Have you tried Cyberlink PowerDirector? It also had a bug in smart rendered AVCHD when I tried it several years ago but I think it may be fixed now.

Thank you so much for your response. I have not tried PowerDirector but will take a look at it.

Hi,

I may be quite late getting in here, you can download and try out any of the Magix products before buying. You don't get all of the goodies but you get a good idea of the look and feel of it. From what I have seen, it is much more straight forward than Vegas. Others here will disagree. If you go for MEP, get at least the Plus version, better with the Premium if you like the additional third party addons. Don't even bother with the basic version. Watch for special deals.

Of course Video Pro X is the best. It probably has a few features that Vegas Pro does not, but Vegas Pro has many advanced features that VPX does not have.

You can also check out the forums at Magix.info.

Magix has several programs that go well with MEP, including MusicMaker, Audio and Music Lab Premium for high-level cleaning and mastering audio, Xara for animated graphics and animated masks (works from MEP and advances video background as you create graphics or masks), and Samplitude Pro. Not many other nle's have the same excellent tools that integrate with the nle like Magix has.

Of course Video Pro X is the best. It probably has a few features that Vegas Pro does not, but Vegas Pro has many advanced features that VPX does not have.

Thank you. I was confused about their versions. I'm looking for something more professional like Vegas. It sounds like Video Pro X is the closest to that. I'm wondering if I should just wait to see what kind of changes come of these products after they purchased Vegas. My guess is we will start seeing features from one showing up in the other. My concern is that when Corel purchased PhotoImpact from Ulead they killed the product and that Magix might do the same with Vegas.

I downloaded and installed MEP as a first test and loaded one short clip from my cell phone (.mp4) and one from my Panasonic video camera (.mts). I added one transition and one effect and everything seemed to be fine. I added a title and when I double-clicked it to edit the text it crashed the program. That is the extent of my testing with Magix products because this is the type of thing I experience with previous versions of their products. If I'm going to have to endure crashes, especially with the incredible system I just build a few months ago, then I'll stick with Sony Vegas Pro 11 which I know very well and can live with the crashes from it.

Did you down and install the patch? The link is under Help, Update online. I don't recall seeing this problem on the Magix.info forum, but maybe I missed it. Sometimes there are clashes with hardware and other software, especially Windows changes, but any major problems are usually quickly sorted out.

There is a strong user group in Germany that keeps Magix in line. They also meet with Magix once or twice per year. The Moderator of the English forum communicates with the German Moderator, who also watches the English forum and sometimes helps out. They are users, not employees.

I suggest that you try again. To fully and properly test it, you need to buy it, download and install the extra content, and activate the codecs. Magix has a 30 day money back guarantee. I have used it, not because I had problems, but because I saw that they had something better, and in another case I somehow purchased (my mistake) a basic and a Plus version. Magix is also very good about update/upgrade pricing. Just ask.

You may also want to review comments on the Magix.info site. There is a good one that says MEP is crap. Why? The guy made a video, burned it to a DVD, tried it in his DVD player, player said it was the wrong format, conclusion, MEP must be crap. I asked for details, including which region, NTSC or PAL and did he export to the wrong format. No reply.

A few of things that Vegas Pro has that MEP and VPX don't: scripting; compositing. They have of course PiP, chromakeying, keyframing, and much more.

Main differences between MEP Plus/Premium and VPX are that VPX has: 4 measuring instruments; more mutil-cam tracks; multi-language capability, more small features all over the place; 2 monitors - source and preview; project folder; under Burning, can export to PSD file and edit in Xara or Photoshop and send back; 3 colour correction wheels - lows, mids, highs; modifiable brightness/contrast graph, with RGB; LUTs import; and probably some that I missed.

As for the future of Vegas, I think that it is quite secure with Magix.  This purchase has given Magix a very strong foothold in the USA, with a Pro grade product. They will want to exploit that and build on it and use it as a springboard to market its other products. Undoubtedly, Magix will make some modifications to all programs to allow them to work together, as per their MX (Media Exchange) feature. Izotope will like be supplanted by Magix' own programs and VST's for audio, but kept around as a plugin for legacy purposes. Just hypothesizing here, so maybe not. You may want to wait a year or so if you want to get Vegas Pro.

Hope you enjoy whatever you decide to do, and that it works well.

I suggest that you try again. To fully and properly test it, you need to buy it, download and install the extra content, and activate the codecs. Magix has a 30 day money back guarantee.

Thanks for the information. At this point I'm not willing to spend $400 even if it means I can get a refund. I'm probably going to just hold out hope for Vegas.

You have the luxury of waiting, and that is good. Watch for the special deals and there will be some. I upgraded to VPX from MEP for 200$, to Samplitude Pro X2 for 200$, and from Samplitude Pro X2 to X3 Suite for 200$ (same price to upgrade to the non-Suite version), Sound Forge came with the Suite as well.

Just coming to this thread now. I see john-brown saying to watch for special deals. Good idea but sadly I missed the best 'recent' deal from around last summer...buy Vegas Pro 13 for $200 USD and get 14 for free! I wasn't looking at that time as had crap computer. Just got settled into new computer this year and then read of that deal. I'd be all over Vegas Pro 14 for $200. As it stands...I wait.

I will add to some of the points raised here that Vegas Pro is, depending on your needs, the way to go but it would be nice if they did some refreshment of the GUI as it's been pretty much the same for nearly a decade and with free NLE's like Resolve and Hitfilm with their modern GUI that make doing transformations so easy...that needs to come to VP but VP is so reliable. Another thing that VP should add is support for VST3 plugins.

Just coming to this thread now. I see john-brown saying to watch for special deals.

 

Allow me to give you my experience. I purchased SVP14 and was sadly disappointed. I have been dealing with crashes in SVP11 for many years. This is not unique with me and one only needs to check the web for all the complaints about all recent versions of SVP. I have had many computers during that time with fresh installs, etc. but it never made a difference. When I purchased SVP14 I had a functioning install of SVP11 (though it crashed frequently). I installed SVP14 and it would not even start. I uninstalled SVP11 and SVP14 and removed every shred of it, restarted, and installed SVP14 again. It still would not even open. When I reported it I was criticized by a Magix admin. While we all have much to learn I can say that as an IT Professional with decades of high-level experience, I can honestly say there was nothing wrong with my system. In fact, I built this current system from scratch (I've built hundreds) and used some awesome hardware and yet SVP14 would not even start. I'm running Windows 10 Pro and everything else runs great. Needless to say that after that Magix admin gave me a hard time I returned the product and am back using SVP11 with its crashes. I hope this helps in your decision-making process.

Thanks for your thoughts video777. That is certainly a different experience than I have had. I can't recall all the versions of SVP I have tried but it might be as far back as 9 on Windows 7 to 10. I can't recall any crashes. I may have had some lock ups but nothing that has burned any lingering memory in my head. I have read in "this NLE vs that NLE" posts various people mentioning crashes just never been my experience. I also know a couple much more serious editors than myself who feel, as I do in my experince, that Vegas Pro is consistently reliable. All 3 of us are IT professionals of varying types FWIW. My decison is made, when I see a significant deal on Vegas Pro I will jump in. Until then I will continue use it on other's machines and make do with the free HitFilm and Resolve (which I will continue using side by side with Vegas when I am lucky enough to get it).

Same here , sonicvision , vegas pro 11-12-13 very very stable on my dedicated and optimised editing only systems . I removed a few third party plug-ins a few years ago since those are likely to make things worse. Instead use those in After Effects since that program is designed for such . Still on sony's latest vegas pro 13 build since does all I need at this moment and is extremely reliable and that's what I need .