"How useful is it?"

In this situation, it was quite useful.

I know that sometimes the order is important, but I don't recall that I have reordered the FX before 😁

Here's a simple example: put a photo on the timeline, add the Black and White effect, now use the Border effect to put a red border (like a picture frame) around the photo. If you change the order and put "Border" before "Black and White", you end up with a gray border (no longer red) because the Black and White effect is performed after the border effect, and operates on the whole canvas, so it turns the red frame to black and white also.

Likewise, the order of any cropping or masking effect is a very significant. Put a photo or video on the timeline, add "Film Effects" preset "Circa 1908" to make it look like a very old film with dust and scratches, etc. Now add "Cookie Cutter" to cut out just a circle portion in the middle of your image. You have a circular old movie image surrounded by black. If you change the order and drag Cookie Cutter ahead of Film Effects, you end up with a circular image in the middle, but the film scratches and dust cover the entire image -- including the "black" parts outside the circle (which are really transparent, not black).

Edit: I thought of another obvious one -- you have someone in front of a green screen, you use Chroma Keyer to remove the background, then apply Black and White to make them into a ghost. If you had the Black and White effect first -- you won't have much luck with your Chroma Keyer effect.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the answers. I'm not yet convinced, especially in the context of VPX. Please keep them coming. When I have more ideas, I'll comment on the individual reasons w.r.t VPX, for and against.

My gut feeling is that it would be a nice feature to have, but I need to build a case for this. If it is only marginally useful, then there may be other features that would take precedence. Don't want to waste Magix' developers time.

Here is the link to the post on the VPX forum if anyone wants to see what we are suggesting.

Here's a simple example: put a photo on the timeline, add the Black and White effect, now use the Border effect to put a red border (like a picture frame) around the photo. If you change the order and put "Border" before "Black and White", you end up with a gray border (no longer red) because the Black and White effect is performed after the border effect, and operates on the whole canvas, so it turns the red frame to black and white also.

Likewise, the order of any cropping or masking effect is a very significant. Put a photo or video on the timeline, add "Film Effects" preset "Circa 1908" to make it look like a very old film with dust and scratches, etc. Now add "Cookie Cutter" to cut out just a circle portion in the middle of your image. You have a circular old movie image surrounded by black. If you change the order and drag Cookie Cutter ahead of Film Effects, you end up with a circular image in the middle, but the film scratches and dust cover the entire image -- including the "black" parts outside the circle (which are really transparent, not black).

Edit: I thought of another obvious one -- you have someone in front of a green screen, you use Chroma Keyer to remove the background, then apply Black and White to make them into a ghost. If you had the Black and White effect first -- you won't have much luck with your Chroma Keyer effect.

Got it now and yes it is important .. however I do not remember that I even needed to reorder the effects! Maybe because I did not have to as the effects order in my previous project was already correct.

To be clear, VPX does not have video effects at the track level, only the object (event) level. There are some that can be applied at the project level. VPX only has audio effects at both track and object level. Effects can be quickly copied from one object and applied to one or more objects.

@Marco.

One would never just add in a bunch of effects in VPX to an object, thinking that one might use them later. They have to be turned on, which means that an effect will be applied, in order for them to show up on the list. Then they can be turned off in the list. I presume that you are doing this at a track level.

It is very rare in VPX that the sequence of adding effects is important, especially for Video effects (Brightness, Contrast, Gamma, Curves, Colour correction, Saturation). Going back and adjusting anything works fine; resequencing changes nothing, so far as I can tell.

Neat Video requires video effects to be applied before adding it in VPX. Changing or adding video effects after applying NV has no impact, nor does resequencing. Thus it has to be done correctly. You have to remove NV, made adjustments, then apply NV. Other effects, like size and position can be done at any time. NV is a special case.

@john_dennis

PhD level. I didn't understand what was going on and it looks like a very special case. In VPX, if I really need to resequence an effect, I can copy an effect, delete it from the list, paste it, and it will come at the end of the list. But, as I stated above, most effects do not depend on the order of effects; moving them produces the same result. Plugins, however, may be different, and I haven't tested any except Neat Video.

@Tim L

Nope! No problems.

I'll try to do up a video to show you what happens in VPX.

1. Border and applying B&W effect: In VPX, this is done on the object, not the track. The video is one object, the border another. The B&W effect gets applied to the video, not the border, and it doesn't matter when. The colour of the border does not change.
2. Film effects: In VPX, there is a template effect called "16mm." This is composed of a video, black with white dust particles, and a mask that get applied to the selected object. The video covers the entire screen. Adding the Cookie Cutter to this has no effect on the video clip or the mask, only the main video (or photo). So the 16mm effect still covers the entire screen. To reverse the Cookie Cutter, this is done in the Cookie Cutter interface, not in the effects list; change the method to "Cut away section." There is a way to limit the 16mm effect to just the image in the circle. This requires a background image or video, that would be placed on the timeline above the image with the circle. It has to be duplicated. The Cookie cutter is applied to the highest level video (the copy) and inversed, so that this is the background. The 16mm is no longer seen on this part which is outside of the circle. Again, a video will explain this better. No resequencing of effects would help this at all.
3. Green Screen and B&W: In VPX, it doesn't matter. Changing the Green screen object to B&W and then applying Chromakey green works just fine. VPX still recognizes that the object has a green screen. No need to reorder the effects. To get the B&W effect, I reduced Saturation to -100. If I wanted to see the green after applying B&W, I could just turn off the effect and then add the Chromakey green, adjust threshold, fading range and antispill, then turn on B&W. Trying again starting with Chromakey green, then B&W gives identical results. Of course, one would most likely apply B&W before doing Chromakey, even in Vegas. I'll show this in the video.

More later.

Any other examples?

I face a lot of fx combination where the order matters, e.g. Blur/Defocus and Lense Flare. Should the Lense Flare be affected by the bluring or not, this will determin which order to use. And it's getting more complex when it gets deeper into compositing when not only the fx order itself matters but also the order of fx and composite. I appreciate the flexibility Vegas Pro offers on this side.

@Marco.

Good points. I tried VPX with Gaussian Blur and Lens Flare (VPX effects, not plugins), and yes, the order matters. Still, in VPX, copying the effect that should come after and then pasting it back changes the order. Dragging the effect up or down would have been quicker.

Flexibility is nice to have, but if you didn't have it in this case, would you be clamouring to get it above other new features?

Probably no. In my case this was other way around. Once this was one of the reasons Vegas Pro became my NLE of choice. It wasn't the main reason but it was and is important to me.

Sorry if I missed it along my seventeen year Vegas journey, what is VPX? Any Post Sony Vegas? Vegas Pro 10 and higher? What? Please people, don't use inside jargon in an OP, and I'm no newbie, but I can't even follow the conversation.

VPX is Video Pro X, as john-brown mentioned in his first post. Another video editing software developed by Magix but which has no relation to Vegas Pro.

@zdogg

I just remembered that I wanted to comment on your query about VPX.

I suggest that you take a look at all (well, many) of the products being offered by Magix on the Magix.com site, if only to be aware of them. You may find some surprises. One, that I recently noticed, is Vegas Production Pack:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-production-pack/

It didn't show up in the new menu system.