Vegas 14 or Bust?

Trenidor wrote on 2/5/2016, 10:28 PM

So...

I'm not prepared to read all 100 posts and topics on the subject, but I think I get the basics:

1. Sony skipped announcing a vegas pro 14 back in 2015.
2. Some speculate that they are discontinuing 14 and replacing it with another sony product (Catalyst--which is still an infant in the world of Video editing)
3. Others believe Sony is holding out until more user data.

I'm about to get my tax refund and realized that I'm still using Vegas pro 11 for my video editing business and it's probably time to upgrade. I skipped 12 because of win10 fears causing me to think that I'd be no better off with 12 than 11, apparently 13 has 'resolved' this, but I'm skeptical and I'm also reading up on still GPU issues that are so frustratingly annoying (I have a 6 core 3.5Ghz CPU and rendering a 3min HD video locks up the whole CPU on win10, if I even try to switch to a web browser my computer blackouts from overheating Not to mention that it takes almost 10 min to render that).

So here's some input from a loyal customer as of vegas pro 8 (ya, I remember when the screen was white not dark) in the form of a question:

How can I maximize my investment at this point? --The good old fashioned business question...

On one hand, I could branch into Catalyst now and then pay to update at a later date when it becomes substantial.--It's not like I do much more than: color correct, edit on up to 6 video layers and 5 audio layers, and then title anyway--nothing fancy, right?

On the other hand, if Vegas Pro will eventually come out with another version in less than 6 months then I would definitely hold out for it.

And as a 3rd option, I could get a full year of Adobe Premier Pro for $50 less than the price of an upgrade, but I would abandon my favorite NLE...

Any suggestions?

---
What I look for in an NLE: 1. Speed. 2. Simplicity. 3. Codecs available/cross platform capabilities.

From my experience, SVP has been the fastest thing on the market as far as preview rendering. It's also one of the simplest: Instead of a razor blade cutter tool that makes you worry you're going to start slitting your wrists in frustration, you can hit "s" for split at cursor, or expand and contract clips--something that even big name NLEs have trouble with. Unfortunately, the Codec department is controlled by the big OS brands and not the video editors. Particularly a certain fruit OS tends to screw with people by telling them they have to pay good money for a simple way to view, edit and render videos that can be played on their OS. Not to mention that windows' codec packs suck and churn out insanely lossy video quality and any open source codecs are a joke. But, alas, the promise of cross-platform capabilities arrived for SVP in version 13.

Comments

PeterDuke wrote on 2/6/2016, 12:49 AM

The answer should be: DON"T UPGRADE UNLESS YOU CAN SEE AN IMMEDIATE OR GUARANTEED FUTURE BENEFIT.

I don't follow that advice since I am an upgrade junkie. I like to take advantage of any discount. I have Vegas 7 to 13 but am still using 9c for most of my work because it smart (sort of) renders AVCHD.

astar wrote on 2/6/2016, 4:13 AM

What are the actual specs on your computer, including RAM specs, and GPU?

You say you machine overheats during renders. This is bad, and you need to solve hardware issues before complaining about the stability of Vegas.

Vegas 13 B453 has been one of the most stable Vegas builds I have used, and I have GPU enabled.

ushere wrote on 2/6/2016, 5:19 AM

1. Speed. 2. Simplicity. 3. Codecs available/cross platform capabilities.

1 depends a lot on your hardware.

2 depends on what you're doing. cut to cut is pretty much the same on all nle's, it's once you start going beyond cross dissolves and the like that things might get complicated - then again, life only gets as complicated as you make it ;-)

3 transcoding can take care of ANY codec problems, and what do you need cross platform capabilities for? file shifting, project shifting, etc.?

quite frankly there's a lot of talk on every forum i visit about the 'problems' people experience with their nle's, but few seem to realize that what they really want is always going to be one step ahead of the technology they have at present.

btw - i think you have some pretty serious problems with your pc ;-(

jwcarney wrote on 2/6/2016, 6:59 AM

I have 13 and it's stable. The Adobe Cloud subscription is probably the best deal going for what you get. They offer lots of tools in addition to Premier that you can use right along side Vegas. Win win in my humble opinion. If that's too rich for you, then the free versions of Da Vinci Resolve and Fusion are good choices as well. Doesn't hurt to expand your skills no matter what you choose.
I agree with the others, get some stable hardware first.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/6/2016, 9:53 AM

> "On one hand, I could branch into Catalyst now and then pay to update at a later date when it becomes substantial.--It's not like I do much more than: color correct, edit on up to 6 video layers and 5 audio layers, and then title anyway--nothing fancy, right?"

