Sony Vegas on Linux. Ubuntu is Hot.

Jonathan Neal wrote on 6/18/2006, 5:35 PM
Hey Everybody,

So, I'm sold on Ubuntu (a Linux OS). Ubuntu has been taking the net by storm, and I recently gave it an install after my friends (who get paid a lot of money in the IT field) raved on and on about it. I gave it an install anyway, since I knew I could Dual-Boot.

Of course, being a professional video editor, I had to see if I could install or just run Sony Vegas (6.0d) in Ubuntu by using WINE (which allows you to run many native windows apps in Linux). Earlier, I was shocked to find Photoshop CS2 ran near-perfect in Ubuntu, and I was also pleasantly surprised at how many other applications were either compatible through WINE, or were simply available as Linux apps. Alas, Sony Vegas did not work, but it really got me thinking.

The great thing about Ubuntu (Linux in general) is that it just doesn't crash. Well, the other great thing about Ubuntu is just how easy and fast it is to use. I've done everything I could to break the system, and I mean almost everything. I've tampered with core system files and rotted out my GUI to what seemed like the point of no return, yet, it was a breeze to restore things exactly the way they were before with NO repercussions. Programs run beautifully alongside one another, and I can really harness my resources and processing power to individual apps. This is why I would find Ubuntu such a great environment to run Sony Vegas in. I would honestly be hardly concerned with system crashes and other programs knocking Vegas out for the count every time I decided to ALT+TAB.

So, I just wanted to let the Sony Vegas team know that I'm inlove with Vegas, and that's the reason I still have Windows running on my machine. Nothing beats Vegas, and whether you're a veteran editor or a newbie it gets the job done. If the Sony Vegas team did what, say, Google has done, and port their applications somehow to Linux, I don't see what would stop them from being the dominant video editing system for Linux. I've tried some of the other software (commercial and freeway) and they don't even come close. Why not beat Adobe to the punch?

Maybe I'm just one user right now, but as a hardcore Windows user, I'm telling you that Ubuntu has more promise (and priority in my mind) than any Windows Vista system. Plus, if you could figure out how to get Vegas running in Linux, what stops you from bringing ACID, DVD Architect, CD Architect, and on and on. Thanks for letting me share, and thanks a million for Vegas.

Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 6/18/2006, 6:28 PM
I just dont see it happening...ever. Why? Because Linux is pretty much a free OS. People that tend to use it dont want to spend a lot for software and definitely not what Vegas costs. Second, you spread Madison developers thinner which takes away from the the Windows app and thats provided the Madison fellas know anything about programming for *nix systems.

Furthermore, Vegas is built on the Windows ASP.NET architecture and APIs. Even if the developers could port Vegas to *nix, do you honestly think there woudl be enough sales to justify the programming and man hours involved?

Id love to see it but its not going to happen.
GlennChan wrote on 6/18/2006, 6:33 PM
I have Debian setup on another of my computers (multi-purpose machine- coding, print, web+FTP server) and my experience with it hasn't been quite as easy. It's a different learning curve than Windows... i.e. the security/permissions, which isn't as easy as WIndows (which favours convenience instead of security). Because I'm not doing anything particularly important, I prefer convenience more than security.

Right now Linux is kind of tricky because:
A- Not everything has Linux drivers.
B- It assumes the user knows something about computers... so the programs don't try to hold your hands. On the flip side, there's some silly "user friendliness" features in the Windows world that doesn't make sense (i.e. the silly dog, paperclip characters in Office and in Windows explorer search).

I don't think there's a sizeable enough user base of Linux users for a Linux version to make sense.

On the other hand, there are some advantages to running on Linux that would help video editing (stability, not having the overhead of Windows). But I don't think the advantages are that compelling, unless you're targeting a much higher-end user base. I know the Matrix compositing system moved from WIndows to Linux for a reason... although its price point is somewhere around $200k I believe (the price is likely wrong, I don't remember it well).
cmallam wrote on 6/18/2006, 6:52 PM
i agree! i just started playing with Google Earth under Linux (Mandriva). i know, old hat for most of you but except for Vegas et al, if it doesn't run under Linux i don't bother. This computer runs 24/7 no crashes, or reboots for months on end, even when installing new software and/or upgrades. Unix/Linux was desigened from the get-go to be multiuser/multitasking, and therefore doesn't doesn't suffer the security issues Windows is plagued with. Vista looks like it is going to be a real pig and suck up all your hardware horsepower just to run the O/S. Hollywood is jumping on the Linux bandwagon with renderfarms, animation and modelling apps. The Madison programmers would have the source code for the entire operating system and could make Vegas fly on the much lighter modular Linux O/S.
john-beale wrote on 6/18/2006, 9:54 PM
I was using Linux during the pre-1.0 version days, and the only reason I went back to Windows was due to lack of competent video editing applications that ran on Linux. If Vegas ran on Linux I would definitely use it! I also agree Ubuntu is a good distribution.
Jonathan Neal wrote on 6/19/2006, 4:13 AM
Wow, I'm surprised to see such a response so quickly! About two weeks ago my girlfriend was having problems with her laptop and it was getting difficult and annoying to constantly fix them (long story short, most solutions involved a reformat), so I stuck Ubuntu on the machine and it's never worked better. Not one problem since, not ONE problem. She can still see all the other computers on their (Windows, mind you) network, share files, download pictures from her camera, and check her myspace (bleh, i'm trying to get her to quit). It may seem a little advertise-eske for me to be saying this, but seriously, I scratch my head at the beautiful package they put together.

