All good questions although some are probably rhetorical. In any case we'll have to wait and see what's actually there.

From the video, I got the impression that the ipad app connects through your local wireless network. You've probably seen TV and DVD player remotes done this way, you download an app that turns your phone or tablet into a remote control. So, yes, if you're in the same room and you own a wireless keyboard with enough range then you could do it that way.

Having a transport control on a tablet over wifi would allow you to leave the room, I suppose. You could be in a control both. If you establish a VPN connection you could be on another continent, but the command transmission would be laggy. I suppose since the app can upload markers you could drop markers and then navigate between them easily enough even if you were overseas in a conference call. You could step through the video point by point. I think this is an awfully complex and tortured example, though, and I'll bet the tablet app isn't really designed to make this easy.

The ability to work offline and at least review footage via proxy files would be useful to some. For example, every morning I pass by a line of people waiting to get on a Google shuttle bus to Mountain View. They have wifi on the bus and I'm sure that you could do this sort of review work while in transit. If it weren't for the fact that Google standardized their in house video on Final Cut this would be a good market for SCS. In fact, I don't see why the proxy viewer couldn't work with other NLEs so maybe it IS a good market to target.

At this point I'm looking at this and seeing lots of possibilities. In the distant past it always seemed like SCS would implement a feature (nested veg files) and then never develop the possibilities.

For example, perhaps a tablet could be connected with a USB cable, or bluetooth, or WiFi, and just become a universally configurable control surface.

As for two people sending two commands...I saw no evidence in the video that you could make two connections. I think that's worth pursuing and that's why I was thinking Vegas needs to be able to handle multiple marker sets (Jane's marks, Tom's marks, Sue's marks, etc). However, as for who controls the timeline, that should probably work like any conferencing software where one person gets control and you have to give it up to the next presenter when its their turn. Not hard, and no one's reinventing the wheel, but if you were to counter that this is too big an investment in the Vegas developer team's time I'd agree. It should be a separate effort.

At this point I'm getting ideas tangled with reality and ought to go back and look at the video presentation again.

You make some interesting points rmack350 that go a long way to answering my questions but I suppose we'll have to wait until we get our hands on VP13 before we can work out exactly what Sony have implemented.

Concerning hard/soft controllers these have been very popular in the audio world and now there are versions for tablets:

http://www.humatic.de/htools/touchdaw/

I imagine the difference is that it's possible to use midi to control all DAWS but I'm not sure there's an equivalent for programming NLE's?

It's my understanding that the Vegas iPad app needs to be on the same network. That means it needs to share a sub-net with Vegas Pro (e.g., 192.168.1.x where only 'x' differs). If that can be achieved via VPN then I guess you can be across the world but the idea is that you can use it like a ShuttlePro sitting in front of Vegas or be across the room and use it like a remote for recording.

There are lots of MIDI control surfaces for the iPad that might also work with Vegas Pro since Vegas supports MIDI control surfaces already. You would need a program running on your PC to receive the MIDI data from the remote app and send it to Vegas but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Here is a list of The Best Control Surfaces for iPad (not sure if they are really "the best" or not but that was the name of the article) DAW Remote HD looks pretty nice.

Apple Logic Pro X has a free companion iPad app called Logic Remote that works really well. You can even control plug-ins from the iPad. It's a really great productive tool.

Using tablets to extend the desktop has a lot of possibilities. I applaud Sony for being on the bleeding edge. ;-)

~jr

Hi everyone,

For those of you that I haven't interacted with yet, my name is Eric and I'm a developer at SCS. The Vegas Pro Connect iPad app was a primary development of mine for Vegas Pro 13. I'm extremely happy to see some of the discussion on this forum thread, and I wanted to take a minute to address some of the questions here about the app. I'll try to respond to everything I can here:

1) The app *will* run on an iPad 2 (and any newer iPad, including iPad Mini models) but does require iOS 7.0 at a minimum.

2) There is no hard limit to the number of tablets running Vegas Pro Connect that can be connected to the same instance of Vegas. In fact, having multiple people all sit in the same room, each with their own tablet, each dropping their own markers or controlling playback, is a specific workflow we wanted to target. That being said, we did not yet get a chance to implement anything like 'Presenter Mode' where only a single iPad can be used for transport controls. Also, even though there is no artificial limit, if you tried to connect hundreds of iPads to the same instance of Vegas, there would be some potential latency. We don't have hundreds of actual iPads to test with, but all of the scenarios we tried with multiple devices worked very well.

3) Even though multiple iPads can all be connected and dropping markers while reviewing, we also were not able to differentiate the markers dropped by different users. This is a feature we would like to add. However, since each marker text is customizable in the app settings, users can set up their own specific text with their markers. For example, I could make a marker that, when dropped on the timeline, read: "Check Mix: From Eric". That way I could know which markers came from me. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a start.

