Yes, a true plug-in interface. OpenFx would be cool, since it's an open standard. (used by Nuke and Fusion among others). But I would be happy with anything that works at this point.
Support for GPGPU computing that works on both Nvidia and ATI cards. But with a decent plug-in architecture that could be addressed by 3rd parties.

Find a way to get along with Panasonic so we can edit AVC Intra without needing a 3rd party solution. I've never fully understood what is holding that up.

"It's not that hard. A plugin is a DLL, load it in a small 32bit wrapper." There maybe a problem with 64bit variables, 64->32 then 32->64, flags, colourspace issues,..etc.... I

jwcarney wrote:
Yes, a true plug-in interface. OpenFx would be cool, since it's an open standard. (used by Nuke and Fusion among others). But I would be happy with anything that works at this point.

Calling OpenFX a "standard" might be taking it a bit far, IMHO. Anyway, I hadn't heard of OpenFX, and I'm downloading it now to see what it offers. It seems you can't get information about developing plug-ins on their web site...looks like I'll have to dig through the source distribution to figure that out.

BTW, what do you consider a "true plug-in interface" - what limitations do you run into with the current architecture? I'm truly curious. Thanks.

[Update]
Downloaded source & binaries for OpenFX 2.0 - I still can't find any documentation on the plug-in architecture and how to write one. I can see source for the sample plug-ins, but that's about it - I can guess at what needs to be done. Maybe someone here can tell me if I'm overlooking something?

What about asking the people behind the OpenFX standard?

what limitations do you run into with the current architecture?
Can't access the frames before/after to do temporal filters without issues.

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IMO, the return on investment for Vegas plugins may not be great. Magic Bullet for example is one of the most popular plugins out there. And even they are having a hard time figuring out if the ROI on a Vegas version is justified.

>> There maybe a problem with 64bit variables, 64->32
>> then 32->64, flags, colourspace issues,..etc.... I

Only if we ever start working in a 64 bit color space. I doubt that will be an issue for some time to come.

"It's not that hard. A plugin is a DLL, load it in a small 32bit wrapper." There maybe a problem with 64bit variables, 64->32 then 32->64, flags, colourspace issues,..etc.... I
It's the size of the pointers that changes. (Ignoring other things like the # of new registers in the new instruction set.)

Variables can still be 8, 16, 32, or 64 bit. For video processing 32 is enough/overkill.

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The way to go is for plugin developers to make 64-bit versions of their plugins. It was pretty easy for the 64-bit versions of my Photoshop plugins (presumably that's the case for Vegas plugins).

"Only if we ever start working in a 64 bit color space." I thinking more about memory word alignments for speed, plus issues of possible using 48bit color within a 64bit word. Since future 64bit vegas is about speed, using odd address 32bit words would cripple the speed of pushing 1920HD around when you have 8-33g memory subsystems.

"The way to go is for plugin developers to make 64-bit versions of their plugins"

Yes.... and the 64 thousand dollar question (sorry... had to get that pun in).... are they going to charge us all over again for these 64 bit plugs?

"are they going to charge us all over again for these 64 bit plugs? "

Not "all over again" but quite likely you'll pay for an upgrade. Some seem to be giving the upgrades for free, others are charging. Anyway that's what I'm seeing with plugins for other applications.

Bob.

I have been rather dissapointed about the support for 64 bit applications by software vendors. I have had some major compatibility issues with some programs and my 64 bit laptop. Every retail outlet I go to is selling computers with 64 bit OS instead of 32 bit; in fact one would be hard pressed to walk into a Best Buy and find a 32 bit computer. The reason for this, they say, is so that a computer can support higher levels of ram memory (especially useful for running Vista); as more apps require higher and higher amounts of ram this will become more of an issue--yet vendors are slow to adopt this new standard.

Any new release of Vegas, I'm hoping, will have full 64 bit support. I thought it was a shame that Vegas Movie Studio 9 did not support 64 bit. By comparison Pinnacle Studio 12 is fully 64 bit compliant--even with all it's plugins. I would use Pinnacle Studio more, except that it is rather llimiting as it only has 1 overlay track availalble--but it has some plugins that if purchase by themselves would cost 3 to 4 times more than the applicaiton itself. If they can do it, I'm sure that Sony can.