So much speculations about Vegas Pro future and the silence on Sony Creative is the hints. If they do have a new version on the way. Then why don't they come out and tell you about. All the huh huh is usually means NO SUCH NEW VERSON ON THE WAY.

Just go look at the posting history on the forums. Example, Spectralayers , last post 4/27. Except for CharlesK, there hasn't been a post since 11/25/2015. Catalyst seems to be generating as much interest as Caesar's ghost.

SCS is on life support, has been for some time and the breaths are getting shallower by the day. Wish it weren't so, but all the circumstantial evidence is accumulating. I could be wrong, but thought I saw initially that BCC 10 would support Catalyst. Now it's in the "possibly" category.

If SCS has a future it won't be with Sony. Unfortunately, there are too many products for a small house to develop and support. That could be part of the problem if Sony has been trying to sell it.

-- tom

http://www.techxtend.com/searchresults.aspx?publishername=sony%20electronics

This link shows Vegas pro 14 released (which was pulled back by Sony).
It looks like this dealer didn't get the memo...!!!!

The part number SVPE14099ESD has been with numerous dealers online a few weeks ago before it mysteriously was marked by all as out of stock (except for the link above).

This site reports as being In Stock although the product info sounds like v13? Very weird that many dealers had this up and then it was pulled and all photos removed and marked out of stock. Yet no word from Sony.

Does anyone know what the heck is going on?

And further encouraging signs on the creative Cow Forum (https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/988681) ---see posts by Daniel Fernandez and Matt Smethers on 8 April. I've not given up hope yet by a long way, but then I'm a glass half full rather than half empty guy.

Richard

Wondering how similar Sony Vegas Pro and GoPro struggle on the competition issue...
http://bokeh.digitalrev.com/article/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-gopro
GoPro now compete with Xiaomi Yi ActionCam, and must say the quality image quality made by Xiaomi Yi action cam and many recent China-made cellular phones are getting better thanks to their Sony EXMOR Camera sensors.

Set

Last weekend I posted to the Catalyst forum asking people not to pay for the forced subscription. I thought if SCS were quietly watching, they would've deleted it, and made their presence known. But nothing happened. The post is still there.

https://community.sony.com/t5/Catalyst-Software/Please-don-t-subscribe-to-Catalyst/m-p/572316/highlight/true#M1165

From the little evidence I gathered from the dates of last activity, and recent Glassdoor posts saying Sony Japan was taking control and fired everyone, it sounds like they're in the middle of a reorganization of what they do with that intellectual property.

My guess is, SCS was left more to theirselves at first, but has been going downhill in the past years as we've all seen, and it finally reached a point recently where the numbers made Sony need to take control, and they're going to rearrange the business.

I think that could potentially be a good thing, because SCS was disappointing for years, and maybe there's a different team in Japan who are more organized and better equipped to produce better results. Or maybe they'll keep Catalyst and sell off or end Vegas.

I have absolutely no clue, and I think it's pretty ridiculous all the wild speculation that's been happening on here for the past months. You even have a petition? What could that possibly do when you don't even know what's happening.

For all I know, Godzilla was causing problems for Sony again, and they needed to fly the SCS employees over to help them defend the HQ skyscraper.

But they're still selling Catalyst subscriptions, with annual contracts, so obviously they're not just closing shop. Despite all the naysaying on here, Vegas 14 always seemed to be in the works, and maybe was soon to be released but delayed from the upheaval.

I'd imagine they need time to do some accounting and put together some business plans to see what direction they're going to take. Maybe everything is going to change, and they're going to give away Vegas or Catalyst with purchase of their cameras.

Maybe they're just waiting for the new boxes to be printed with new logo because they're changing it to Sony Tokyo Pro 14.

I wish Sony would say something more definitive. I am looking to upgrade but if v14 is on the way then I will wait for it. It is usually my luck that if if I upgrade to v13 it would probably be about 31 days (assuming a 30 day free upgrade) before the release of v14.

Sony has caught me before in that type scenario... Years ago I bought one of their big tv's that had a 1 yr warranty. It crapped out 1yr and 1 week after I bought it and Sony would not budge on the warranty repair. Except for the 53 weeks of use, it was a complete loss.

"It is usually my luck that if if I upgrade to v13 it would probably be about 31 days "
- FWlW, SCS customer service is usually very accommodating... Unlike SCS 'tech support'

i've been with vegas since v1.1. I've invested thousands of dollars and hours with vegas, and made money with vegas too.

that was then. scs has finally lost me, by way of not responding to the pleas on this forum and elsewhere to let the community know what is going on. if vegas is dead, man up and say so.

i use cakewalk sonar for audio. cakewalk was at a crossroads three years ago, as was scs. cakewalk was sold twice, but is now flourishing and growing. sonar is better than ever and continues to improve. in the last three years, scs has gone steadily downhill, to the point where they just dont respond. not a company i want to work with.

i'm mostly retired, just do projects for myself and friends. i have a wealth of vegas projects, and 13 is fine for all those. as far as anything new, i looked at resolve 12 and went, meh, but i've started learning resolve 12.5. it really is what vegas should have become. and its free! yes, it will take a while to get up to speed. but the company is living and breathing and there's no doubt resolve will continue to be developed.

with catalyst, scs tried to emulate the modern nles, much too little, far too late. resolve only became an editor two years ago, and with 12.5 they did it right. perhaps they saw the mess scs made with vegas, saw an opportunity and stepped up to the plate...

