"I think it doesn't pay to lose sight of how much Vegas Pro software costs, and what you get for the money, plus support and updates, IMHO great value for money."

Absolutely agree, in fact I've gone further in the past and said it's too cheap. More money in the till means more money for development and QA. From memory I don't think the upgrade price has gone up much in the last 10 years, if at all.

Bob.

i for one would pay more for a RELIABLE & ROBUST system - but not for new features at the expense (and breakage) of old ones!

"i for one would pay more for a RELIABLE & ROBUST system"

That's the "more" I meant.
Can we trade in PTT for a few basic updates to the old titler too please.

Bob.

Interesting.

How much more? Double? 3x or 1.5x?

Grazie

At double the price it would still be great value, especially as DVD Architect is included. An alternative of course is to be offered a "basic package" and pay for additional add ons, for example 3D, codecs etc.

I am currently beta testing Lightworks (which again this is only my opinion) is a superb interface and fast, and it is everything I need. When the final release is made, the options will be to pay for additions.

I can hear gnashing of teeth already!!!!

Anthony

I'd say up to double would be safe enough, beyond that you're kind of getting into the price points of Avid MC which does come bundled with a lot of goodies.
Certainly any such discussion has to consider what the market will bear. The other very big factor is IP products are wierd to strike a sell price for. The per unit manufacturing costs are very small, the fixed development costs are considerable and users tend to not look too much at price. Dropping the price of Vegas to half is unlikely to sell more units to people thinking to buy FCS or Avid MC or ULead MSP. Selling IP is very different to selling cars or toasters.

Bob.

i'd probably pay upto $1k, and $300+ for upgrades - as long as i was buying a reliable, robust system that didn't break things as it incorporated new ones ;-(

loads of good points being made about Vegas,

i would also pay double the price if some of the issues were ironed out,

why add things like 3d stuff which really should be a add on,
how much time did the development team spend on that,

time which maybe could have been spent on making everything rock solid
within Vegas,this maybe a dream but its just a thought,

and i do think SCS should visit this forum more often and see what all us guys are saying

It is a hard fact of capitalism that bling sells faster than function.
Car manufacturers discovered this in the early 1950's, and the world has never looked back.

A relative minority of quality-conscious consumers aren't going to change that fact. iPhones can do a million things, most of which come with a price tag. But they still drop calls.

I too would pay double for a system that has the stability of earlier versions of Vegas. The upgrades seem very cheap if you buy them while the introductory offer is valid.

(p.s. but I'd sure love better quality slo-mo, deinterlacing/resizing, and H.264 without using 3rd party tools)

"(p.s. but I'd sure love better quality slo-mo, deinterlacing/resizing, and H.264 without using 3rd party tools) "

You just said a mouthful, Nick. I would gladly do without 3D if these things were in place.

Sony software made in Middleton can do many cool things

"It is a hard fact of capitalism that bling sells faster than function.

I can't let that one slide :)

And then along came the Japanese who built basic reliable cars. That's the point from which the world never looked back.

Bob.

..."And then along came the Japanese who built basic reliable cars"...

Very true...but that reliability came at high R&D costs and high manufacturing/materials costs. To compensate, the Japanese auto manufacturers received large subsidies from the Japanese Government. That allowed them to compete with Detroit in spite of their low profit margins. (Not to mention unfair & unequal Import & Tariff practices).

Building reliability in cars is easy...you simply design them using very high "MTBF" materials. The problem comes when you start to look at your materials costs vs "ROI".

Detroit gambled that Americans would settle for a 50,000 mile engine. For a long time we did.

"That allowed them to compete with Detroit in spite of their low profit margins. (Not to mention unfair & unequal Import & Tariff practices)."

Oh come on! I realize we're getting a little off topic here, but this line is just plain silly.

Employees of the American 'big three' along with their unions (as well as upper management) sunk the ship with outrageous wage increases and incredible benefits packages.

Can you believe that these people actually flew in a PRIVATE jet to the US capitol to beg for money in the last 'big three' disaster!?!? They didn't think that was going to hit the newspapers??

The big three all by themselves made it stupidly easy for just about ANY outside competition to come in and sweep up.