If Catalyst Edit meets your needs, that is definitely a product that Sony is betting on for the future. It will support the latest formats and take advantage of the latest graphics cards. It is all new from the ground up so it is built for GPU acceleration instead of having it be an "add-on" that may or may not architecturally fit, and it runs on PC and Mac so you have an option of platforms to choose from going forward.

> "On the other hand, if Vegas Pro will eventually come out with another version in less than 6 months then I would definitely hold out for it."

Well... NAB is just around the corner (April) which is less than 6 months and traditionally Sony has announced new versions around major industry shows. You might want to wait a bit and see what happens. This option has the advantage that you don't have to learn anything new or buy any new plug-ins.

Even if they don't come out with a new version, you've been using Vegas Pro 11 for 5 years now so upgrading to Vegas Pro 13 should last you another 5 years. So you could always just upgrade to Vegas Pro 13 if a new version don't come out.

> "And as a 3rd option, I could get a full year of Adobe Premier Pro for $50 less than the price of an upgrade, but I would abandon my favorite NLE..."

This is a horrible option for someone like you who is still using Vegas Pro 11 (released in 2011) in 2016!

While Adobe CC might look like it's $50 cheaper today, the operative word in your sentence was "get a full year" because that means you will pay for it each and every year after that which for the past 5 years since you bought Vegas Pro 11 would be $3,000 MORE!!! (not $50 less) Adobe CC is $600/yr and you don't get to decide when to upgrade... you have to upgrade every year whether there are features you need or not. It's not your choice to make. I can't see how you feel that's a good deal when you didn't upgrade Vegas Pro for the past 5 years.

~jr

royfphoto wrote on 2/6/2016, 10:38 AM

I have taken the money I usually spend on software and put it into hardware. I am slowly transitioning everything to DaVinci Resolve which has considerable hardware demands and a steep learning curve, as I believe that future development of Vegas has been abandoned. My experience with Catalyst has been terrible.

Byron K wrote on 2/6/2016, 12:15 PM

Trenidor, like Astar said, your overheating issue may be a hardware issue. Check your CPU cooler if it's very hot when fully loaded down. I mention this because I get overheating issues when the weather is hot i.e. in the 90s.

My single fan water cooler gets very warm and my next upgrade will be to swap it out w/ a dual water cooler radiator.

Also to further isolate if it is the cooler, run a CPU bench test like CPU-Z or Prime95.

A good real-world test for video encoding is Handbrake and this can also be used to test raw CPU performance.

Make sure logging is enabled before you begin the test (in the settings menu), load up a video of your choice, select a preset and let it go. If you’re using a hard disk rather than an SSD to both read and write the file, its performance may bottleneck. In this test, expect a linear improvement in encoding times with additional cores: that is, a quad-core chip will perform twice as fast as a dual-core processor, while an eight-core chip generally performs twice as fast.

I'm still on 12 but many forum members here say that 13 is stable for them.

To be honest Vegas 12 has all the features I need to do my video edits.

I'm probably the only one here who don't care if Sony doesn't update w/ future version just update with bug fixes and maybe better incorporate Nvidea GPU acceleration.

My next upgrade aside from the cooler may be an ATI R9 390 video card.

