Why would you even think that Magix would remove the script functionality from Vegas? It is one of Vegas' most powerful and unique features.

I'm sure that V14 continue to support scripts, but MAGIX can change scripting requirements (different paths, namespaces, names of assemblies etc.) - this will require some changes in all existing scripting extensions.

MAGIX is not gonna change no scripting requirements what so ever.
It continues to surprise me at some of the oddest and irrelevant conversations
that are constantly posted here!

Thanks for the assurance.

btw "the oddest and irrelevant conversations"
My company relies on Vegas scripts and I am not going assume anything...this question/discussion is very important and certainly not irrelevant at my studio.

Yes, best to be certain when major change is about.

"certain"... ROTFLOL

Sorry, Steve, I didn't quite get that?

G

Hi Everyone,

Altarvic says, "I'm sure that V14 continue to support scripts, but MAGIX can change scripting requirements (different paths, namespaces, names of assemblies etc.) - this will require some changes in all existing scripting extensions."

This is exactly true. Unfortunately, legal considerations will force us to change the namespace and thus all existing scripts will need to be modified in order to work inside VEGAS Pro 14. It will be a minor, but critical change. We're still working out the details, but once we have them, we will tell you exactly what you'll need to change in your scripts.

Thanks Gary..
to those that think all will be a seamless blue skys red roses too, business as usual, and us little people ask dumb questions....well, not "irrelevant"....you see what is involved here.

Edward Troxel, a giant amongst scriptwriters and author of the magnificent Excalibur, has written the following on his jetdv forum (in reply to a general question from me about his brilliant forum viz a viz the takeover):-

I have found out that existing scripts will need to be changed to properly work in Magix. I cannot say if I will be able to do this before Vegas Pro 14 is released or after at this time.

A nuisance for all of us and I only hope they find a way of transferring our existing plug ins and scripts without our having to reload them, or worse, pay for them again! Even worse, some are quite old and the authors may not still be active!!

Richard

Yes Richard I agree. Just for starters, how about the Vegas2Handbrake script? Marco, are you about? And also for me WAAGs Open Still in Graphic editor! We've just got it sorted out.

G

The answer from the SCS/Magix development team is really more disturbing than I think we imagined what would happen to this transistion.

Essentially it makes Vegas14 a single exception to all previous versions. That alone is a deal breaker to those of us who are maintaining a shop with running concurrent multiple versions!

There is another ramification that the OP probably did not understand but lurks around just the same.

It is possible that changing the script code calls to underlying support code from the OS can kill the nature of older written scripts. This DID happen with the development teams' first release of VegasPro13 which was proven to have been changed in this way. Fortunately enough of us lobbied SCS to have them pull back the update change and continue compatibility across most recent VegasPro versions.

Now under Magix - these type of code error creations is likely to be more prevalent and no fallback would be contemplated.

Another potential (likely) victim would be Timeline Tools written by Gary James. To insure compatibility with later versions, he used Vegas 8 as a reference assembly in his code. The problem seems not so much with many of the simple scripts written in javascript or C#, but the many script extensions (dll's) that many of us routinely use such as Rosebud's "Show Event Length". My real fear is the loss of the Debugmode Frameserver since it has been abandoned by its author. Frameserver is an essential component of the Vegas-to-Handbrake script and also for many (some) of us who routinely use filters inside of Avisynth and Virtualdub. Although, I intend to upgrade to V14, my suspicion is that I'll be using V13 for quite awhile into the future.

wwaag

Wayne, yes.

Gary please take note.

Graham

Not so fast. Everyone needs to read this thread from the Vegas Scripting forum. It looks like, for legal reasons, V14 will be changed to use a new Scripting Namespace; in technical terms that means all previous Vegas scripts and Extensions will become broken.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?messageid=948102

Hats off to all the Vegas scripts writers! You have saved the day many times by building scripts on request, and having effective tools available.

So is this were we are at?
1. Script writers will eventually be able to update their scripts for v14
2. Older irreplaceable scripts will not work in v14

This is diminishing the enthusiasm that I had.

At this point I'll probably just buy one copy of v14, and not the planed three copies for the edit suites.

We're talking about "Sony.Vegas" in scripts, right? I can see that it might be a problem for MAGIX to distribute the standard set of Vegas scripts with that remaining, but surely it shouldn't be a problem for Vegas to read "Sony.Vegas" in user-created scripts and redirect/rewrite it on the fly to "Magix.Vegas" or whatever?

Failing that, with regard to all our .js and .cs scripts, couldn't MAGIX (or anyone) supply some sort of batch converter to make the necessary small changes? Or maybe someone could create some sort of shell that scripts run within that converts the namespace.

If V14 can't frameserve, and projects aren't backwards-compatible to V12/V13, I doubt I would buy it as I'd be trapped into creating enormous intermediates. But the Frameserver code is open source and can be found here. It's crying out for someone who knows what they're doing to fix the couple of glitches it has with V13 and then take it forward. Better still, MAGIX build frameserving into Vegas.

As for Gilles' (Rosebud's) extensions, I dare say we could beg/bribe him to make the small changes and recompile for V14. For me, the one biggie there is Show Event Length, and it's high time that functionality was built into Vegas.

Nick, I agree. Yesterday I thought about some of these solutions, and now you. What I'm concerned about is that that hasn't been tabled here by the MadisonMagix team - yet.

We are in their hands.

Graham

Scripts in notepad are one thing, but the more powerful feature of the same is from independently made compiled .dll files that go with the script operatives - that is quite a more difficult bridge to cross.

As for Gilles' (Rosebud's) extensions, I dare say we could beg/bribe him to make the small changes and recompile for V14.

Even better would be for him to make the original source code available for all of his extensions. In that way, changes could be more easily made now and in the future without having to go back to the original author each time.

To me, this really points to the need for a common repository of Vegas scripts. At present, they are really spread out with no means of easily searching and accessing one that meets an individuals need. Just an idea.

wwaag

> "...or worse, pay for them again!

Well... maybe not pay full price again but are you saying that you wouldn't be willing to pay something to get the updated version that works with Vegas Pro 14?

Consider this scenario:
You created 32 videos of various interviews for a customer over the past 5 years. They call you up one day and tell you that they just got a new company logo and they're sending you the PNG file of the logo and they'd like you to go back replace the company logo on all of the lower thirds every place that it appears in all 32 videos and please render them back out and package them the same way you originally did. Oh... and they want you to do that all for FREE!

What would you say to that customer? (...oh sure I'll spend couple of weeks working for free, my kids don't need to eat that bad?)

Because that's what MAGIX just did to script developers who are try and make a living selling scripts!

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect script developers be compensated for all the work that this change will cause. VASST has 32 script products that will need to be updated, re-compiled, re-tested, re-signed, re-packaged (oh, and still work with older versions of Vegas Pro!). Thats not a trivial amount of work. And if the change goes deeper into changing OFX plug-in ids which have sonycreativesoftware in the name, the change will be MASSIVE for us!

We (VASST) have updated our installers every year to be compatible with the next version of Vegas Pro for free. I don't mind doing that for our customers (although that too is a fair amount of work). I don't believe we can absorb this amount of change for free. I'm not making any "official" announcement here but this is a LOT of work that we will need to seriously consider.

~jr

John Rofrano
VASST Software
www.vasstsoftware.com

I am sure that there are a number of Vegas users who would expect a 'free' updated script. I, for one, find your explanation both extremely fair and expected. The time savings alone for all of the scripts we use are invaluable.

Bob