality and it automatically uploads to my account. I can then configure the video for web distribution and it spits out code I can copy and paste into the admin panel for each posting in Wordpress. The Brightcove functionality is accomplished via a plugin and I have modified the template for my individual videos hosted by them.

BK - SCS has a unique community that includes notables that could very well produce some sort of marketing similar to this. I think the biggest expense would be the streaming of live webcast content that included more than just audio. If SCS is a part of the juggernaut known as SONY, what is preventing them from taking this up several notches? The emerging field of newspaper video journalism is ripe for the opportunity for a software package like Vegas Pro (even Vegas Studio Platinum). These still shooters transitioning to video are under the impression that MAC/FCS is the ONLY way to do post and Apple is more or less locking up that market without any serious effort on their part. Adobe's webcast could be seen as fighting back and trying to take a share of that emerging market segment. Bloated software suite that requires huge system resources and is known for not being all that stable - as compared to Vegas/Vegas Pro which provides all the tools needed for myself and colleagues shooting web video journalism.

Any chance I get, I promote the use of Vegas as a serious alternative - especially to those who have read my articles I have written on the subject for Newsvideographer.com - Maybe I need to do a side by side comparison of these apps as a test - in my spare time.. ;-)

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | ImmersiveVJ.com

I'm looking forward to the NAB show but am disappointed that once again at a major video oriented trade show/expo Sony/Vegas does not offer training courses.
FCP seems to have certification/training classes at all these type of shows as do several other product vendors.
Many of us learn by watching someone demo a product and here is where Vegas could reach out and entice new customers. It would also be nice to take a one-day intensive or even a couple of days of workshop about Vegas.
We don't seem to have the variety of support books/training that FCP and Adobe seem to offer.

Why not???

Teaktart

I do think Sony's

adobe & apple didn't wait. Sounds like a bad market plan to me: buy NLE that's aimed @ the web market & then let the competitors who started with a non-web based market & say it's not worth it, blow past & get a huge lead.

I know the turtle won the race, but that's because the rabbit screwed around the whole race. The rabbit here stopped screwing around long before the turtle got to the starting line.

bluprojekt,

Since we are off topic... are Brightcove and Vimeo sites that provide video streaming for flash video movies... FLV files?

Do they host your website as well?

Thanks for any info.

Will_3, they host/stream the FLV files. I prefer Brightcove, but Vimeo will host 720p HD files (still compressed though)

They don't host websites, that something one has to do on their own.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | ImmersiveVJ.com

So you just link to them from your website when the user clicks on the video... right?

And the video shows on your page... they are not transported to the other website... right?

Finally, I didn't know about WordPress... It explains on its website that it is software to create weblogs... right?

Or can you create a regular website with it as well? We have been using Microsoft FrontPage as it has always been an easy drag & drop and we don't have to create so much code by hand... If WordPress won't also do regular websites... can you suggest another open source or non-open source solution?

Thanks for the tips.

Will_3 - My bluprojekt site is done in Wordpress - you can create pages and blog entires - really straightforward. Go to opensourcecms to demo wordpress or any of the other various open source apps available for creating a website.

HTH,

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | ImmersiveVJ.com

If SCS is a part of the juggernaut known as SONY, what is preventing them from taking this up several notches?


Um, anyone who has looked at Sony in the last few years, perhaps right up to the BluRay win, would not describe them as a juggernaut. An Armada of individually minded ships might be a better way to explain it. To follow that analogy through they just hired a non-Japanese Admiral to try to get the ships going the right way.

The SCS group when first bought by Sony were part of a small division within the Movie Studio. Sony for a long time, had a high end editing system made by another division, (I think that's dead now.) The Sony laptop division doesn't bundle Sony Vegas as the editing app. In my opinion if SCS were part of either the pro camera group or the consumer camera group, they would be in an excellent place for cross-promotion.

