"No significant boost in render speed..."

Actually, as my own recent tests confirmed, Vegas 7 renders at twice the speed of Vegas 5. That's more than significant.

And how about vegas 6 to vegas 7?

(assuming I am not doing HD)

is the performance that much better?
and the snapping?

Thanks
allen

download the demo and see for yourself,, you only know if it is worth it,,
For me the new snapping feature is very very nice , never even knew i wanted it,
unlike some others ,on standard dv i dont see much if any render difference on my machine.

Does you still teach that NATO defends us from the Soviet bloc because it's cheaper not to upgrade your textbooks? Do you teach COBOL programming because it's cheaper than buying courseware for a contemporary programming language? To put it bluntly - you owe it to your students to use a current product.

For private use, people can run whatever version that suits them, but your "school" is in a position of having a level of PUBLIC TRUST. Your students are counting (and paying!) on you to do what is in their best interests -- mainly give them relevant training on current technology that will help them get a job. You VIOLATE this trust if you are not turning out graduates that can assimalate into the business world. Ancient software on a resume does very little to improve their job prospects.

You are shortchanging your students. As a network engineering student I travel right past TWO local universities who don't have SSL VPN gear to get to the college that has the training/tools I need to make my living.

I am sure some of your prospective students see this same thing with your offerings. You just don't realize it because they likely go elsewhere (probably internet). Even though you are teaching "simple stuff" I'll bet a number of your students are well beyond what you are teaching. I knew more about my school's LAN than most of the instuctors.

To give you a specific instance why you need to get current:
DSE's book: Vegas 6 Editing workshop, pg 311, has a specific citation about "Growth curves for Vegas 4 Users." This is in the behaviour of track motion and pan/crop tools. You also need to develop HD course content ASAP. It's here, you aren't.

Despite the strident tone--I don't intend to flame you here- but rather advocate for your students.

I've been to some schools that taught on obselete equipment and as soon as I gained enough knowledge (usually from the internet) to realize they were taking advantage of my ignorance, I got the hell out of there. I was sure to mention to my fellow students to avoid those places where the training was deficit.

I hope you take this to your board.

Well, I don't work in HD and I'm not planning on it any time soon.

All the things I mentioned in this thread are great workflow improvements for SD work as well, particularly if you're doing long-form documentary work.

I'm much more efficient with V7, just because I can find things quickly, move things around more easily, and avoid all those slivers, gaps, "accidental" ripple edits, unsynched audio and unrecoverable trimmed VEGGIE files that used to have me pounding my head on my desk with frustration when I was using earlier versions.

Other folks may pooh-pooh all these "minor improvements," but I'm glad Sony has focused on improving the basic editor workflow. I think, with V7, Vegas has finally matured as a VIDEO editor and not just an unusually versatile multi-track audio editor. I've stuck with Vegas through V4 through V7 precisely because I've seen constant improvement in the little things that add up to a much quicker and more pleasant editing experience. Although there are still some things I want (like a storyboard and an "open in still image editor" function), I think V7 is the only version of Vegas I can say has no glaring weaknesses or omissions when compared with its competition.

P.S. Ya want titles? Do 'em in Photoshop or After Effects and move them around with Pan/Crop in Vegas. Every title editor in every NLE I've seen has always been a kludge, and none work or look better than PS or AE. I don't know for sure, but I'll bet you anything you like that no-one in Hollywood uses an NLE built-in titler.