Regarding people who haven't gotten an email or pop-up about this offer: If you already have Vegas Pro 15, don't expect to get an email with this offer.  The email -- in its essence -- is an offer to upgrade to version 15, which you already have.

(I am surprised, though, that I haven't seen any other mention of 16's planned release -- on Magix's FaceBook page, or even here in the forum news -- since the cat is out of the bag at this point.  But we are still nearly 2 months out from the expected release -- there is plenty of time to go.)

--- if you have a need for the second VP15 then its a compelling offer.

Did any of you that have VP15 now actually receive this offer?

Not via Email. If I start VP14, there is a popup window that makes this offer. But I use VP15 mostly so would not even know about it if I had to depend upon an email notification.

“I always wonder”. Well, no harm in wondering what or where I may have seen the HDR. I can put your obvious curiosity to rest and assure you that it wasn’t weak youtube videos etc.

When reading statements like yours I do wonder if you only see the world through your own subjectivity, or have you considered the possibility that others may have contrary views to you, and the way you see things.

I personally dont like hdr, but thats just me.

HDR will be the future, regardless what you or I think. And it is no subjectivity at all, simply because people who see the extended dynamic range (instead of being limited to 6 stops only), who see the extended Gamut and the more appropriate gamma curves may not know that technical background: but they will realize that the picture has become more natural and more similar to the perceptions of the human eyes. This makes significant more difference then jumps from HD to UHD, and if you have not seen that by now really nobody will be able to explain that to you. You have to see that.

There are always people who fall in fear of change, and start to blame other guys like you do here. There will be a lot of people who have no experience by now with HDR. No experience with shooting and Grading that footage. But it is simply good if Vegas goes that way, to be ready for the future. And that we will not have to use Resolve or Edius to grade our HDR footage instead of using Vegas

Beside that it is the free decision of everybody to apply such technologies or not. So do not panic, you will still be able to edit your SDR footage.

Not only that, but because of HDR's implementation, the color tools are likely also going to be upgraded (because they currently are not capable of HDR), and that will help those non-HDR folks out there as well. Nothing bad at all about it, it has something to get everyone excited.

That said, mark my words. In 5 years you will not be able to buy a SDR TV or camera new.

Wolf, do you have any resources that explain how bit depth translates to stops of dynamic range? I've always been curious. I hear 6 for SDR, 14-16 for HDR? I imagine 12 bit would go exponentially farther than that.

Well, all the clairvoyant HDR fanboys are on a rant, and CAN see the future, how wonderful. Like I said its not for me, but hey, different strokes for different folk. Wolfgang S, I really wouldn’t know where to start in dissecting your erroneous presumptions, assumptions, and basically making it up as you go along. I don’t blame anyone here for anything, and new concepts don’t frighten me, if false facts are your thing then go with it. I get it, you can see the future and its HDR, wonderful, go for it, just accept that not everyone has to agree with you, or maybe that’s something you’re not used to.

I'm still looking for the automatic subtitle creation using "Magix" or "Somebody else's voice recognition software" with the ability to make corrections. Making minor corrections is hugely easier than hearing low level conversational jargon and trying to decipher it. Now that I said it sometimes you will have to spend 2 hours listening to one phrase ten million times anyway with voice recognition not being that good.

JJK

What about automatic audio ducking. Is that already available on 15, if so how so I activate it/what filter do i need?

What about automatic audio ducking. Is that already available on 15, if so how so I activate it/what filter do i need?

Sidechain compression is your friend. It is a compressor that modulates one audio file based on parameters from another audio file. For instance, when the kick drum hits, you can have the sidechain duck all other instruments by a set amount. EDM producers often use it to create a sort of "swelling" effect on their keyboards, as the kick drum ducks and swells back in the audio. It also happens to work perfectly for audio ducking with speech and music.

Here is a tutuorial on how to install the sidechain compressor VST and set it up in Vegas.

You can hear him using it on his voice to duck the background music... though I would set the attack and release to be a bit longer than what he is using.

What about automatic audio ducking. Is that already available on 15, if so how so I activate it/what filter do i need?

Also, see a recent forum discussion about audio ducking a VO:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/audio-ducking--111697/

@vkmast Ok, curiosity won out. I did it from the email they sent and this is a small extract from the order confirmation email they sent me.