My point is that Ubuntu is changing the way people see Linux. There is no doubt that when harnessed, Linux, by it's very design, has better, stabler processing performance. So why not? As Google has shown us, a WINE port should run at near native speeds. Until then, we can at least keep the discussion going.
rmack350 wrote on 6/19/2006, 10:34 AM
It's true that you'd need other infrastructure installed and running before Vegas would work. There's a lot to Vegas that's very strictly Microsoft technology. However, the beauty of Wine is that it can run a lot of windows apps without recompiling them.

As far as I know, Linux offers the big houses certain economies of scale. If you need a hundred Windows licenses for the OS, database server, and also developement tools, Linux starts to look a lot less expensive.

Like any software, I think it comes of age when people over 70 can manage to use it.

Rob Mack
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/19/2006, 11:15 AM
I’ve been running Linux since the original Slackware distribution back in 1995 when you had to compile your own kernel with the drivers you needed just to get a bootable system. Those were the days. It ran incredibly fast on a 80386 PC back then. I agree that if the Sony Madison suite ran on Linux I’d have little reason to use ever Windows again. It’s too bad. Even my current laptop is a dual boot Linux system. I’ll have to check out Ubuntu.

~jr
jkrepner wrote on 6/19/2006, 11:23 AM
I'm installing it on a old PIII laptop here at work right now. So far so good.

I'd like there to be a good NLE for Linux. It's not that I don't like Windows, it's just so much overhead. On my editing computer I pretty much turn it on and then open Vegas/DVDA and that's it.
Jonathan Neal wrote on 6/19/2006, 10:19 PM
Just to let you guys know - there is serious pull behind using Ubuntu as your studio OS of choice.

After a little research I learned today that Linux has got ASIO / DirectSound / Soundfonts / Nvidia-drivers / Ati-drivers working, and as we speak Ubuntu users are figuring out ways to make them all install and run as seemlessly as possible, if not even smoother than Windows (as it often turns out).

Here are a few links of interest.

Ubuntu Studio Website:
http://www.ubuntustudio.com/

and their own forum @ Ubuntu:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=128

I've just finished getting VMWare Server (which is free) to load Windows up, and it runs shockingly well, I'm about to do some more tests. Next thing, of course, is to see how well Vegas performs in an emulated enviroment. I may be surprised yet.
Jonathan Neal wrote on 6/22/2006, 2:39 PM
Some interesting developments on my continuing quest!

1. There are some great ways to run Vegas through Windows on Linux machines for free, and the speed may astound you.

2. Support for Linux by some of the big hardware makers seems to be warmly welcomed or coldly disregarded. Not much of the lukewarm.

3. Will Vegas take the leap of faith?

VMware Server (which is in beta) running Windows is amazing. I've been trying to compare speeds between VMWare Vegas and Native-Windows Vegas, but it's difficult to determine the differences between machines. For a process that takes 2 minutes on my AMD64 2800+, VMware comes in 2 or 3 seconds behind. More noticably, my framerate hangs around 23fps running some video effects where my Native-Windows machine would stil be running at 29.979. I've also been reading some great things about Xen 3.0. Here is a link to a video that describes virtualization a little: http://www.redhat.com/f/swf/virtualization/1947_RedHat_3_10_06.swf . The Speed using Xen should be 100% at par with a true-windows running machine.

I also emailed nVidia, ATI, EMU (and subsequently Creative) about their Linux plans. They are some of big-ones when it comes to popular computer hardware.

nVidia and ATI are already offering Linux support and it will only get better with time, but in both instances there are no details to their "confidential product development plans". They also included useful links and nVidia encouraged me to sign up for their newsletter for "driver update and product release information" This is great news, because wondering 'how will they' and 'when will they' come second to 'will they'.

Creative, on the other hand, seems to have their hands full, struggling with XFI issues (their new soundcard) on Windows (there are giant threads about this on their forum). In two emails I was given the following information. "We do not offer any linux drivers." (and) "There are no future plans to release any linux drivers." Other than their signature, that was it. However, I have a great fondness of Creative, and I can understand how much they have on their plate right now.

So, with that in mind, would Vegas still be a good move? Yes, I say. Sony (Madison) Software brings a lot to the table for Linux. Let's look at the dependencies.

