Vegas Movie Studio 11 released

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 6/8/2011, 10:40 AM

Does it take Canon's DSLR mov files without crashing and at a reasonable fps in preview without transcoding? I have been waiting for this for more than a year now. Premiere Elements 9 has been doing this since october 2010,
There aren't many other reasons for upgrading, except 3D, of couorse.

Eugenia wrote on 6/8/2011, 10:49 AM

Yes, dSLR and other h.264 footage is faster now than it was on Platinum 10, since this version of Platinum is based on a recent Pro 10 version. You can download the trial and test it out, it installs in parallel. As for crashing, dunno, that's a different subject to speed.

Birk Binnard wrote on 6/8/2011, 11:03 AM

I just downloaded and installed VMS11 & DVDAS5 (the upgrade package.) I had no problems at all on my Win7-64 SP1 system. As chance would have it I had just finished creating a bunch of new projects with VMS10 and to make sure everything was OK I verified that I could open one of the projects with VMS11. No problems found.

A couple of notes about upgrading from VMS10 to 11:

1. VMS11 installs in its own directory so if you don't de-install VMS10 you will end up withe both versions. I did not want this so I de-installed VMS10 BEFORE I installed VMS11. The VMS10 de-install ran fine, but it does leave a bunch of registry values and files behind. My un-installer program (Advanced Uninstaller Free) found these and deleted them.

2. Ditto above for DVDAS5 - except it left 0 registry values but more than 800 files behind. The DVDAS5 looks to be the same version as that provided with VMS10 but just to be sure I deleted the version that came with VMS10 and installed the one that comes with VMS11. I should have checked the build numbers but I didn't. Oh well.

I;ve not tried to do any real work with VMS11 yet. It might be a good idea for someone to start a new thread here about what is different/better/worse with VMS11 compared to VMS10. The info on the Sony VMS11 pages suggests the major change is 3D support.

I'm assuming there is no change the DVDAS5's limitation of stereo only (no 5.1) sound. (Grrrrrrr.)

Eugenia wrote on 6/8/2011, 11:05 AM

I did an AVCHD h.264 test between Platinum 10 and 11 (with the same preview options and footage), and the difference is quite big. On an older machine (Pentium 4 at 3Ghz), which I used on purpose in order to see the difference more pronounced, Platinum 11 is 3x faster in h.264 decoding.

On another machine, an i3 mobile CPU at 1.33 Ghz, Canon 1080p P&S digicam footage (1080/24p at 34 mbps) runs smoothly on preview/auto. So anything faster than that (and that laptop is pretty slow compared to desktop machines), should be able to edit AVCHD and dSLR and digicam h.264 footage with no problems.

richard-amirault wrote on 6/8/2011, 11:16 AM

Release notes on 11:

http://sony-446.vo.llnwd.net/dspcdn/releasenotes/moviestudiope110_readme_enu.htm

sergiob wrote on 6/8/2011, 11:22 AM

Does anyone know if the program is x64? Does it come with Wavehammer x64 plugin?
Thanks,
Sergio

Eugenia wrote on 6/8/2011, 11:29 AM

64bit is not mentioned anywhere in the literature. So, no, it's not 64bit. Which means that [possibly] some crashes will still happen when the app runs out of RAM, as it happens in older versions. The only way to find out is to install the trial version and really test it out with *complex* projects while editing, and while exporting.

I updated my exporting tutorial to include Vegas Platinum 11 instructions btw, since the rendering UI is now different: http://eugenia.queru.com/2007/11/09/exporting-with-vegas-for-vimeo-hd/

amendegw wrote on 6/8/2011, 1:39 PM

Sometimes VMS leapfrogs Vegas Pro (witness the media stabilizer). I see in the list of improvements is "New Titles & Text plug-in." Is this something improved over what is in Vegas Pro? (there are very few fans of the Pro Type Titler).

...Jerry

Steve Grisetti wrote on 6/8/2011, 2:19 PM

I like the new titler tools in version 11 very much!

