How about other DVD authoring software? Any suggestions? I've rendered some scenes as MPEG2 and would like to check them out on the DVD/TV but I don't have any tool for that right now.

Are you doing this professionally or semi-professionally? Do you need DVD software? Can you afford the upgrade?

Unfortunately, if you bought Vegas 4 last month, you would have qualified for the free upgrade.

If you have Vegas 4, don't have DVD-A and you need DVD software, then the upgrade from Vegas 4 to Vegas5 + DVD is a fantastic deal. If you have a registered copy of Vegas 4, the upgrade price is $249 until May 31st. This is only $50 more than folks who bought DVD-A 1.0. Normally Vegas+DVD is at least $200 more than Vegas anyway, so you can look at it as getting the Vegas 5 upgrade for just $50.

When DVD-A came out, the story was that is wasn't an amazingly full featured editor, but it was stable, made compatible DVDs and came with a free AC-3 encoder. Well all that is still true and now it has a whole lot more features. If you were going to buy another professional DVD software, how much would that cost you?

When you say you don't have a tool, you mean you don't have a burner? Will you be getting one?


Here is the link the Sony preferred pricing for registered users.

Yes.

For the $249 upgrade price, I challenge you to find a better DVD Authoring program than DVD Architect 2. It’s like getting the Vegas 5 upgrade for free. In reality, you are paying $149 for the Vegas 5 upgrade and $100 for DVD Architect 2. Which, as busterkeaton pointed out, is only $50 more than I paid to upgrade and I bought DVD Architect 1. Any way you cut it, you won’t find more value for your money. Go for it!

~jr

I am sure its worth it and will u/grade asap but wonder what features V5 has over V4 for basic editing.

> wonder what features V5 has over V4 for basic editing

It allows you to scrub the timeline now with the mouse just like Premiere. It has better compositing capabilities (i.e., the parent child relationships can be nested 4 deep). It has 3D Track Motion so you can make some pretty impressive introductions with tiles and images, etc. It has Bezier masks, which come in real handy for garbage mattes and other compositing work. It has the latest 2-Pass MPEG2 encoder from Main Concept. That costs $149 standalone from Main Concept. So the upgraded MPEG2 encoder alone is worth the price of the upgrade. It’s got transition envelopes so you have incredible control over transitions. Hey, It’s got ACID Loop support so you can compose music right on the Vegas 5 timeline and laydown a music bed using loops. It really does have a lot of new features. Do you need it? Only you can decide that.

~jr

The Bezier masks feature alone makes the upgrade worth it for me. Since you can combine different video PIPs with arbitrary shapes and feathered edges, it is now possible to create some very nice effects without having to use external programmes to create masks.

The other features, like 3D track motion, are just icing on the cake. Definitely worthwhile.

Richard Hunter

I was using Vegas 4 and upgraded to the Vegas 5 DVDA2 bundle for the special $249 offer. In my opinion, DVDA2 was worth the cost of the upgrade alone. It's a fabulous tool.

It is definitely worth it. I haven't upgraded yet but I will before May 31. With my DVD burner it came with Roxio Media Creator lite and it nags you to upgrade. You end up spending 99 bucks just for that. Instead I can upgrade Vegas to V5 and for about the cost of the Roxio consumer ware I can have a professional DVD authoring program that works with Vegas. It is a no brainer.

By the way I just upgraded to Vegas 4 in Jan this year. DVDA2 is better now so for 100 extra bucks I'll go for it. 249 for something that offers what these two programs do is the best deal around.

Yay Vegas!!!!

Apart from the new features, which are going to (and have already) produce(d) some amazing .veg files from all round the globe, I just loved the fact that that I was in the midddle of an important 30 min project in V4, and I had no qualms at all about opening it in V5 and carrying on from there.

This software is fabulous!

To all those still bemoaning "missing features" - please appreciate that the things added DO really work, and that takes development time.

Funny thing now that people have had a chance to digest the full impact of the Vegas 5 and DVD2 the repsonses to this question have definatley changed from the first day of its release. At that time, seemed liked everybody was scrambling to pooh-pooh V5 (to include the childish whinning over colors/icon shapes). I suspect this was caused by not having a certain feature they wanted. I for one was blown away but all the subtle changes and believe it was/still a wise return on investment....

Yeah, there were a lot of improvements. Sadly, this upgrade didn't address Vegas' serious shortcomings when compared with other sub-$1,000 NLE's in the area of media management.

I used Premiere Pro as my video editor. I use Commotion Pro for paint and rotoscoping. I use After Effects for compositing and non-paint and roto effects. I use Vegas 4 as a DAW, light compositor and finishing tool.

Had the Vegas team addressed media management, I would have been glad to upgrade AND sell my Premiere license. As is it now, I can't.

While I do plan a software upgrade this year, it will be to Premiere Pro 1.5, not Vegas 5. Yes, I resent paying $99 to Adobe for a lot of bug fixes and features that really should have been in 1.0, but I do want some of the new features they added that make working with After Effects a breeze.

So, my answer is no. The Vegas 5 upgrade is not worth it to me.

I've thought much about this and decided to buy the upgrade mainly for the subclips and the fact that I have already coverted a project into version 5 and don't want to redo it. I like the masking features as well and I'm sure the 3D motion is pretty amazing once you learn it. I'm not an effects heavy editor though but I'm sure I'l find some use for it. I was actually hoping for 3D motion in the event/Pan tool for still work as I find it easier to work on an event level for stuff like that.

I am also looking at other programs like Premiere and Avid for media managment reasons, better titlers, additional color correction tools, additional trim capabilities and hardware support. I was hoping this update would take care of some of these things but oh well I guess you can't have it all in one NLE. It is amazing how stable Vegas 5 is for a new release which is more than you can say for many other programs. I still find much of the Vegas workflow a joy to edit with save some of the features I'd still like to see.

Marc

Do you mean Encore 1.5? I was not aware that PPro was 1.5? From what I have read Encore 1.5 in real terms is the first release, a friend of mine uses it and waits with bated breath each and every time he builds a project.

Cheers
-coffeebean

>>>I was not aware that PPro was 1.5?<<<
Yes, it was announced just prior to NAB. It really is adding some bug fixes and re-adding some fatures that were left out of PPro 1.0...and it does cost $99 if you already have version 1.0. Kind of sad in a way and I can agree with those who feel, rightfully so, they should not have to pay for things that are being called "new" when in reality they are features that, in some cases, were in Premiere 3 and 4.