Vegas 6 Features -- It's That Time Again...

vitamin_D wrote on 11/12/2004, 1:21 PM

Hey,

Just writing to see if we can stir up some talk about the next major Vegas update before it hits code freeze, as complaining after it's been released didn't seem to get me far last time :D

My personal wishes include:

A skinnable UI, or a button to revert to the Vegas "classic" look of versions 4 and under -- as it stands, I'm generally not one for needing a skinnable interface, but then I can't say I like the choice Sony made for me with the 5 UI, you know, the Hello Kitty Interface...

Better media management -- something I'd assumed was a given for 5, especially all the word play it gets on just about every Vegas related forum, or has gotten in the past. And now I see Frank Capria at DV Magazine cites it as one of Vegas's glaring cons. Take some cues from the better capture and logging utilities out there and go from there.

AAF/OMF/EDL support -- I know it's not going to happen, I just figured I'd put it down for the sake of posterity :) Another Capria con in the recent DV review, incidentally.

Network Rendering -- I can't imagine improvements to the net rendering services will be easy, but at the same time I think it's safe to say they're necessary. While we're on the topic of rendering, something to speed it up in general for Vegas would do a lot for its professional reputation -- hardware support for a proprietary codec, for instance, might not be a bad idea. Again, I'm betting the reason it hasn't happened isn't to a lack of interest from the programming and design team at Sony -- moreso a limitation with the Vegas architecture -- still it's something of a needed area of work.

Official, well documented and easy to understand Decklink support and integration -- I know this has been something on the burner for a while now, but I can't easily get a clear answer as to how well Vegas supports the DL cards, their proprietary rendering services/codecs/etc. This goes for HD support in general -- it's the new buzzword, and while people like BJ_M seem to be happily working with HD and Vegas, the rest of the world needs to know what Vegas can do.

Higher bit rendering engine -- is this at all realistic? Avid has 10bit codecs; AE has a 16bit engine; Is a higher bit render engine in the works, and if not why?

That's it for starters -- anyone else?

- jim

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Comments

RangTang wrote on 1/19/2005, 7:41 AM

First, two GUI additions, a frame forward button and a frame backward button. Then what everyone else said.

SimonW wrote on 1/19/2005, 8:18 AM

MXF support

scifly2 wrote on 1/19/2005, 9:23 AM

Im not looking forward to going to xp on any of my machines but looks like I'll have to if I want to take advantage of the added capacity of Dual Layer DVD, or even single. I wish it wasnt that way. I dont like having to compress 90 min.or more of video plus menu to 4 Gb or less.Getting more than 512Mb of ram might be good too. As for AMD and P.O.S. machines, I remember when PC was not even an option. If it werent for some competition on OS, processors, etc.. most of us would have to find something else to chat about. Competition gets the price down and pushes the capability up.

mdopp wrote on 1/19/2005, 10:02 AM

Finally a good deinterlacer would be most welcomed. I am referring to adaptive deinterlacing, where only the areas of motion are affected and new pictures are generated by true motion interpolation.
Martin

musman wrote on 1/19/2005, 2:07 PM

I believe you can go 1 frame forward with Alt+arrow left or right. I programmed it into my shuttlepro, but that is in for repairs currently. A lot of shortcuts people have requested here I believe can be programmed into that device though.

musman wrote on 1/19/2005, 2:18 PM

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but it's a glitch that I reported and Sony acknowledged. I'm talking about raising and lowing your sound card's volume to the speakers whenyou're editing. I used it a lot in Vgeas to quickly check my mix at different levels (not to avoid waking up the whole block). Vegas 5 added some default functions to these keys and even when they are disabled, the function does not return to them in V5 as it works in V4.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/19/2005, 2:38 PM

probably the most mentioned thing on here, but I'll say it too, or again, or something -
1) Nestable T/L
(EDIT) 1.5) Better snaping of clips together, it really eats at me when I have to make sure that the last clip I select is one of the 2 clips I'm going to be butting together.
2) Though I will not hod my breath on this one I would Love motion tracking.
3) Text media generator that does 3D (or a plugin to a program that can do it - Something with an easier learning curve than Graffiti [my tutorials didn't even do what the manual said that they would - didn't give me options that were supposed to be available] It's good, but it's not easy)

RANKINGS:
#1 (and #1.5) Necessary #2 would make me smile from ear to ear for sometime #3 Not so major, but would be nice.

