Seems like V7 renders faster; that alone makes the upgrade worth it. That, plus the Blue flash screen over the Orange (which I always hated)! None of the listed fixes from 7a -- 7b were relevant to me but I installed 7b anyway.

Spot said:

"VASST had 40 products to update; while it wasn't a party, it got done. "

I was looking for the updated version of GrafPak Viewer. Is that one yet to be updated, or is the download link just pointing to the wrong place.

Just curious. Thanks.

Regarding the download speeds -- using Firefox, Vegas7b downloaded quickly, while DVDA4a was taking forever (even when I stopped/started it again). Just for kicks, I opened up IE, and the DVDA4a downloaded fine.

So you might want to try IE for the DVDA4 download (ymmv)...

Wes - if you don't read the release notes and in some cases the manual, some features may be apparent but others will only be found by accidental discovery. And you'll lose some real benefits.

For example, if you are editing a volume envelope (such as when pulling down a section of audio), hold down the shift key and the cursor turns into a pencil. Then you can do a freehand drawing of the curve you want. Compared to manually adding four points and dragging it down, this is a huge time saver, especially if you are doing this a lot.

There are lots of things like this that for people who take the time to learn them, the reward will be greatly enhanced productivity. Things that take you minutes now may take only seconds after you learn these things. And this will of course get easier after somebody releases a new training piece with a "what's new in V7" portion.

This is a big thing. While XDCAM support may be huge for people with those cameras (and may allow Vegas to reach new market segments), it's the basic editor enhancements that really benefit the rest of us. Or, to be more correct, that benefit ALL of us. Power Users (i.e. people who actually read the documentation, use more features, use the keyboard shortcuts, and use the product quite frequently) probably benefit the most.

Grafpak Viewer doesn't have security, as it's a freebie, and therefore doesn't need upgrading for Vegas 7. It should work just fine as-is.

Thanks for the reply. I think since I have GrafPak Viewer 1.0.0, it only includes link options for Vegas 5 and 6 (thus I'm not able to find it in the menu, or add a button). If there's a newer version, the download link doesn't know where it is.

Since this is really a different issue, I'll just e-mail support.

Thanks for the tools and help.

.

"Grafpak Viewer doesn't have security, as it's a freebie, and therefore doesn't need upgrading for Vegas 7. It should work just fine as-is.'

Spot, I have not been able to get any of the Vasst freebies to install in Vegas 7. When I install It looks for Vegas 5 or 6.

>>""Hugh Jass Iddyit"

Ah well. Your post was so like others it was satirising that I took it be one of the same. I'd skipped to the next posting before checking for subtleties. "Gor blimey!" might have been my reaction but otherwise unruffled.

OK can now give Vegas 7 a bit more attention. The major thing presently is not being able to run Cineform at 25fps (PAL). Can run m2t just fine, including dissolves (only test so far). But doing much more than transitions on m2t is surely going to give poor results on rendering (recompression); or am I wrong about this?

But doing much more than transitions on m2t is surely going to give poor results on rendering (recompression); or am I wrong about this?
========================================================

I'm not so certain.
You shoot in HDV, whatever happens during the camera's encoding is undoable. You can convert that to anything and it's not going to get any better.
So you ingest a digital copy of that. And then YOU do things to it. Presumably Vegas decodes the m2t frames into uncompressed, does it's calcs and writes the results back using the chosen output codec.

If your pipeline is that simple I honestly cannot see how adding anything else into the process is going to make matters better, in theory surely it can only make things worse.

Certainly if 'the chosen output codec' is not the same as the final output then using a less lossy codec in their could be a big or huge benefit but going straight from the native m2t files on the T/L to say mpeg-2 for DVD I'm at a loss to see how converting to a CF DI first will help.

Also of course going though multiple render phases then a less lossy codec is also going to be a benefit but I suspect that's perhaps not that common an issue.

Bob.

There are a lot of ongoing disucssions about that - with different opinions. For sure, mainly intensive compositing - keying for example - will deliver poor results. It depends on what you do.

But beside that Vegas 7 gives us the possibility to edit much more in native m2t files, compared with earlier versions. I think we have to collect more experience about things like titels, color corrections, corrections with levels and so on - to be able to assess at the end of the day what we like more. As said, different people have different opinions about that - but I have not seen a lot of relevant testing in that area up to now.

Snapping is cool. Thanks for the tip. I did not even notice it. Nor do I think it is worth $149.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy Vegas and its approach for the user. It's just that the real truth is that this upgrade should really be called ver 6.0e or 6.1. Let's face the truth for a bit.

One thing, kudos to the dev team for the mostly bug-free release with v7a. Ver 7.0a to 7.0b was much less urgent than 6.0a to 6.0b!

Yes, I guess that's the question: how does Vegas handle m2t data? If it does a decode (to 4:2:2 avi?) applies the effects and recodes at render, then I guess should work well. This process appears to be hidden presently. Testing? Yes, good thing to start trying. However I imagine that Madison people already know the answers to such questions, so it seems a pity that users should have to untertake individual valuations.
The thing is that we are familiar with the results that we were getting with CF and this is a new ball. One where we had been sagely saying "you never edit m2t". Now it seems we do. Good thing if it works. Well I've got a job Monday cutting 2 hours of m2t for a client whose FCP isn't up to the task and he says he wants just cuts and some dissolves, titles and fairly simple stuff. So looks like I'd better run some quick tests and renders. Not having to generate CF intermediates will save a lot of time.

Sonic Foundry stock just jumped to #2.95. They must be doing something right.