Trenidor wrote on 2/6/2016, 12:39 PM

Downloaded the Catalyst Trial. Booted up. First thing that comes on the screen:

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/eiWLtpDDMUkIEvYSuhNnw6WgNLkVHEKvUZs2SsobY2m?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

I have an AMD Radeon 6800 with 1024 mb onboard
16 GB of RAM
Plenty of HDD and a small (64GB) SSD
My CPU is an AMD 6300 6 core 3.5 Ghz
I have a 600 watt Corsair Power supply.
it has win 10.

I built this PC myself and still have room to upgrade to 64 GB of ram (the 16 gb was a carry over from my last PC). If anything is wrong with it my suspicion is the power supply needs to be upgraded, but the fact remains that my GPU should be sufficient to use GPU acceleration.

JJKizak wrote on 2/6/2016, 3:08 PM

OK, what is Davinci Resolve?
JJK

set wrote on 2/6/2016, 11:26 PM

JJKizak,

DaVinci Resolve, now owned by BlackMagic Design (BMD), is a color correction application which has evolve now as another NLE (Non Linear Editor). Available on two versions, one is free (DaVinci Resolve 12), and paid one (Resolve 12 Studio).

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

If you are purchasing BMD URSA Mini camcorder, you will also receive the studio version which you can use to process the RAW DNG files coming from URSA Mini camcorder.

You can adjust correction on selected area of your clip here and track the movement of it. Very nice application if your highest concern on production is color grading.

But for quick editing, audio, I felt Sony Vegas is still a winner. So, depends on what you are looking for.

deusx wrote on 2/7/2016, 5:02 AM

>>>free versions of Da Vinci Resolve and Fusion are good choices as well. <<<<

Those two are far, far, far better than any adobe suite. Unless you need Flash, Photoshop and other stuff Adobe suite is not needed. It's worthless.

ForumAdmin wrote on 2/8/2016, 9:37 AM

@Trenidor Please try a reinstall of your display driver for your GPU: http://support.amd.com/en-us

If you did an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 from a previous version of the OS, then it may have uninstalled your OpenCL.dll driver.

Laurence wrote on 2/8/2016, 11:36 PM

I was just playing with both the free version of Resolve and the trial version of Catalyst Prepare and Edit today.

Catalyst looks like it might mature into something quite nice. I like the concept behind it very much. I can't use it right now though. In addition to missing VST audio support, it immediately slows to a crawl and locks up as soon as I try to put either a PNG or JPG still on the timeline. In both my documentary and ad work I use stills all the time. I also use VSTs constantly. In particular I use the simple Waves one fader noise reduction and brick wall limiters constantly. I would rate the two Catalyst programs as quite promising betas, nowhere near ready for actual work.

Davinci Resolve kind of blows me away. In spite of it's complexity, it is pretty intuitive. Everything is where you would expect it to be and all my VST audio New Blue FX plugins are in place. Missing are my highly valued Boris BCC9 plugins. My only real complaint with Resolve is that I have to use proxies to get smooth playback through transitions. It is the one area where Catalyst is better: I can use Catalyst without proxies. I am also not really sure of how will Resolve be in keeping track of long form documentary projects.

I also tried Cyberlink PowerDirector today. I couldn't make heads or tails of the interface. They have a pretty steep discount right now which will expire tomorrow. Some very nice features in it, but boy is it confusing compared to Vegas, Catalyst or Resolve.

I am pretty tempted to switch over from Vegas to Resolve right now. The fact that they have this good a solution for free is pretty amazing. If I was any other NLE maker, I would be pretty worried.

Arthur.S wrote on 2/9/2016, 12:06 PM

Didn't realise resolve had got to the level it has. Looks like a winner (as they all do at first ;-) )
With the (apparent) future demise of Vegas, I'll be taking a long look at Resolve as soon as I've got some 'play' time.

NickHope wrote on 2/9/2016, 10:26 PM

"My only real complaint with Resolve is that I have to use proxies to get smooth playback through transitions."

Laurence, were you using the latest version 12.3, released last week?

One of the main improvements in that point release: "This software update improves the performance of H.264, OpenEXR, Varicam, MPEG4 and AVC on both Mac and Windows."