Dave

musman wrote on 1/20/2005, 3:06 AM

Damn right about #1 and #1.5. I see your point on #2 and #3, they are nice to have. But I really wish they'd spend their time working on communication. Boris Red, Combustion, or AE will do all that and more-so there's an option for it. Boris is tricky and I would never have gotten anywhere w/o the dvd tutorial I bought and the help at Borisfx's creativecow forum.
But, you do have options for that kind of thing now with other add ons. You don't have options for outsourcing except to other Vegas users.

filmy wrote on 1/20/2005, 10:43 AM

>>> First, two GUI additions, a frame forward button and a frame backward button.<<<

I use F3 (back 1 frame) and F9 (Forward 1 frame), is there a reason why you feel a gui button is needed? Just curious.

HPV wrote on 1/20/2005, 11:25 AM

1.5) Better snaping of clips together, it really eats at me when I have to make sure that the last clip I select is one of the 2 clips I'm going to be butting together
-----------------------
Dave, I'm not following you. Click on an event and drag it to snap to another event. How is that a problem?
Craig H.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/20/2005, 11:43 AM

When it's only one clip that you have to move to the end of another clip, it's not a problem. Try dropping down several clips then separating the first 3 from the last three. Then select from the first one of the last 3 to the last one of the last three. When you but the clips together they don't snap, they smoothly flow over one another to create a cross fade, or try selecting placing multiple tracks of clips together. If you don't make sure that the last clip that you selected was on the same track as the other clip that you are trying to butt up against, it will do the same thing. I would like it to snap with the closest available selected clip within a certain range - and have that be able to be turned off and on via the options menu.

Dave

(I'm not griping here, I'm just explaining to HPV what I was saying, I wouldn't trade vegas 5.0 for anything - except vegas 6.0 :-)

FuTz wrote on 1/20/2005, 11:52 AM

">>> First, two GUI additions, a frame forward button and a frame backward button.<<<

I use F3 (back 1 frame) and F9 (Forward 1 frame), is there a reason why you feel a gui button is needed? Just curious."

alt+ left/right arrows for frame by frame... drop the "alt" and it's left and right by some frames, depending on how much zoomed you are in the timeline (goes pixel based this way)

HPV wrote on 1/20/2005, 3:42 PM

Thanks Dave, I see what you are saying now. Never noticed that behavior before. Hope they can tweak this to work better.
I'd like to also see the following:
*Vidcap- Don't leave the deck/cam in pause when I hit stop.
*Titler- View the full page without scrolling around (Yuck)
*Titler- Allow effects and properties to be adjusted for each font or each line.
*Timeline- Nested sequences
*Preferences- (Editing) LImit new still image length & cut to overlap conversions to frames based on project properties. Easy to have quantize errors the way it is. Default values are wrong for NTSC projects.
*Generated media- Default value of 9sec and 29 frames shouldn't be 9:29 plus 3/4 of an extra frame resulting in quantize
*Show unquantized event start and event end. Hidden feature now. Will show you the above quantize errors.
*Event select outline thickness adjustment. Hidden feature now.
*Event,track,master fx windows open at the same time.
*Smart rendering that would use the much faster preview quality for areas of the timeline that don't need good or best. Yes, there are things that render at preview quality just fine . Color correction of a straight DV clip is but one of them.
*Native YUV support (Full rewrite needed but big speed gain) Maybe that is coming with the 64bit Vegas. I only say that because Sofo was on the record of supporing a MS 64 bit OS.
With that said, Vegas is one awesome NLE. Love it.