In addition to including many more tools for creating titles, it includes some fun, bouncy animations for things like having your text dance in or bounce around.

GaryDZ wrote on 6/8/2011, 2:45 PM

I would be curious to know if the DVDA that comes with VMS11 will create a blu-ray disc with 5.1 surround. (Too late for me 'cause I upgraded to Pro to get this capability)

Tim L wrote on 6/8/2011, 3:04 PM

And the " Vegas Movie Studio Updates" sticky at the top of this forum, from October 2008, still refers to the new "VMS 9.0b" updates... :-)

(Ummm.. in fairness, though, it does click through to a page that does show VMS 11, it's just the text for the links in the sticky that needs to be updated...)

Steve Grisetti wrote on 6/8/2011, 3:27 PM

Vegas Movie Studio 11 Platinum comes bundled with DVD Architect Studio 5.0.

No changes have been made to DVD Architect Studio.

michaelt wrote on 6/9/2011, 10:57 AM

Many new Sony P&S come with 1080/60p, but I see from the release notes that 60fps is supported for 720p only (not for 1080p).

I was wondering if the AVC bit-rate is limited to 20Mbps just like in Vegas Pro ? In that case Sony's 28Mbps (let alone Canon's 34Mbps) is not of much use.

Marco. wrote on 6/9/2011, 11:07 AM

You can use 1080p60 both as project setting as well as for AVC output. Max data rate for Sony AVC output is 26 Mbit/s.

Eugenia wrote on 6/9/2011, 11:15 AM

>60fps is supported for 720p only (not for 1080p).

This is not true. On Vegas you can simply EDIT the frame rate and resolution fields. The fact that Vegas doesn't offer a pre-made 1080/60p template doesn't change the fact that you can edit these fields, having the app behaving properly for these changes, and save a new template.

>AVC bit-rate is limited to 20Mbps

16 mbps to be exact. At least that's what SonyAVC reverted to after picking an AVCHD template and editing its number.

>In that case Sony's 28Mbps (let alone Canon's 34Mbps) is not of much use.

That's also not true. The source footage's bitrate has nothing to do with the exporting bitrate. Vegas will use all the quality/bitrate on the source footage, and then you can export back using MainConcept instead of SonyAVC, in MP4, up to *at least* 32 mbps.

Remember that the kind of SonyAVC/MainConcept AVC exports feature are much more optimized than in-camera encoding, because cameras have to do encoding on-the-fly with many battery constraints, severely limiting the optimizations they can have "live". So don't be surprised if a digicam's 34mbps is not much better than SonyAVC's 16mbps. This is also why camcorders' 24mbps AVCHD is often better than dSLR's 44 mbps = because camcorders feature the best DSPs, since they're specialized video devices, while digicams and dSLRs feature less optimized ones, cheaper, or multi-functioning DSPs. And compared to an offline encoder, that has no battery constraints and doesn't have to be real-time, even a camcorder's DSP can't compete with.

So, use your digicam, export in MainConcept MP4, and you're set.

michaelt wrote on 6/9/2011, 11:41 AM

Eugenia - thanks a lot! That was very informative. I will definitely try the MP4 flow you suggested.

Hybris wrote on 6/9/2011, 12:45 PM

yes, movie 11 performs much better than movie 10 with avchd stuff
now it behaves like pro 10

actually on a low powered pc movie 10 is quite unusable without abusing of the dynamic ram preview
movie 11 and pro 10 insted are pretty usable

i always considered the low performance as a limit of my pc but when i tried pro 10 several months ago i understood that it was a bug in movie 10 that was limiting performance

and actually this is the only feature of 11 i need

i always hoped in an update of movie 10 and now i am asked 64$ for a bugfix and a bunch of stuff i do not need

not very impressed

Zulqar-Cheema wrote on 6/9/2011, 12:54 PM

Reads .MP4 files from JVC HM700, Ver10 did not

MSmart wrote on 6/9/2011, 4:02 PM

i always hoped in an update of movie 10 and now i am asked 64$ for a bugfix and a bunch of stuff i do not need

Agreed. Pro 10 had several updates, why couldn't SCS give VMS one?

