I wonder if a Sony Admin will chime in on this topic? Most companies pay money to get this sort of feedback. The fact that Vegas users take this so seriously speaks volumes to our devotion to this product.

It's be wise for them to pay attention to these sorts of posts, rest assured that undecided potential customers are. I always read up on message boards to get a general feel for how happy the current users are before jumping.

that's part of why I posted this thread - the more feedback Sony has on their product the better. Not that i know if they will have someone reading this thread or not, but it's good for them to have it available.

Dave

I almost forgot - I haven't posted my view on the product.

I think that Sony Vegas has just a little too much to be on the prosumer market... we may not use some of those features, but they are there.

I would say that it either falls just inbetween the Prosumer and Fully Professional product.

however I think that it can easily pull some Pro users in it's current state, some won't switch unless they have some features that are what they are used to in other editors. I know some guys say... WHERE THE HECK IS THE SOURCE SCREEN?!? - How can I use it w/o a source screen? You can't edit properly w/o one. Well, that's bull, but they think it's necessary.

I think the main thing that needs to be done, is that the RT playback needs to be able to get better framerates. This is one thing that so many folks seem to cringe at.

Overall - the destination is going to be Pro, at least, by the way Sony seems to be utilzing it in their booths at NAB, and so on. I'm not talking MAJOR PRO stuff that is utilizing substantial hardware dongles etc... etc... But Pro as in the same as FCP and the like.

Dave

Dave, I think FCP can be easily set up as a high end editor where vegas ,it would be rather hard to do. so I dont see vegas "pro"in the same way as FCP.

"I think the main thing that needs to be done, is that the RT playback needs to be able to get better framerates. This is one thing that so many folks seem to cringe at."

I totally agree with Dave on this one. I know probably ten people that have passed on Vegas because they could not get full res/full framerate HDV from it. All of them either went to FCP or Canopus. This was the only thing that mattered and I imagine it's because they edit with the Producer/Director in the suite. I know when I have a producer/ director in my suite I always have to tell him that the HD footage is "slightly" lower res, I then ram render out a chunk so he can see what it looks like full res on my 2405 Dell.

It's not a big deal but I can always tell it freaks em' out a teeny bit - These are guys that are used to working in realtime suites with Avids or FCP hardware systems. Of course they know I can deliver great quality and they are always impressed at how quick Vegas is but I would love to not have to worry about it. Plus I would love to work at full res/full framerate too :)

Good point.

Rob

who i think it's for is wedding videographers type. people who aren't in film or tv. i don't know the terminology for it, but something like that.

i think that as vegas' user base grew, they included blackmagic support to satisfy reqests from tv & film pros.

i could be wrong, but that's what me thinky.

Videographers. Point blank, end of sentence. Or those who for varied reasons need to do it all themselves from start to finish, even if that's usually NOT a great idea. They cut, they design, they do graphics & sound, output, transfers & DVD authoring. Vegas doesn't play particularly well with other apps, there are rendering time issues because of lack of hardware support, etc. Sure it might be coming but it's too late. The war is over but there are small niche battles yet to be waged and Vegas may win some of those. At this point the Apple juggernaut, like the AVID machine, is just too large to stop. I love Vegas and use Vegas for those projects that I start & finish alone. I have FCP just to be able to read those projects natively for further work that needs to be done in a collaborating world.

Reid C

awesome reid.

war is over but there are small niche battles yet to be waged and Vegas may win some of those.

The war is never over. Each new technology jump provides new opportunities for other competitors to emerge. Aldus Pagemaker and my old company dominated Desktop Publishing at the end of the 1980s. A decade and a half later, Pagemaker has been scrapped, Ventura Publisher has been relegated to a niche, and the king of the hill is Quark, who took advantage of the emergence of color technology in the mid 1990s.

HD is not a huge disconnect from SD, but it nonetheless provides enough change for smart companies to advance their market share. The real question is therefore: Is Sony one of these smart companies?

I guess I'll have to be the one disagreeing with most of this.

I would rather see Vegas simply update its support for the latest windows media interfaces...DirectShow, DirectX 9 and OpenGL2. From that, the capture card venders can interface with Vegas without Sony having to directly support them.
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I couldn't agree more. I bought Vegas 2, 3, and 4 and stopped there because the developers began concentrating on "bells and whistles" and never used their imagination to improve the basic editor so that "editing" would be easier (ripple edit comes to mind but is not the only one). And basic things like the horrible credit roll generator and titler. Basic stuff that needs improvement was ignored with every version following Vegas 4 (that introduced the awesome Color Corrector).

I plan to buy Vegas 7, but ONLY because there is no other way to rise above DVDA 1.0 I tried to buy DVDA 2, but the company wouldn't sell it to me as a stand alone.
John

the king of the hill is Quark, who took advantage of the emergence of color technology in the mid 1990s.
Actually, the king of the hill is now InDesign. We knew it was over for Quark when a local newspaper left Quark behind for InDesign last year. Which is great for me, because although I'm fast in Quark, InDesign is a much better tool, especially in the CS suite.

Who is Vegas market? Just about anything but the independent print-to-film market. It's mainstay is the mid level and lower level editing stations, but it has a broad use in broadcast both at truck and station level. Weak points are in-depth media management and standard editing tasks, although those issues are VERY easy to get around, especially with keymapping, but simple things like a J or L cut should be key assignable with a pref to length. Lack of hardware support is a big deal for some, not for others. Adding DirectShow capability is important, IMO.
Vegas fits its market very well, but needs some pushes in both upper and lower directions to fit out a wider market need. It'll never be a good print-to-film tool, and frankly, it doesn't need to be. With Sundance aiming for 75% HDCAM in 2007, this is a clear indicator of the market trend. With XDCAM HD support and similar support for other tapeless systems such as Infinity, it could break more deeply into broadcast as well.

With Sundance aiming for 75% HDCAM in 2007
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Don't they all have to be shot in 24P then so that they can eventually be transferred to 35mm film?

John

Spot,

Good point about InDesign. I thought I had included that in the same sentence with Quark, but my mind forgot to tell my fingers to type.

Of course not.
Many of the films at Sundance will never see 35mm, and as time marches on, fewer and fewer films will ever see 35mm. Film as a distribution medium would already be dead were it not for some legal wrangling. Heck, some of the studios have offered to finance and subsidize digital projection due to the exceptionally low cost of distribution compared to celluloid.
Frame rate not withstanding, 50i and 60i have been transferred to film for years as well. Hollywood wishes it could get farther away from 24p acquisition, and in some cases, they're starting to. 24p has its merits, but at this stage of the game, the market hype far outweighs the merits, IMO. 25p and 30p are easier to deal with, and generally "look" better, again, IMO.

" .... What/Who is Vegas' Market? ..."

... for me it's anyone who has money and wants to spend it making a digital presentation ... Sony Media should put all their core audio/video products on the user's hard drive with unlock codes to get access to the various tools ... want broadcast features? ... buy an unlock code ... want to remove pops and clicks from your audio file? ... buy an unlock code ... something like that ...