I'll just add my input that I agree that the previous post by SonyEPM was just deflecting the real issue that John has been pointing out.

I think he has been making a valid point and I want to get in line that he isn't the only one thinking that it is an important issue.

SonyEPM: If you were going to reply in the previous thread, why no mention of the issue of add-ins dealing with temporal frames? That was the whole point, were you could have added insight. Instead we got a --no real content-- marketing reply.

I'll agree that the SDK could use some tweaking on the method in which frames are served up. That said;
The main reason you see all the plugs for Premiere is because PREMIERE DIDN'T WORK! And, because Premiere, and most of the other tools out there, can't do/didn't do at the time, what Vegas could do out of the gate.
Why isn't there a Stagetools or Imaginate for Vegas? Because Vegas did all that from day one. Why isn't there a Palette for Vegas? Because Vegas had all those tools from Day one. Why isn't there a Vectorscope plugin for Vegas? Because Version 4 offered one.
Further, even though there are some issues in dealing with transporting frames, the format in which Sony deals with plugins is among the best in the world. Boris and other major makers will tell you this straight up. It's a model the rest of the world would do well to follow because it's non-proprietary. People laughed with Sonic Foundry's implementation of DirectX in version3 of Sound Forge. It then became the industry standard. It needs some further dev, but it's a brilliant way of allowing access to an application.
Sony's barely owned this company for 6 months, their first dealer and ship announcements were in December. Give em' time, they'll be supporting third parties better in the near future.

Spot,

Excellent points, especially about the number of things built into Vegas. I agree, and it is one of the many reasons why I use this product instead of Premiere.

I am also glad to hear that the plug-in interface is well thought out, and "developer friendly."

Finally, I am heartened to hear, from someone who is close to the action, that "they'll be supporting third parties better in the near future." I am definitely looking forward to that, because despite all the things you point out, which I just agreed with, there are dozens and dozens of things that Vegas doesn't do, will never do, and probably shouldn't do, but that --> I <-- need it to do for some of my projects. It is the whole reason for plug-ins, namely they can serve small, but very important, market niches that cannot warrant the development and support effort from the Sony development group.

Hence ~ "Pugins". Kinda like aftermarket stuff for your pickup truck.

If Sony really wants to support their third-party developers AND simultaneously ensure that Vegas will lead the pack forever, I have a simple suggestion:

PUT SATISH ON THE PAYROLL!

Pay the man whatever he asks... he's worth it. Can you even begin to imagine what Satish could do if he had a development team and Sony's resources behind him?

It is difficult for one person to create software, flog it out, then find out there are 300 scenarios that were not taken into consideration.

JJK

That may be the best idea I've ever heard.

Give Satish whatever he wants so he can work full-time on Vegas. There could be no better investment made.

Satish, as good as he is (and he IS good), is only one developer, and a one-man show at that. Sony needs to have a full-time person in charge of developer relations, and that person needs to find several hundred people like Satish. This is not an unreasonable goal. These other individuals and companies might not all be as good as he is, but they would each contribute.

Think of what the Vegas world would be like then ...

Also , unlike Satish, most developers are in the business to make money---I am not sure of the statistics but Premiere has a much larger user base then Vegas so if I'm a developer I am developing for that larger user base. As the Vegas base grows, I am sure you will see individuals write for it---

You guys are soon gonna be surprised at what third-party stuff is available for Vegas. Very surprised....!
It's all good, right?
Consider this about Satish though....he's a star because he runs his own show. As soon as someone starts working for someone else, the passion becomes different. Not lesser, just different. Even for me leaving Windham Hill and going to Virgin as an artist, my focus changed because of the much larger Virgin label....Satish is best off where he is, IMO. I'm positive that if he wanted to work for a corporation doing their products, he'd be there now. Satish certainly doesn't lack for ability.

"Further, even though there are some issues in dealing with transporting frames, the format in which Sony deals with plugins is among the best in the world. Boris and other major makers will tell you this straight up."

Hmm, why (if I am not wrong) in Boris the user must manually enter clip duration? Because duration and timebase information is missing in VV SDK - am I right? Such information is easy to add in plugin API, but VV SDK is not updated long, long time. Even standard for DirectX information like m_Progress variable not have a correct value for Vegas filters. I think that a few days work over plugin API can dramaticaly improve it and make it much more "developer friendly".
I like Vegas and Vegas SDK, like DirectX plugin architecture, but some missing small additions in a VV SDK prevent it from being "the best".

Spot speaketh:
>You guys are soon gonna be surprised at what third-party stuff is available for Vegas. Very surprised....!<

Seems to me the last time he was so coy, Vegas 4 was dumped in our laps, and there was much rejoicing. I'm getting very excited about V 5.

Coy away, Spotnik!

Greg

Just wondering if while searching through all the goodies from Adobe you found an "Illegal Operation" filter for Premiere?
Seems it's still missing this most needed filter :)

Bob

Think about this one from Vegas' perspective for a moment, or from the perspective of a user.

Let's make a spinning cube in Boris; for this example, a spinning cube that does one rotation over the duration of our event.

Since Boris maintains its own timeline, it only has one keyframe in Vegas and keeps the rest of its data internally. If we split the event upon which our spinning cube is applied halfway through the spin, what should we see? Vegas will tell the newly created event (from the split) how far along it is from the new start point.

