Two years later still disappointed with Vegas Pro

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/11/2014, 11:06 AM

Here's my rant for what it's worth.

First off - after trying to get timely responses to various questions here on the forums, I'm resigned to sticking with Adobe's CS6 apps for my post work.

Timeline performance is lackluster, Vegas Pro 13 is now locking up randomly for no apparent reason even though nothing has changed, etc and has basically forced my decision to stick with Adobe as much as I don't like it. I can't play back QT animation files without it bringing Vegas (v428) to an absolute crawl - yet those kinds of files/codecs are used all the time in post work. I get RT playback with my measly GTX-550ti in Ppro CS6 at full resolution with multiple streams of 1080P footage, QT animation files, graphics and transitions. I've had to resort to preview 1/2 resolution to get near the same thing in Vegas Pro. My footage is running off of a Raid0 so I know it's not a data throughput bottle neck. I can't render a simple cineform AVI because somehow Vegas can't work with it correctly - getting "license is expired" - and I'm using the GoPro Studio version, yet with PPro - no issues whatsoever.

Regarding actual hardware - Visit Premiere Pro Benchmarking (PPBM7 - http://ppbm7.com/) and you discover a wealth of information that goes IN DEPTH into the discussion of hardware specifically for video editing and creating balanced editing based systems and the hardware for Premiere Pro. It furthermore goes into fine tuning those configurations based on solid configurations for various levels of editing machines. I'm left wanting here on the Vegas Forums. The search feature is laborious and time consuming. PPBM is rock solid with benchmarking results, recommendations, etc all broken down and easily laid out.

The shift of hardcore users like @JohnnyRoy moving to the MAC platform, Douglas Spotted Eagle has disappeared completely from the forums from what I can tell, in addition to the lack of innovation on things like industry standard Bins, integrated media encoding that can be done outside of Vegas Pro like Adobe Media Encoder - the lack of these kinds of time saving tools have also added to the decision. A lack on SCS's part in not creating a standardized graphics card list APPROVED and KNOWN to work out of the box has also played a role (Adobe has had a list since CS5 - even though the VP forums thread on the best graphics cards for Vegas Pro was helpful), Radeon cards appear to lack industry support throughout numerous apps from what I can tell - but I could be wrong. I will concede the newer versions of Premiere Pro support OpenCL, but then again, one is locked to ransomware since Adobe will not release an update for us CS6 users to utilize Radeon OpenCL for Windows based cards so we're stuck with using nVidia CUDA based cards only. And there are those who prefer to not have to pay a monthly fee to get their work done and honestly, I don't' trust Adobe to NOT raise their pricing scheme in the future.

The collaboration support within the post production field for Premiere Pro in addition has grown to such a level now I would be remiss in deviating from Premier Pro as I'm now beginning to collaborate with others and they have standardized on Ppro.

I'll still lurk occasionally hoping one day that SCS will create a revised interface and GPU codebase for future versions of Vegas Pro that will work more tightly with other apps and have full support of third party industry standard plugins.

I'll revisit when SCS announces Vegas Pro 14 and see if anything has changed for the better.

Until that time - cheers

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Comments

videoITguy wrote on 12/15/2014, 1:52 PM

As I said not only is the book good and it serves a real purpose because I use it as a textbook in a college level film-making class for budding film makers. What better legacy to Spot? even IF he himself was self-critical of his efforts to get published. I recall Joe Ozer had the same problem many years before. Do you all recall?

VideoFreq wrote on 12/16/2014, 12:04 PM

Without the issues in Vegas Pro, my life would be perfect so I welcome them for amusement. This is one of the best posts I have read in a while, regarding the issues. So, to stay on subject, here are a few of my issues with SVP (in addition to those posted): It's titled, "How to REALLY make SVP better."