JJK

Bob, your comments are very interesting and I sure hope we can get some answers. For Sony, CFDI was what really got them into the HDV market in the first place, because prior to Vegas 7 it wasn't practical to edit .m2ts.

If it's as you say (speculate?), that one generation off the timeline will have no impact to the render quality of .m2t sources (vs. CDFI) regardless of what you are doing (color correction, compositing, etc.), then that might explain why Sony apparently made no great collaboration with Cineform to make sure things go smoothly with Vegas 7 and CFDIs. If Vegas no longer depends on Cineform for a viable HDV solution...

Which is kind of strange. I read in a September edition of Videomaker magazine where they were quoting a VP from Sony Madison Software talking quite favorably about using CFDIs..

Also of course going though multiple render phases then a less lossy codec is also going to be a benefit but I suspect that's perhaps not that common an issue.

I am doing a project in Vegas 7 where I had to run it through DeShaker first. Straight HDV was not an option (VirtualDub doesn't take .m2ts). Had to use an intermediate. True, you could argue that good shooting would have avoided this in the first place, but sometimes we aren't in control of the camera and must deal with shakey stuff later. Stuff happens. Also I needed to do some destructive editing on the audio outside of Vegas, which meant rendering out the audio, and making my changes. So that I wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of severed audio clips, I used Vegas to render each clip separately into a new clip, joining the original video with the newly enhanced audio. I did this with CDFI. Had I done it with .m2ts I would have taken another quality hit from generation loss.

If you are doing a render to new track or something similar that requires multiple generations of intermediates , you would be better off using uncompressed (the best option) or some format with less lossy compression for these intermediate renders than long-gop MPEG-2.

However, you are not going to get _better_ quality that the original source by compressing to any intermediate file first, and then applying fx, and then rendering to your destination format. No matter what the source format is, it gets processed in Vegas as RGB 4:4:4, and from there it gets rendered to the output format you choose (WMV, DV, M2t etc etc).

It is true you might get a different look by rendering to some compressed intermediate format first (due to dithering or whatnot), but you'll never have a _cleaner_ source than pristine native original file. Compression = data loss- you might not be able to see it in one or even 50 generations but it is occuring, and it does add up.

Summarizing: If you are rendering to new track, applying fx, rendering to new again, applying fix, rendering to new again, applying fx, and then rendering to output, you are better off using uncompressed, Sony YUV or a visully lossless codec like Cineform for these intermediate steps than you would be if you were rendering to a highly compressed format like HDV m2t for each of these intermediate render steps.

If you have a timeline with a variety of original sources (m2t included) and you apply fx and titles etc and then you render to your output file, you'll get the cleanest possible result (because you didn't compress in any intermediate steps).

Thanks forumadmin! I'm trying, probably like a lot of people, to figure out a "best practices" workflow. I've had really good experiences with Cineform and I do a ton of tweaking, multi generations & exporting to other programs (AE, Ultra, etc..) So a robust codec that previews well is a huge thing for me.

Cineform has also been really responsive to tweaking and improving their codec at a very rapid pace and combined with Vegas I have been getting great results. The m2t thing is confusing a bit because there seem to be 3 camps:

1) never touch the m2t file - capture the file to a DI like Cineform on ingest
2) edit m2t for simple stuff and a DI for more composite/tweaking heavy stuff.
3) edit native m2t - anything else and you take a quality hit

Also the "native editing" marketing speak has confused things a bit as well (in my opinion). So far my impression seems to be number 2 is the way to go, which petty much puts me in the number 1 camp because I guess I rarely edit stuff that doesn't get tweaked.

Thanks so much for your info - I feel like it validates my workflow!

Yoyodyne - I think what the ForumAdmin posted goes beyond what you are concluding. I didn't know that Vegas internally does everything at 4:4:4 regardless of what's on the timeline. This (as far as I know) cancels what a number of veterans have posted, where they suggested that for complex color correction or compositing you should always use an intermediate.

No, instead I think what's being given to us is that the determining factor should be whether or not we're doing multiple generations of rendering.

This is really good news, and makes native .m2t editing a whole lot more attractive. As long as your "tweaking" is non-destructive (i.e. don't render and re-render), stick with native HDV.

My particular project that I discussed does require multiple generations of rendering, thus I do need digital intermediates. Thus I wish CFDIs would playback faster on the timeline (equal or better to Vegas 6). But more often than not, I'll probably be using native HDV and get an overall better experience than what I got in Vegas 6.

What I don't know is how well playback compares when there are more video footage tracks (i.e. you are pushing 3 or 4 streams of HD video instead of 1). But that knowledge will only come with experience.

And, to the ForumAdmin: thank you so much for the clarification. We appreciate it a quite a lot!

Jayster, I think we are on the same page. By tweaking/compositing I mean multi-generation renders - both in Vegas and in other programs.

Rendering to a new track is a commonly used technique and like YoYodyne I commonly use DeShaker to smooth tracking shots and also DVFilmMaker, each of which involves a new generation. I've been achieving a good final product. Yes, it takes time. Native editing of m2t is great, but we seem to have taken a step backward for more involved workflows.

ForumAdmin, all,

So are you saying going to an intermediate just to apply special effects rather than using the original m2t is not the best approach?

Or is it just a subjective recommendation from some pros that an intermediate can handle some effects better than m2t?

I notice that Forum Admin says "It is true you might get a different look" rendering to an intermediate. Is there objective comparison data on this?

Please, no offense to anyone:) I tend to use most of my effects directly on the m2t's for final output. I've tried both, and both results are fantastic for me.