Don't blame the Japanese for classic American greed, which BTW reared it's ugly head yet again on Wall Street just a short time ago.

What an interesting discussion this has been. I don't even know why anyone would bother comparing Avid to Vegas. They truly are not comparable products. They are targeted at completely different markets with totally different needs.

Anyone who says Avid is slower to cut in than Vegas doesn't know how to use Avid. After 4 months I was faster on Avid than I had ever been in Vegas. But Avid is not a Swiss Army knife and was never intended to be. Avid MC is a singular part of a chain of products designed to produce movies, news, and other professional media. I have yet to see a professional format that I could not put on the timeline in Avid. Yes, it's implementation of putting consumer based formats on the timeline isn't good. So what. Not something a pro should be doing anyway.

The programs Avid comes bundled with EACH cost more than Vegas. Again, a totally different market.

For those championing how "pro" Vegas is, tell me about:

1. Titling. An absolutely critical piece of doing finished work.

2. EDL. How is Vegas at producing industry standard TEXT FILES that allow hand-off?

3. Collaborative editing. When you've got 3 or more people working on the same show. Something that happens daily in a great many pro environments.

4. Handling of pro level formats like ARRIRAW, HDCAM(SR), AVC-INTRA, DVCProHD, etc. To be fair, they have done a nice job with RED.

5. Compression. The compressors in Vegas are average at best. So people end up using third party tools like Handbrake, x264, etc. Should you need to use freeware to get BETTER quality than your $600 Pro app?

6. Scaling. I got sick to death of having to use Vdub's lanczos rescaler every time I wanted to make a clean DVD from HD material. Again, I just paid $600 for a Pro app. Why I am using freebie tools that give me far superior results? Not to mention the lost time and productivity of having to write lossless AVI files to do the round trip.

8. Effects. What effects do you get with Vegas? And how does that compare to what ships with other pro suites, including Avid? No contest.

9. Sound. Vegas wins.

10. Multi-cam. I understand this has been improved in V10. It was a nightmare in 8 and 9. I gave up on it. Avid invented it, and still does it better than anyone else.

11. Stability. VPro 9 crashed more per week, than Avid MC5 has since I bought it June. Others may have a different experience. Avid does have very strict guidelines for hardware. I followed them and have had zero issues.

12. Speed. Timeline performance, including previews, in Avid is bank vault solid. Even my MB Looks effects and so forth play back in real time with online media. On exactly the same hardware, Vegas struggled mightily to give even 18-20fps playback.

13. Third Party Support. Everyone and their brother supports Avid, FCP, and even Premiere these days. Vegas, not so much. Maybe not a big deal to some, but for others who rely on certain tools, this can be hugely important.

Some people have unfairly gone after Bob, and I think that's a shame. He's an industry pro with a lot of years of experience. And unlike many here, has actually cut on numerous systems. I am sure many here will just think I have sour grapes toward Vegas, but nothing could be further from the truth. I tried to wait it out, but my needs grew beyond the program. Particularly with respect to captioning. V10 has addressed some of this (though not all) but after 7 years of waiting, I had to move to something else.

Vegas is absolutely the right tool for most of the folks I see here. And Avid is definitely the wrong tool. Nothing wrong with that. That's why we have choices.

"The compressors in Vegas are average at best. So people end up using third party tools like Handbrake, x264, etc. Should you need to use freeware to get BETTER quality than your $600 Pro app?"

OUCH! That's gonna leave a mark! <sigh>

"The big three all by themselves made it stupidly easy for just about ANY outside competition to come in and sweep up.

Agreed! (See my above comments about those 50,000 mile engines they made in the 1950's & early 1960's). You are correct.

"Don't blame the Japanese for classic American greed..."

Please don't misunderstand me...I'm not blaming the Japanese Auto makers, IMHO, the blame lies squarely on the American Big Three. The Japanese Auto makers very cleverly took advantage of a situation that was made available for them by the American Big Three.

I believe that the world of international business is a cuthroat environment (example -- Bill Gates). I also believe that those Government subsidies, that Japanese Auto makers received in the 1960's & 1970's, played a key role in their ability establish a foothold in the American market. They had to have a way of remaining financially afloat until the American public accepted their products. (I'm not talking today's market, I'm talking about the early years of their attempts to enter the US market).