I do agree with you that newspaper journalist who are turning to video should be a ripe market for Vegas because Vegas's biggest converts are those who didn't come from other Video tools and other video workflows.

How do you market this kind of product though?

Like Cliff I use Vegas for almost all my paying jobs. We're both smart enough to understand this is a business. Work quick and light and make a fast buck. Vegas wins hands down.

But that's not the mindset of ever so many who get into this game. I once meet a pretty young thing who'd landed a job as an assistant projectionist and she sincerley believed she was on the road to Hollywood and she isn't an isolated case, in fact she has the same mindset of ever so many coming into this game and there's no way to get the stars out of their eyes.

Sooo... Let's take a look at the competition. Avid, Ppro and FCP. All have major cinema releases to their name. Now what are the starry eyed clueless masses going to buy? Of all the people I've met using FCP and all the stuff I've seen them make 95% of it could have been done in iMovie. In fact one of the most fastest rises to the big time I've seen was from someone who used only iMovie, all the way to the big dollars. She had a very good head for what sold and was very good at walking the walk and pressing the flesh.

Getting back to the question at hand. Take a walk around the floor at NAB, well Avid and Apple will not even be there this year but going by last year all the major players use serious footage from serious productions to showcase their product. What are the masses drawn to? It's not like the cost of any of the NLEs is an impediment to buying them so why wouldn't you buy the one with that Hollywood tick of approval?

Of course you might wonder why doesn't Vegas have that Hollywood seal of approval. I think recent posts here by a local fellow Australian highlight the very core of that problem. He's probably having no more issues than Walter did with Cold Mountain but the response from Apple was vastly different.

Bob.

BK said: ...newspaper journalist who are turning to video should be a ripe market for Vegas because Vegas's biggest converts are those who didn't come from other Video tools and other video workflows.

That's my point. If you look at what the needs of a video journalist for going to post - you're oging to find dissolves, stright cuts, the ability to lay in titles, possibly with motion, color correction and the ability to teak audio - all things that can be done right within one application. I guess that's the irony of it all. The product literally is a perfect fit for laptop editing in the field for mobile video journalists, but instead they're led to believe using a bloated suite of applications is what makes them professional. My colleagues ask questions all the time about how to go about doing something and the hoops they have to jump thru with FCS when it is a simple one click operation in Vegas...

The downside is that freelance work seems to be predicated on using FCP (I just interviewed for some freelance web video work and the only tutorials for new shooters submitting work are for FCP).

farss said: ...the response from Apple was vastly different.

What are you referring to Bob and does this show how Apple is willing to address issues to please their users as compared to SCS?

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | ImmersiveVJ.com

Sony bought Vegas with the loose change in their pockets. It wasn't a big investment, and Vegas software sales will not add or deduct from their bottom line to any perceptible degree. In other words, Vegas is not where Sony's profits come from.

Adobe on the other hand is strictly a software company. Premiere, while not as profitable as Photoshop, is still an integral part of their business.

On one hand, I wish everyone was using Vegas, on the other hand, for competitive reasons, I wish that I were the only one using Vegas.

And who's to say that if Vegas was promoted more AND more people started using it, that it would become an even better product? A lot of people use Microsoft stuff and it barely seems to improve over time. I would rather see SCS put most of their effort into improving the product, not marketing it.

Trust me, you want EVERYONE using Vegas. "Niche" products and those in third or fourth place always die. It is a basic rule of business.

Well, one good thing Sony has done recently, though I realize this is only a drop in the bucket, and not mainstream, is the following:

Sony has sold the XDCAM HD PDW-F335 with a free U1 computer drive and a free Vegas Pro 8 for the six months ending tomorrow.

I think it is at least good to get some higher-end users looking at it, too. I really don't think any NLE can deal with XDCAM HD as well as Vegas Pro 8, especially when you include being able to work properly with the proxies.

I totally love working with XDCAM HD in Vegas Pro 8.