4) Since all you need when setting up a connection between Vegas Pro Connect and an instance of Vegas Pro 13 is an IP or hostname, you could theoretically connect the iPad to Vegas Pro from anywhere in the world, *as long as the machine running Vegas is reachable via the IP/Hostname and port used on the iPad*. So if you were willing to use port forwarding, etc to open your computer's IP to the internet, you could connect Vegas Pro Connect from anywhere. Now, over the WAN (internet) the latency for transport controls and timecode display would most likely be so bad, you wouldn't be able to use the app. However, the offline project syncing and review process might work fine..... The primary use case for the app, however, is communicating with an instance of Vegas Pro that is on the same local network.

NOTE: Unlike some competitor's products that only auto-connect (I'm looking at you, Logic Remote) the iPad and computer running Vegas Pro shouldn't even need to be on the same subnet. Basically, in network-speak, If you can create a TCP socket from the iPad to the machine running Vegas, you can connect via Vegas Pro Connect.

5) Since Vegas Pro Connect *isn't* converting to MIDI commands, but is instead communicating directly with Vegas Pro, it reduces some latency, and it makes the type of messages it can send/receive much richer and more expandable in the future.

6) The feature that no other mobile product out there has yet, that I know of, is the offline proxy/review workflow we've implemented with Vegas Pro Connect. Whether you're a hobbyist who just wants to take their latest project with them when visiting family to show it off, a single professional who wants to review their work on the bus on the way home from work or with a client, or a broadcast producer who needs to review and approve multiple editors' work, the Vegas Pro Connect Review Projects can be beneficial. The ability to sync a proxy version of a project (or part of a project) to a tablet, then play the project and add markers even when offline, and have those markers sync back to Vegas Pro the next time you're in wifi range makes this a powerful feature I hope you'll explore.

I hope I've been able to answer at least a few questions about Vegas Pro Connect. Like I said before, I'm excited to follow the discussion here and see some of your suggestions for where this product can go.

Great to read your comments Eric.

One thing I remember requesting years ago might help with differentiating peoples' markers, and that's having the ability to choose the colour of Markers. This could have many uses for "normal" editing, but also, if each iPad user could set their own colour, it could come in useful there!

Is it possible, even roughly, to say when an Android version might be ready - even if it's "two or three months"?

Thanks.

Peter

+ 1 android 2

Hi Eric,

Really appreciate your development for the iPad app. Thank you.
I think for gadget lovers, you just create WOW factor to them :), also you really expand the editing possibilities.

Even though we haven't touch the app, just my idea for no.3 based on what I watch here :

Colorful markers as PeterWright suggest is a good idea, on the other side, perhaps adding 'temporary UserIDs' on 'Settings' can do.
By adding UserID e.g "Set", after tagging "Check Color", I will find "Set: Check Color"
Other iPad with UserID e.g. "ushere" :) tagged "Check Mix", later I will find "ushere: Check Mix". etc.

Also, just a thought, if this feature is not available yet: custom saved text tag for later use, in case we need different similar texts, so we can choose from them instantly without the need to retype them again and again.

More ideas & possibility can be achieved from this idea.... Looking forward for Android version, and to try in our hand soon!

*Thumbs up* b^_^d
Set

And another voice for Android here.

Looking at apps, Europe seems to be 50/50 Android/iPad users whereas in the states its more towards Ipad. Just a thought.
Certainly my closest friends and professionals use a mixture of Android and iPad.. Thats in the UK.

Paul.

This app will be fantastic, I'm very happy to see him, but it ha possibility to vegas for mac be realeased?
User'm mac and always accompany vegas, vegas and use the dream on a OSX operating system..

According to IDC Worldwide Quaterly Tablet Tracker in 2013 Android had a 61 % marketshare vs. iOS with a 35 % market share (Windows about 3.5 %, iOS expected to further descend in future). So soon supporting Android wouldn't be the worst of all ideas ;)

Ipad and android meh, kindle fire all the way =P

> "Ipad and android meh, kindle fire all the way =P "

I'm sure there'll be a kindle version the minute Vegas come out in grayscale.

Peter,

Unfortunately I can't give an estimate for an Android version at this point, but I can say that we have received a lot of input and heard from a lot of people interested in an android version.....and we're listening.

Those are misleading numbers however. Android may technically have more market share but iOS dominates in the areas of actual web traffic and app purchases. Most of the market share claimed by Android is for the lower end of the market. Cheap and fairly useless devices sold mainly overseas.

I'm sure an Android app will appear but I'm not surprised that the iOS version was first.

Now if they would only port Vegas to OS X like they did for Sound Forge :)

J\