Radio Guy wrote on 2/10/2016, 7:02 AM

I've been looking for alternatives since upgrading to Windows 10 and Sony Vegas Pro12 hangs on the create file i/o surrogate. Yes I've looked at all the recommended fixes and nothing works and SVP 12 is dead in the water. I tried the Movie Studio and the same result.

Like you I looked into Davinci Resolve but it does not handle avi files. That's a must for me and quite surprised it doesn't handle the format. The only one that works for an alternative now is powerdirector 14.

vtxrocketeer wrote on 2/10/2016, 11:01 AM

Like you I looked into Davinci Resolve but it does not handle avi files.

No, it most certainly does. In fact, the use of Cineform avi's as DI's constitutes one solid basis for round-tripping between Resolve and Vegas. Exactly what avi does not work on your end?

Laurence wrote on 2/10/2016, 5:00 PM

>

12.3 is the first version I tried. I suppose native format support was worse before this. What I find is that a timeline with just cuts and no effects plays back just fine with the native files. You can tell it's struggling a little (at least on my laptop) because when you move the curser on the timeline it takes a while for the image to catch up. Add a transition like a simple crossfade, and when it gets to that point, the crossfade happens very slowly. Meanwhile, the timeline is progressing and anything that is happening as this transition gets stretched is obscured.

The simple way around this is to just generate low res proxies, and when I do that, playback is flawless even through transitions and effects.

There are two features I would very much like from the full studio version. One is the noise reduction. The other is the motion blur. I want the noise reduction because often footage from my GH4 needs it. I want the motion blur because, like many mirrorless and DSLR shooters, often I end up using way too short a shutter speed. The other features from the studio version are really cool, but I really wouldn't use them.

Another thing about the studio version is that it works if you have a dongle. It doesn't matter if it is a Mac or PC dongle, or even which revision of Resolve was out when you bought the dongle. If you have that dongle, you can use the latest version of Resolve Studio.

These dongles come free with the higher end Black Magic cameras (just not the pocket camera). With that in mind, I started thinking about dongles. It occurred to me that maybe some buyers of these cameras wouldn't need the dongles and might be selling them at a good price on eBay. I looked and found a version 12 (not that it matters) dongle for a buy-it-now price of $399 plus shipping. I snagged it, so sometime soon I should be a Resolve 12 Studio user. Again, all I'm looking for is the NR and motion blur effects. I'll use them all the time though, and so I thought that this was worth doing.

Anyway, I'm officially "transitioning" into being a Davinci Resolve user. I'll still be using Vegas as I switch over, especially for my template work, but going forward, this will be my NLE.

I have been using Vegas and frequenting this board since Sonic Foundry Version 2, and have grown very fond of everyone here. I imagine I will still be back occasionally, but right now I am submerged in Resolve tutorials and newbie questions on their forum. Best of luck to everyone here.

vtxrocketeer wrote on 2/10/2016, 5:09 PM

Laurence, I finally stepped off the curb and am learning Resolve, too. In my case, I upgraded my workflow to shoot full 4k raw on my Shogun, which is scheduled to soon record native cDNG files in glorious 12 bits. I looked to Resolve for ingest, and then discovered wonderful color correction and grading power, in addition to round-tripping options between Resolve and Vegas. Bumbling around on my own, I exported a Vegas timeline as an XML to Resolve, graded, then bounced back to Vegas. Cool!

Nice idea about the dongle purchase. In addition to no NR and motion blur, the free version doesn't export full 4k, only UHD, which for some, like me, might become an issue.

Laurence wrote on 2/11/2016, 1:28 AM

The one area where Resolve 12 really feels like a backwards step is audio. I don't see any elastic audio for instance. I don't see any way to send the audio from a video clip out to Sound forge or izotope RX and bring it back as a linked take. I only see linear audio crossfades.

NickHope wrote on 2/11/2016, 5:12 AM

How are you monitoring video in Resolve Laurence? Just within the GUI on your laptop?

Laurence wrote on 2/11/2016, 3:24 PM

>How are monitoring video in Resolve Laurence? Just within the GUI on your laptop?

Yes, just like I was in Vegas.