Craig H.

ShannonRawls wrote on 1/20/2005, 5:34 PM

.BWF support. I need this for the firld recorders that record in this format and deliver their files in this format.

Native HDV Capture, Import & Export from the Sony HDV cameras.

Spot|DSE wrote on 1/20/2005, 11:47 PM

First, the DV Mag review had their head up their a$$, IMO. They do that from time to time. The whole HDV incident/announcement in November made that fairly clear. Keep in mind, CMP owns the magazine, and a different arm of CMP is VASST's co-publisher, so I'm saying nasty things about a relative here.

The only thing I'd strongly argue against in your post is that 10 bit will "increase sales." I don't believe that for one second, and if Sony thought it would increase sales, you'd see 10 bit. What are you acquiring on? Likely an 8 bit cam.

I don't know that better EDL support would cause the cost to skyrocket. The bigger question is how much value it would really have. You can output a basic EDL now, and it's not a whole lot less than most apps can do. It would be nice to have more, I agree.
I'm more concerned about other aspects, and EDL and 10 bit aren't among them. But I can see how some might want better EDL, and that's OK. But the whole 10 bit thing.... I just can't see it as a benefit to the majority of users.

Coursedesign wrote on 1/21/2005, 12:36 AM

Spot,

I can't find the post you are replying to, but here is my thought on 10-bit:

I haven't shot 8-bit since last summer. Shoot 10-bit and love the look of it. This leaves a lot more room to tweak in post also.

You say implementing 10-bit wouldn't benefit a majority of users. This is of course 100% correct.

But only for existing users.

If Sony wants to add new users (people shooting on 10-bit DigiBeta, or as more and more people are doing, shoot 10-bit direct to disk with Decklink cards, Aja cards, Convergent boxes or perhaps the new Rosendahl Bonsaidrive portable uncompressed video harddisk recorder with 10 audio channels for $2250 MSLP, etc.), then it's time to get prepared.

10-bit could even be helpful for footage originated in 8-bit.

I just found out that Rosendahl are presenting the Bonsaidrive in booth 6766 at NAMM, would be great if you can check it out and let us know what you think! The data sheet is sparse...

TeetimeNC wrote on 1/21/2005, 3:23 AM

Ray, I agree regarding MOTION TRACKING. I would really use that feature.

filmy wrote on 1/21/2005, 6:07 AM

>>>alt+ left/right arrows for frame by frame... drop the "alt" and it's left and right by some frames, depending on how much zoomed you are in the timeline (goes pixel based this way)<<<

But that only says another way in addition to what I said to also go frame by frame - didn't answer my quesiton about what a need was for a button on the interface to do it. Original post was Vegas 6 should have a button to allow easy frame by frame...and I still am wondering how that would be easier than just hitting the F3 / F9 or your mentioned option of alt + left arrow /alt + right arrow.

FuTz wrote on 1/21/2005, 9:58 AM

Exactly, I said that so the guy can choose. Not criticising.

If he wants a GUI button, it's probably because he's more of a "mouse guy" than a "shortcut guy". Seems some people like to keep concentrated on the screen. Having choice is never a bad thing.

musman wrote on 1/21/2005, 9:12 PM

Coursedesign, that's exacly what I mean. Most Vegas users now don't have a need for 10 bit, but there are a lot of people out there who don't use Vegas but might be drawn into it if it was 10 bit capable. I think a lot of FCP users choose FCP b/c it has a much higher capablity for higher end stuff. Also even if most users won't ever go that route, they like to know it's there and also there's the ego thing that says, "Hey, I'm gonna be big time. Someday, I might just need that higher end stuff". So, a lot of people lie to themselves, but that's the kind of thing I was trying to say could be marketed towards, bring more users in, and thus pay for itself without raising the price of Vegas.
As for myself, I shot the last short on film and feel in love with it. Next short will also be on film, so I can pretty much choose the output format.

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