1. Have a Slide Bar on both sides of the timeline or incorporate thumb-wheeling so that you can scroll the timeline up and down easier.
2. Make a way to save often used video & audio FX using a keyboard command.
3. Have video clips show a different colored bar on the top or bottom to indicate which special effect has been used on it. The green bowtie is not adequate for say, a media FX effect like Stabilization or to distinguish between color correction and others.
4. Have a two-monitor workflow set-up as follows. All tracks on left screen, all else to the right. Or even vice versa and have the "Min/Max Restore Close" button at the top right. I do this now but everything on the right screen is floating.
5. Ability to copy & past individual FX. If one has stabilized a bunch of clips and now you want to copy a color effect to them all, you have to re-stabilize, etc. all the clips if you apply "Past Event Attribute" on them. This wipes out any other effect on that clip. Other editors let you copy and paste ONLY the effect that you copied by selection.
6. More SVP "look" color options other than white and light gray. See Camtasia 8 for inspiration on deep grey.
7. Show a "Clips Used" check or bar or color so I know what clips I have used in a project. A wedding event is 6 hours long with thousands of clips. I don't edit 1/2 hour TV shows with limited, two-cam takes. I have five cameras going all the time.
8. Allow a "marked start" so that you can start, view and re-start at the same place every time within a sequence as you build it. The blue loop is inadequate and causes issues.
9. When in a "dual screen" mode, when rendering or stabilizing, the render splash screen is centered in an awkward place between the two monitors and can't be moved.
10. When opening up an existing project under File/Open, the window goes to the last file structure you imported from which could be anything other than where Vegas looks for veg files. Have it stick with and go only to project veg file folder.
11. Have SCS specify a specific video card used for Vegas Pro that is not only benchmarked but endorsed by a card manufacturer. You can look at nVidia's site and see what video card other NLE's and Architectural programs recommend for the programs to run smoothly.
12. Dual SLI rendering and support for three screens
13. 10 bit color space support and rendering.
14. More 4K rendering choices including 60p. My Galaxy S5 has a higher bit rate than my Canons or Sony EX3 and shoots 59.97p.
15. Drop CUDA - Even your people say turn it off.
16. Improve de-interlace engine for our older cameras.
17. True 1080-60p support without gimmicks.

As most of us already know, all NLE's have issues. A powerful machine with the correct hardware solves most of them. If SVP would incorporate some of the above, my life would be near perfect.

salsamac wrote on 12/16/2014, 10:06 PM

astar said: * I discovered the USB3 chip on my motherboard was stealing lanes from the GPU. Once corrected, *

How did you discover that and what did you do to rectify it?
Thanks
salsa

NickHope wrote on 12/16/2014, 11:19 PM

5. Ability to copy & past individual FX. If one has stabilized a bunch of clips and now you want to copy a color effect to them all, you have to re-stabilize, etc. all the clips if you apply "Past Event Attribute" on them. This wipes out any other effect on that clip. Other editors let you copy and paste ONLY the effect that you copied by selection.

I know others like it, but for me it's a step backwards that "paste event attributes" overwrites all the FX on the target event. I now find myself having to create temporary presets called "zzzz" or whatever, just so I can get an FX copied onto another event without losing it's existing FX.

jwcarney wrote on 12/19/2014, 9:29 AM

Someone mentioned a high powerful desktop. I have a Dell M4800 laptop with fast quad core i7 , 32gig ram and Nividia Quadro K2100M with 2 gigs. Is that not powerful enough to run Vegas?

OldSmoke wrote on 12/19/2014, 9:51 AM

@jwcarney

It depends on what your typical project is but for me, no it isn't. Mobile i7 processors are running at lower clock speeds and the K2100M doesn't really help much either because it is a Keppler architecture and not Fermi and the GPU on it isn't very powerful either.

ddm wrote on 12/19/2014, 1:25 PM

>>>>Is that not powerful enough to run Vegas?

Of course it's "powerful enough", Vegas will run fine on it, it will just run better on a more powerful desktop.