Thanx. I guess the good news is that VP13 is a pretty nice program to this day and these software companies are going to have to create more spectacular advances to sway folks on the fence like me.

Still on Vegas 13 myself. On the fence and new releases are so buggy I would not touch it. If they seriously improve AMD support for previews like they said they will do in the future I will probably upgrade. That said I'm starting to learn Resolve and its pretty powerful and seems to take advantage of my graphics card.

I just bought a 7.1 ATMOS Onkyo home theater receiver and was wondering if VP15 can do 7.1 audio. I don't see it but maybe there is a secret way to do it😉? 7.1 would get me to upgrade as well as a side-chain function and a nice place to store text for the documentary style videos I often make.

I wouldn't upgrade - A fresh install on my laptop as Administrator works fine - no other apps installed. Moment I log into my user account with admin rights it crashes. This is pretty much the last straw for me. I cannot and will not recommend the program to anyone. Back to Premiere Pro CS6 suite for me. 😡

I wouldn't upgrade.....I cannot and will not recommend the program to anyone. Back to Premiere Pro CS6 suite for me. 😡

Cliff, does this mean you won’t need further feedback on your other threads? It’ll be good to know ‘cos I’ve been reading and following your experience. I wish I’d could supply a solution - I know you like Vegas 😉.

@Cliff Etzel, have you tried installing the SeMW Extensions?

http://www.semw-software.com/extensions/download

@frederick-wise Have a look at our new update and possibly the previous ones. Maybe you can find some new features which are interesting for you.

If you are more a practical person then I would recommend you getting the 30-day free trial. 😉

I got the trial a few days ago but so far haven't really discovered any new features that seem worthy of upgrading. But I thought maybe there were some subtle, great new features that others may know about so I started this thread asking if there are any MAJOR "hidden" improvements I may be overlooking as compared to version 13 (which is a very nice, mature product). As you see from the comments above, there don't seem to be any hidden gems. I was hoping there would finally be a sidechain/ducking function so that I can make documentary type of videos easier but for some reason, that wish is totally ignored. How can this be a professional product without one of the most common styles of video being supported? I guess I'll wait for the next version.

Audio ducking functionality has been available from inexpensive third party add-ons for years.  Recc you look at Vegasaur... there are some others.

I already own several ducking/sidechain plug-ins via my music DAW, Sonar Platinum, but don't think they can be used in Vegas. Also I have an awkward but functioning ducking technique from Vegas which incorporates the "wave hammer" in an overly elaborate setup as I recall. I even bought and returned something from Vegasauer a few years ago that pretended to do ducking but it really didn't. It was so obviously not really doing ducking, I had no problem getting Vegasauer to agree to return my money. I'm still very disappointed Vegas decides to change colors of the gui rather than include valuable upgrades like an easy to use ducking plugin that should also come with a "new project template" that has everything already set up. Oh well, they know their customer base better than me so I guess I'll have to wait, probably forever......📅 lol! There's always Premiere CS5 which I own but never got the hang of but I did figure out a lot of tricks with AfterFX which was part of the CS5 production suite I bought about a decade ago. On the bright side, I just saved a few hundred dollars.

Thanx to all for the suggestions.

The ducking feature in Vegasaur makes a great job of detecting silences and getting a useful volume envelope onto the track, with keyframes that can be further tweaked if necessary. It's saved me a lot of effort in adjusting volume envelopes manually.

But it does only detect silences, and the envelope affects all frequencies. Am I right to think that the sidechain workflow you want would inherently monitor the volume of the narration and continuously compensate, or perhaps even duck vocal frequencies only?

My sidechain/ducking compressor in Sonar Platinum simply allows one to route the narrator's voice via a send on the narrator's track to the background music/sound track that has the sidechain/ducking compressor plug-in installed. Whenever the sidechain processor "hears" the voice it automatically reduces the volume of the background music. When the narrator pauses, it smoothly increases the background music back to where you want it. It repeats this process on the fly and you can easily tweak the threshold, attack, release parameters until you get something that sounds just right. Of course, if you don't have such a compressor, you can do it all manually and "ride" the faders and create lots of keyframes but that's a lot of work whereas a sidechain plugin works very fast - if you have one! Where is it in Vegas?

PS I don't think it was Vegasaur from whom I had received a refund, instead it was from a company named VASST that has a plugin called "Voice Assist". I guess I "miss-remembered" lol!

FYI I just downloaded a Vegasaur trial and don't recall ever trying it years ago. Is the "voice-over" feature fairly new? It kinda seems to be doing some sort of ducking but it isn't in real time. Regardless of whether 3rd party sidechain/ducking FX work, Vegas should include this as a standard feature. Also, I remember from years ago discussing this issue on the Sony forums and someone found a real looking plugin that supposedly did ducking in real time. I'll see if I can find it.

FYI I just downloaded a Vegasaur trial and don't recall ever trying it years ago. Is the "voice-over" feature fairly new? It kinda seems to be doing some sort of ducking but it isn't in real time. Regardless of whether 3rd party sidechain/ducking FX work, Vegas should include this as a standard feature. Also, I remember from years ago discussing this issue on the Sony forums and someone found a real looking plugin that supposedly did ducking in real time. I'll see if I can find it.

The Vegasaur voice over feature has been around at least 5 years. I think silence detection was added in 2.0. The other ducker I know of is in Excalibur. It does a similar thing to the one in Vegasaur. i.e. It just puts on a volume envelope, but without as much control over the keyframes and fades. It requires the Blue Cat Digital Peak Meter for silence detection.

Sidechaining in Vegas has been requested many times over the years.

I would not, There is always a bug into every sony vegas, Since this is a new version, (from my knowledge), It is best you stay at 13 until you really feel like upgrading.