”How and when do I get my new VEGAS Pro 16?
When the new version 16 is released at the end of August, you will receive an email with your serial number and instructions for downloading. Please keep an eye on your spam folder around this time to make sure you don't miss the email.”

There are four serial numbers included in the email for ...

Upgrade: VEGAS Pro 15

VEGAS DVD Architect

HitFilm Movie Essentials

NewBlue FX Filters 5 Ultimate

@Former user I took a look when I opened VP14 Edit. There was only one version listed. There was no VP16 Suite, VP, or VP Edit nor what they will come with. And while I am tempted, just can't hit the switch because I don't know what comes with the software and whether a "Suite" would be a better buy.

I'll wait until the end of the summer.

@Reyfox 

Probably a wise decision. I personally have never found a justification for going for the Suite, just couldn’t see the benefit, but my editing needs are fairly simple. Then again It could turn out that VP16 Suite might have something really attractive, we'll know in September for sure.

When I clicked on the link to “Learn More” I then get the three program options, Edit, Pro and Suite

@Former user, I personally need more info on what will come with Suite vs Pro. I bought 15 Suite around Christmas for $50 USD less than the upgrade price is now.

I'm patient and can wait to see what happens when it's released. I've been an early adopter with other software, which usually meant being an uncompensated beta tester. That's fine and I didn't mind, but just not up for it right now. I'll wait for your review!

“I'll wait for your review!” I’m flattered😂 lol.

JN_, HDR taking over the market isn't as much about seeing the future as it is looking at the current trends. 3D never got adopted on as wide a scale as HDR currently is. We have HDR broadcast standards developed (Hybrid Log Gamma, NHK & BBC), HDR TVs are taking over the market to the point that even the cheap $400 roku sets have it, and it requires no other equipment on the user end (no glasses, etc) to work, so it's just a matter of owning the TV and viewing the content. If current trends continue another 5 years, as I said before, you won't be able to buy a set that does not support it in some form (there are currently competing methods of HDR, just like there were competing formats back in the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD days, one will eventually win out and become the industry standard).

No other video fad that came and went, like 3D, ever got standardized and adopted by the entire industry on such a wide scale. A few TVs supported it for a while, a few movies featured it, but other than that, if fizzled out. That is not happening at all with HDR, quite the opposite, actually. That is where our "clairvoyance" comes from... just gotta look around.

There is no "look" about HDR to like or dislike, it is nothing more than 10 bit color vs. 8 bit, so you get 1.04 billion vs. 16.9 million colors, and the TVs must be able to hit 1000 nits of bright and a certain (exact number escapes my memory right now) level of black. It also supports metadata that tells your TV what settings mine was at when I color graded it, so yours can adjust its settings to most closely match what I saw when I was grading.

Many people take this to extremes and way oversaturate the images, which is probably what the "look" you mention comes from, but that is a product of the colorist, not the technology. Your HDR videos do not have to look that way, they can just take advantage of the additional color accuracy, white/black levels, and metadata.

@fr0sty, I remember when HDR was a "thing" in photography. Then, it was everywhere. Now, not much talk about it. But the idea behind it is good. Taking several images of different exposures and creating a composite. But most that were viewed were over saturated, that to "me" made them unappealing. Just like when you go view 4K sets in the store. I have no crystal ball to say what the next big thing will be or whether HDR will be the norm. But I do remember many NLE's having 3D of some sort, and now 360 is another new "buzzword".

Yes, current TV's will have HDR, just like a lot of them at some price point had 3D. When you do mention HDR to a photographer, they just stare at you as visions of the hyped over saturated and sharpened images come to mind that were all over Instagram and other social media sites.

I understand that editors have to have something "new" on the box every year to be competitive and attract your attention and possible money. 3D was one of them. I've seen some HDR Sony footage that wasn't like anything you will see in a big box 4K HDR tv display. I can see the appreciation of additional color depth. Maybe in 5 years everything will be HDR, but for "me", I'll wait a while and continue with 4K. Where I live in Poland, people still use DVD players....