Sony uses .NET. Done. http://www.gnulinux.net/ & http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

Sony uses firewire. Done. http://www.linux1394.org/

Windows kernel and DLLs. Well, they'd need to change that, but in the meantime. http://www.winehq.com/
p@mast3rs wrote on 6/22/2006, 5:28 PM
Its nota good move and thats simply Buisness 101. For Sony to even consider for a remote second on whether to support Linux it would have to justify the cost of research and development for a platform of users that generally rely on open source or free software...which means how many sales can you genereate? If you Sony cannot genereate a helathy profit margin there it would be senseless for them to waste time making sure software runs the same on different OSes.

Changing the dependencies on kernels and dlls is the foundation of Vegas. To change that as you suggest would require a complete re-write of the code. Be happy that you can run Vegas on a Mac now. Because frankly, thats as close to Linux as youll ever get with Vegas.
Jonathan Neal wrote on 6/22/2006, 6:05 PM
Yes, you can run Vegas on a Mac ... but not on the actual Mac OS. I laughed though, because I get your point. :-)

Is it not worth it? I read that VASST will be certifying Vegas users for something like $900; why not tap into Mac OS at the very least? Perhaps the cost of research and development would be too high for Linux, but as many could tell you - it's many, many times easier to port your applications from Linux to another OS, rather than port them from Windows or Mac to any others.

I've decided (since I've been so vigorous on here) to maintain the Sony Vegas report on WINE's AppDB. If it's not a bother to the forum administrators, I hope we continue to discuss the idea of porting Vegas to Linux or Mac. :-)
Chienworks wrote on 6/22/2006, 6:44 PM
I'm a Linux-head all the way. I've had one or more Linux boxes on my desk for over 10 years now and really appreciate the stability and efficiency of it. Do i want Vegas on LInux? Sure, i guess. Do i need it? Nope. No point really. Windows is good enough that it never seriously impedes my work. I get the job done using Vegas under Windows, and by that measure, it's just as good as Linux. Probably the only issue i have is that, following Microsoft's trends, i fear that they may paint themselves in a corner and Windows may eventually stop being a viable platform. This is the ONLY reason i can think of to justify porting Vegas to another OS.

I suppose one could make the argument that porting Vegas to Mac would help validate Vegas as a real editing platform for all the companies that seem to think that artistic and media work can only be done on a Mac*. Macs have such a small installed base that i doubt there would be enough additional sales to make it worth the expense. For that matter, now that Macs are going Intel, it might get a lot of those closed shops to realize that there really is a world outside of Apple, and that world gets a lot of good work done with a whole lot less expensive hardware.

*I recently was counselling a first-time computer buyer on a new computer choice. He is entering college for media production and even though he had used exclusively Windows-based PCs in high school, he went with a Mac because he seriously believed that there was no way to do photo editing, page layout, and music editing with Windows. He figured a Mac would be a good choice because i have one. When i explained that in fact i don't have a Mac he was shocked. He was sure i had one and couldn't figure out how i did all the media production i do without one.
Grazie wrote on 6/22/2006, 11:05 PM
Will Linux improve the Vegas Previewing speed and consequently allow my Edit Decisions more creativity? Yes or No?

This is an easy issue.

Grazie
Jonathan Neal wrote on 6/22/2006, 11:44 PM
Easy issue, easy answer. Yes.

Longer answer? Faster speeds, less crashing, and dare I say (I dare), a lot more productivity. That's because Linux is a much 'lighter' operating system (OS), so things happen faster than a Mac or a PC. In Linux, if you're running other stuff in the background like a web-browser, chat, anything you could think of, you'll see much, much less speed loss! And if something weird happens on your computer, you won't lose the system or get any blue screen of death. Linux has always been known for it's superior security.

It sounds crazy because it IS crazy. Google it for more info and proof, or if you just like to play with stuff, download the CD from Ubuntu, it's free. You don't even need to install the software to see what it looks like. You just boot the computer off the CD-ROM, it will load the OS and even let you go online, surf the web, chat with friends, play games.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Bad news? There IS no Sony Vegas for Linux. It might even be a long shot to ask. Typically, big software companies leave Linux out, and let free software alternatives emerge. That's where we got things like VLC Media Player, gAIM, and Firefox (heard of them?). Oh, maybe you have!

Good news? Hardware vendors like nVidia and ATI have started supporting Linux, and (so the news claims) software favorites (of mine) like Mackie Tracktion and Adobe Photoshop will be making appearances down the line. Mind you, these companies still prioritize their babies (and justly) Windows & Mac (Adobe is actually still working on getting their software to run on the new Mac Intels).

But Yes. The answer is YES!
GlennChan wrote on 6/22/2006, 11:51 PM
Performance-wise, it might just make sense for the developers to program more of the filters to be GPU accelerated.

By moving to Linux, it's doubtful that they'd get better than 2X performance. Whereas with GPU acceleration, you can sometimes get a 20X performance increase.


Stability-wise, I'm very happy with Vegas. Underlying hardware problems will likely be a bigger source of instability... i.e. I recently figured out my Linux server had a weird RAM/motherboard conflict.