"Why Isn't SCS Promoting Vegas More??"

Not THAT'S what I call free/cheap marketing!! For me the sub-plot here is: Hey, this product is just so good, why isn't more money being spent on marketing it?

Here we have a devotee of Vegas. And, IMHO, obviously besotted with it. And ruing why not more is made to market this fine brand. Personally? I kinda like/prefer what ever scant resources there MAYBE being spent on making Vegas even better, rather than marketing. But then again, (coughs and clears throat) as I am making video content for organisation, with zealously guarded "marketing budgets", I say MORE money should be spent on marketing - Oh yes!!

Neeeahhh . . Life is just sooo tricky - yeah? So difficult being a bear . . my head always swims with these these grown-up issues . ..

Johns Meyer&Cline - . . brilliant observations. Brilliant!

Grazie

Is Vegas helps bring home Emmys good enough for you?

"Bobby G credits his 2006 Emmy win to Vegas software. In this commercial for a major gas utility company, an egg makes the desperate choice to commit suicide rather than be cooked on an electric stove. This commercial was filmed on 35 mm and used Sony Vegas software for the final edit and logo treatment that won the 2006 Southeast Emmy Award. Sony Vegas software kept the final product sunny side up by giving it a crisp, clean, and smooth look."

Too bad they're not marketing this announcement all over the trades :-(

Mike

When I bought my Z1's I received a free copy of Vegas 7 with each camera. I didn't see that one coming.

@JM,

I can't argue with that. However, with "pro" level software, the niche is often hard to define, especially since it's intertwined with hardware/OS issues. Take for example FCP. What's are its worldwide annual sales figures? 700K units? A million? Whatever it is, there are two considerations. First, Apple sells hardware. By selling FCP, Apple sells more hardware. And these sales consist of high end boxes, not some thinly-disguised laptop PC that they sell to a college student. Then, you have Avid and Premiere. They are on both Windows and Mac-based platforms. Authoring software in that fashion requires a lot more technical knowhow than just for one platform.

Apple could certainly port FCP to Windows, but why undercut its hardware sales? Then you have Vegas. It's Windows only. The Mac market is nolo contendre. Are any of you suggesting that SCS try to port Vegas to the Mac OS? Now, Sony sells hardware also, but the hardware is camcorders and they are not wedded to any computer OS. The another advantage that Premiere has, is that it is part of a software suite. We can't expect SCS to also come up with a legitimate competitor to Photoshop? Or can we?

It looks to me that SCS's marketing strategy is to let Premiere, Avid (which just halved the MSRP on MC) and FCP battle it out on the Mac platform and then have Vegas attack Adobe on the Windows platform by being a product with more capabilities (including a 64 bit version). Maybe that's a smaller niche, but it's not a bad position to be in, especially with a potentially sagging worldwide economy on the horizon.

I guess Sony is doing more cross promotion with the camera division than I realized.

They have also started to have the look of magazine ads for Vegas match the magazine ads for the Camera and to use the slogan like.no.other. throughout the company.


Though, I have to say I don't like the look of the magazine ads. It's a black page with a large photo of say a director's chair on a barren landscape and Caption like "Imagine the Impossible." Underneath is a paragraph of tiny text and there is a small pic of the Vegas box at the bottom right. You have to work to figure out what they are advertising and if you don't know what the Sony Vegas box is, you may not take a second look at all.



The promotion with F335 and F355 XDCAMS ends on March 31st.
Limited Time Offer (now through March 31, 2008)

Sony is pleased to introduce two new HD Production packages: The PDW335ProPac and the PDW355ProPac. These packages consist of the new PDW-F335L or F355 XDCAM™ HD camcorders, the new PDW-U1 XDCAM drive and the newly introduced Vegas® Pro 8 editing software. The Vegas Pro 8 includes the DVD authoring system and alone retails for $699.99, based on MSRP. With this promotion, you are saving thousands of dollars off the suggested list price!