@fr0sty I'm worn out with all of this, but you persist. Thankfully just about everything that Reyfox just said now is where I am coming from, saves me a lot of typing. The photo hdr left me cold. But the other thing, which is purely personal and of course colours my perspective on all of this is that I have always gravitated towards a more dynamic, contrasty look, in photos and video, not egsactly safe levels :D. I still think its a brave person than fortells the tech future, the landscape is littered with the next big things that weren’t, actually. Lets get back to the topic and which hdr is only a part of, namely vp16.

3D and 360 require special equipment to film, edit, and view. That is why they failed, unlike HDR which most true pros already have cameras that shoot above 8 bit, now most NLEs edit it natively, and most TVs feature it. I figured it was the photo HDR that caused you to have this opinion of it... just know the two have nothing to do with each other. One involves taking multiple exposures at different brightness levels and combining them to get more detail in highlights and shadows, but you are still staying stuck inside the 256 levels between black and any given primary color, so you're really just faking more dynamic range into an 8 bit image via tone mapping. HDR for video actually does expand the dynamic range available.

That said, we can get back to talking about 16, though HDR is what I'm interested in the most in it, so that's what I'm going to talk about.. and it's not like we have many other details to discuss at this point.
 

Too true.

I can also say one other thing we have learned about it... built in motion tracking, especially if it is a good planar tracker like Mocha, is going to benefit me immensely, as I do CG animation and video projection mapping. The project I'm working on now, for instance, I had to use mocha to track the movements of dancers we are doing a video projection mapping installation for, then take that mocap data and copy it into after effects, attach that data to a light or camera object, then save that after effects project as a c4d project, then open that in cinema 4D, in order to get the mocap data into c4d (I didn't have time to learn how to use its internal mocap, I already knew Mocha). If there's any way I can export Vegas' mocap data and import it into C4D, that will save me a ton of time by keeping pretty much all of my editing in Vegas when projection mapping.

I also often animate elements into my videos and then motion track them into the scene to follow camera movement, like having text sitting on the city skyline or something like that. This should enable me to do this within Vegas without extremely expensive plugins. I'm curious to learn just how in-depth its tracking goes. Anyone wanting to experiment with visual FX should be excited about this, mocap opens Vegas up to a lot of new possibilities and markets. Its interface is so much easier to use than AE. I'm going to be doing a lot more with my coloring now that I can mocap elements of the scene and adjust them independently.

HDR aside, mocap alone, especially if it is good, is going to make my work look a lot better. I often avoid doing things I could do with built in mocap because I don't like working with the interfaces of other apps that can do it.

Magix, if any of you reads this... once you start to get the feature request list and bug list down a bit, maybe consider going toe to toe with Adobe and integrating AE style motion graphics generation tools into Vegas? 3D particle simulation, 3D lights, importing 3D objects (c4D cross compatibility??)... It's a lofty request, Premiere and AE are so feature rich they got split into two programs... and I wouldn't hold it against you if you did the same, as long as it seamlessly integrates with Vegas. I'd sure love to be able to stop paying Adobe $50/mo. to use programs with user interfaces that frustrate me more than they help. Maybe something to consider working on for release alongside 17? You'd open your market up to a lot more people if you did... people who do not like Adobe's choice to go subscription only.

Well after having received countless special time-limited offers to update from Vegas Pro 13 - which always seemed rather pricey compared to the old updates from 9, 10, 11, and 12 - I've gone for this offer which gives 15 straight away and the promise of 16 by the end of this month. 16 is confirmed in the 15 email purchase confirmation

I don't actually have critical uses for 15/16 right now as I don't use 4k. Also I will have to update Pluraleyes to 4 from my preferred 2 (3 is dormant as it wasn't as usable as 2 for me). PE4 seems to be some hassle, I'll see when I try it. My current card is the GeForce 570 so it wouldn't be useful for 16/16.

So why buy it? I paid for the update to 13 in May 2014 and it was £108. This update is £209 (both figures include taxes). Looks fair enough.

In practice I'll probably continue with 13 until any initial bugs are resolved after 16's arrival.

I've gone for this offer which gives 15 straight away and the promise of 16 by the end of this month.

Just to be clear, the expected release of Vegas Pro 16 is the end of August (i.e. next month, not this month).

Whoops yeh, August; I knew that 😁. In practice I wouldn't be bothered if the update is a little longer in coming than that, its good to know its on its way.