The Boeing 707 Commercial Jetliner (the first for America) was developed using US Government subsidies. (The Air Force version was called the KC-135 -- I believe that was in 1954).

PS -- Sorry for being a participant in a "Thread Hijack".

"Avid MC is a singular part of a chain of products designed to produce movies, news, and other professional media. I have yet to see a professional format that I could not put on the timeline in Avid"

Well it USED to be that way. However with the inclusion of avchd/5.1 sound import ability it's clear that Avid is trying to change the way MC is looked at and marketed to. And it has NOT turned out very well either. And PLEASE don't talk about Avid stability. I read the MC forums daily and stability in MC5 is a big disappointment.

I would suggest to you that Avid seems to be a little "lost at sea" with regard to the direction they want to take this whole thing. They know things must change.... they just don't know how.

As for 3rd party plug ins and apps included in the MC bundle.... that all sounds real nice, but;
A) People don't quite understand that the various 3rd party updates are not included in further mc upgrades and have to be done as an ADDITIONAL cost.
B) Throwing in a lot of 3rd party products is a lot easier and cheaper than actually upgrading the MAIN product itself.


". Speed. Timeline performance, including previews, in Avid is bank vault solid. "
Right... so please do me a favor and throw a native avchd file on the MC time line and let me know how your speed is ;)


Don't get me wrong... MC is a great cutter... but it's a lot like FCP in the respect that it's old code, and Apple BTW appears to be about as lost at sea with fcp as does avid. People already sank lots of time and investment into things avid express pro and avid liquid.... only to get dumped on suddenly as Avid pulled the programs and the support. Now it seems Adrenaline is being pulled too. Pinnacle Studio is a total mess and the people there have no idea if it's still living or dead. Now I KNOW that Sony Vegas pro is secure and will be around tomorrow. However, I can't say the same for Avid... or the rather fast dwindling stock of Avid programs that remain on the shelves.

"Now I KNOW that Sony Vegas pro is secure and will be around tomorrow."

I'm very certain that many of us here are waiting to hear HOW you know this. Even the employees of SCS would probably be pleased to know how you obtained such an assurance.

The Vegas / Acid / SF team have already changed hands once. They were saved from the brink of financial collapse by Sony who took on a very significant debt.
Over the 10 years that I and others have been here various features, plans and support for 3rd party products have come and gone. Do I need to list them?
Sony have had at least one venture into the NLE market aside from Vegas, their XPRI system. It's now no more despite it developing reasonable traction at the pointy end of the business.

Bob.

Well I guess Bob...
About the same way you know this:
"The pro end of the marketplace falls over laughing when they see what Vegas cannot do."
;)

I don't think Avid is trying to change the way it's viewed as much as it is trying to find a bridge into a market held by FCS. The student filmmaker, or the low-budget indie producer. Avid has previously been out of reach for those folks, but that is changing. Especially in light of tapeless workflows.

As for stability, I can only speak directly to MY experience. And I am 100% qualified to make the comments I do based on that context.

Third party plugins in Avid, Vegas, or anything else need to be updated at cost. Not sure why this needs to be pointed out.

In terms of speed, I work with pro codecs on my timeline. And with those, I find Avid's speed to be wonderful. If you want to throw highly compressed codecs on your timeline, that's certainly your choice. I prefer not to work that way.

As for Pinnacle and Liquid, I don't know any industry pros who lost money there. That's like saying that Movie Studio didn't cut it for lots of people and they had to move to VPro. Totally separate markets.

As for the "fast dwindling stock" of Avid... well Avid has taken a nice ride up since the release of MC5... and that's in a generally poor economic market. So tell me about the charts for SCS... or FCS? Oh, you can't because they aren't listed. How about Premiere? Can't do that either. Yes, Avid is a small company having to compete against the behemoth money of Apple, Adobe, etc. And somehow, when $100M of movie is on the line, they seem to be the go to system 99.9% of the time.

This bickering is pointless. If Vegas works for you, great. Use it. But why bash another system? It's so 8th grade.