With a filter that made use of keyframes, we would have two events: one that shows the first half of the rotation and one that shows the second half of the rotation. PERFECT! With a filter that maintains its own internal timeline, we'll have two events that both show the first half of the rotation. oops...

You might suggest that Vegas keep information around regarding the start of the event at the time that the filter was applied (to maintain behavior), but that would hide some very important information from the user and create an ordered, rather than stateful, user interface.

In short, the decision to not provide duration information to filters was a concious one, aimed at discouraging the use of internal timelines in plugins. Plugins can't know what editing operations are occurred in Vegas. Even if we did signal such edits to plugins, we would likely expand Vegas' functionality and break behavior for existing plugins. The way that a plugin can truly behave appropriately is to make use of Vegas' keyframe management facilities.

That said, we may extend the Vegas plugin API in the near future, and we would like to discuss the needs/wants of plugin developers. If you have a filter that "Just needs Vegas to do , let us know. We won't necessarily do everything that people ask, but we think long and hard about the features that our users and third-party developers ask for.

> If you have a filter that "Just needs Vegas to do X", let us know

the ability for a plugin to seek and read parent media data (like asking for random video frames of the parent video event) - that has been the most asked for addition to the plugin SDK by me and other developers

Yes, Your spinning cube example looks convincing, but what happens if the effect require more than 2 keyframes? Some more complex 3D effect like "fly out, morph, rotate & drop down"? Vegas not support "sequence of keyframes" presets I think! The only way to make such multi-key preset is to use internal timeline OR to spilit each preset into 4-5 separate keyframes (and the user must apply each key separately). Other problem - how to make filters like "Camera shake" or "Aged film" without any time information? Both - camera shakes and film brightness variations are not "new random value for each frame", but a smooth part-of-second fluctuations. I agree - it is good to encourage the use of Vegas keyframe management, but insufficient timeline information can affect the quality of some effects.

chaboud,

My recommendation is to NOT start with what is easy for Sony developers. Instead, focus on what will get you the most market share. If providing a plugin SDK enhancement that would let an external company develop a plugin for your spinning cube example would get you another 500,000 units a year (obviously that particular one probably won't), I bet you would figure out a solution in a heartbeat.

Third party support will make you -- or break you. As a result, I am thrilled that you are asking for input!!!

I really want to see Vegas become the market leader.

If it was possible to use AE plugins within Vegas , then it may be a step toward a very good middle ground. I know that if you have have Bors Red running inside vegas, then AE pluigns are useable, but that is a lot of money to spend to get some plugins to run natively since I am quite satisfied with After effects for compositing.

Since Satish has a plugin that allows Photoshop plugins to be used as well as the Virtualdub ones inside of Vegas, surely it is not impossible for Ae/Premiere plugins to be used inside of Vegas with some sort of adaptor?
Combustion will allow for AE plugins and even the old crappy Aist Movie DV allowed for some AE plugins to work inside of it.

Rather than expecting all third party developers to cater to Vegas, having AE filters (which are as much a standard to video editing as photoshop filters are to any image editing app) running inside of Vegas would fill a lot of gaps.
The number of times I have to cart footage from Vegas to AE and back again just to use Reelsmart moblur or Trapcode shine, etc drives me nuts, and is a real time waster. I don't expect the more complex Ae plugins to ever work, but the simpler image processing ones surely must be feasible?

chaboud

I am not a developer but a user of Vegas and Boris. Understand your comments but if I compare the functionality of RED in Premier Pro to Vegas it is the one area where Premier wins hands down.

Purely from a user perspective if the Boris plugin had the same functionality as Prem I would remove Prem from my system. I think I can live with the split event limitation.

It appears to me that the Vegas plugin architecture is hampering developers, Satish's comments seem to indicate this as well.

Paul

chaboud,

I have to agree with Satish. The inability of a plugin to seek and read parent media data has hampered any plugin that does temporal processing. I don’t know if other NLE’s like Premiere allows this in their API but it seems like big limiting factor to me.

~jr

>If you have a filter that "Just needs Vegas to do X", let us know. We won't necessarily do everything that people ask, but we think long and hard about the features that our users and third-party developers ask for.

Actually, I have a programmer (myself) who can do just about anything if he is (1) interested and (2) has tools that make developing fun.

i've checked out both the SDK and scripting api and walked away because I don't see the developer environment being "handed to me on a plate", and the learning curve will take too long before I can be productive. Probably this is M$'s fault, since you're dependent on their tools. And, I'm spoilt rotten because I do java and no M$.

Current situation: I work in java and entry cost is zero. I have a free IDE called Eclipse that sets the standard in any programming environment. If I start playing around with Vegas programming, what tools do I need, how good are they, and how much will it cost? Since I'll be doing it for fun, I won't be making a penny and I don't expect it to cost me a penny. Just getting the inside poop on the next upgrade makes it worth it to me :-)

All these questions and issues are not answered by your website and I have not been motivated to find out elsewhere. Plus, the feedback I've received from the scripting forum ("What dev environment do you use"? et al.) is all negative.

To make a long story short, everything John has said is correct: If you want 3rd party support, host a developer's conference, and appoint someone internally to promote and support it. At the very least, add some 'getting started" tutorials to your website, suggest useful development tools, provide examples, etc, etc, etc.