Polly because they were concentrating on adding all that 3D code.

Eugenia wrote on 6/9/2011, 4:05 PM

>64$ for a bugfix and a bunch of stuff i do not need

I'm sorry, but the h.264 speed ups on v11 are not a "bugfix", it's optimizations. A bug is something that makes things to not work as intended. v10's h.264 performance was as intended, it was simply not as optimized yet, because optimization is a gradual maturation process that can take years and many revisions. Also, an optimization doesn't have a clear finite point as "fixing a bug" has (meaning, the wrong behavior is not exhibited anymore), so you could argue that you don't want to pay Sony for VMS12 because the extra optimizations there should have been on VMS11, or VMS10 or VMS9. And even if VMS12's optimization fix the lag on your PC, there will always be someone with a slower PC arguing the same thing (that there is a bug, and decoding is slow). And this makes no sense, optimizations are not (necessarily) bug fixes.

The exact same thing with h.264 performance has happened with Premiere Elements, and iMovie. h.264 decoding is a beast to master because it's the most complex codec ever created by mankind (minus the upcoming h.265). It takes time.

Also, as someone else stated, the upgrade fee is $45 until the end of June.

>Pro 10 had several updates, why couldn't SCS give VMS one?

That's a different issue, and I agree, VMS 10 should have had 1-2 updates at least.

MSmart wrote on 6/9/2011, 4:18 PM

Even though I shoot/edit SD DV-AVI video, I'll probably upgrade because even that doesn't playback at full 29.97 all the time. Add a video FX (color correction) and Good/Half sometimes doesn't even keep up. If I keep a project open/idle for a while and come back to it, I have to close/restart VMS to get decent playback.

It won't help complaining now but an "a" update should have been released. There's no acceptible excuse not to have.

Eugenia wrote on 6/9/2011, 4:39 PM

When adding something like color correction is absolutely normal that even a very fast machine wouldn't keep up. Unless these plugins are written with GPU hardware acceleration support (and they aren't, GPUs are a very new thing for consumer video editing and it will take a few more years to mature and re-write from scratch all these plugins), what you ask is not possible for ANY editor. Also, I'd suggest preview/full or preview/auto for more speed, it's the default after all for a reason.

Hybris wrote on 6/10/2011, 12:33 AM

> I'm sorry, but the h.264 speed ups on v11 are not a "bugfix", it's optimizations

Eugenia, i do not agree.

I would agree if the performance would go from the one of the 11 to any better point.
That would be optimization.

But the performance of 10 can be rated as almost unusable (and we are talking about PC that mets the requirements) without ABUSING the dynamic ram preview.

So bringing the software from the level expressed with version 10 to any better level is not optimization, it is bug fixing.

Simply version 10 was released with an immature (to not say buggy) support to AVCHD.
This has been addressed in Pro 10 and VMS 11.

They could have done it as an update to VMS10 but they preferred to cash in by putting it along with a bunch of marginal features and ask money for that.

Who cares about 3D anyway....

Eugenia wrote on 6/10/2011, 9:45 AM

>I would agree if the performance would go from the one of the 11 to any better point. That would be optimization.

I'm sorry, but you have a very skewed memory of how things have gone down. If you think that Platinum 10 was slow (it was NOT, compared to its competition at the time), then you should try and install -- just for fun -- Vegas 8 and 9. THEN you would see how slow it REALLY was.

In Vegas 10 Sony rewrote their h.264 decoder from scratch. What this meant was that the first version was much faster than Vegas 8/9, but since it was a new piece of software, there was room for improvement. Improvement that appeared in Vegas 11.

There was NO bug in terms of h.264 performance on VMS10. It was simply the way it was. There were other related bugs, that produced crashes occasionally, but the performance -- albeit not as ideal as it could have been -- was as intended for a first version.