I expect SCS to release Sony Vegas 14 as well as new versions of Sound Forge, Vegas Studio and even DVDA (all non subscription) by the fall. With Catalyst still a low feature work in progress and nowhere near a competitor for the Abode juggernaut, I can't see SCS giving up the Vegas revenue stream in favor of the Catalyst product which may turn out to be a giveaway with Sony's higher priced cameras.

Presumably only SCS (and Sony) knows from which product its revenue is derived but I would be shocked if Catalyst subscription sales make up more than 5% of SCS revenue. While I hope SCS will continue with Vegas, if SCS is going to do so it is a major marketing error not to let its customer base know that a update is on the way as many of us are seriously considering alternatives.

SCS business partners such as Hitfilm/NewBlue/BCC also can't be pleased as Vegas owners have to be hesitant in buying plugins that may be obsolete. The silence from SCS suggests that I'm wrong about a new Vegas 14 but I hope not and I'll continue to use Vegas Pro 13 suite in the absence of a new version until my cold hands fall off the keyboard!

I have also been a Vegas user since Sonic Foundry and version 3.0.

However being in the business THAT long I have to say I am the ONLY person I have ever met that uses Vegas. In my latest job which is with a major studio in Los Angeles, I had to spend a lot of time convincing the studio to let me use Vegas on the project (I'm way faster at it than anything else). Even then i was only able to convince them because (after MUCH fiddling) I was able to export the timeline to Premiere so that the project (which is 13 episodes of a major brand for a major studio) could be finished (color correction and mix).

Two years ago I edited a 4K commercial in Vegas and it took two days to get the timeline imported into the color correction studio. Very embarrassing, as it is seamless using other NLEs.

Sadly, I agree with anyone else who feels that Vegas will never have any real market share. I am very proficient in After Effects so I will be moving to Premiere. Already I hate using it, but over the course of this project I will learn it and then at least I will be using the industry standard.

For all my personal projects I will probably still use Vegas until it just can't keep up with formats, but I don't see Sony pumping any more money into a platform that requires you be on PC or run boot camp on a mac. The industry is 80% mac now (grrrr..), so it would make sense for them to build around catalyst, which is cross platform. They should have seen the writing on the wall at Version 5 and made an OSX version of the software.

Maybe they can get Catalyst to parity with Vegas in a few years, but by then I think they will have missed the small window of opportunity they had, these past few years when Apple alienated all of their Final Cut Pro users. Had Catalyst been ready around that time and had feature parity with Premiere and Vegas, maybe, just maybe they could have made a dent.

But seriously, there isn't a person I have met in 15 years in the business who uses vegas, and at this point every producer I have met with in the last year hasn't even HEARD of it.

Producer: "what do you edit in?"

Me; "Vegas"

Producer: "Um, do you mean the city?"

That was seriously a conversation at a meeting.

I've been their biggest supporter, but at this point it may start costing me jobs to continue to work on this system. Even though those same producers have watched me edit, and MARVELED at the audio tools and speed of Vegas, I can't keep selling myself as an editor that works on his own, antiquated system.

~Chapman

You have to wonder whether the delay is the hope that enough Vegas 11 and 12 users upgrade to 13 at full retail price before announcing that it will all go away. The users at these forums represent a small fraction of truly informed users.

I have Vegas 11. Vegas 13 really doesn't bring anything of value to the table. So they will be waiting a long time.

Check any of the reviews and top NLE's over the years, exclude FCP on Mac and certainly on the windows platform there has been two most popular & leading professional editors which are Premiere Pro and Vegas Pro. There is a massive user base on Vegas Pro like Premiere. We are all just waiting for Vegas Pro 14 hopefully with a wow factor upgrade to jump start Vegas pro as still a serious NLE.

Come on SCS make an announcement on the future of VEGAS PRO ??????

"There is a massive user base on Vegas Pro like Premiere."

Thing is, and this is just my anecdotal observation, with Premiere people are on Creative Cloud and hence are paying regularly and/or on the latest version. Similar with Final Cut, it always seemed to me like those users were often on the latest version. With Vegas Pro, and again this is just my anecdotal observation, it seems like it's users have either pirated the software or are on an ancient version. It always made me wonder how Sony made money off this product when most anyone I would come across that used it had a torrented version or a paid version from many years ago that they wouldn't upgrade. In contrast it just always seemed to me like Premier and Final Cut users would at least buy the program and also spend to keep it up to date.

I guess what I'm saying is from my observations, it's wouldn't be surprising to me if they just gave up on it and stuck to their cheaper Movie Studio version. At least with Movie Studio they can get some value from it as a free pack in with their video cameras, whereas with Vegas Pro why bother when people don't seem to want to pay for it or upgrade it.

There's been little reason to upgrade. People shouldn't have to pay on a schedule, just because. A business is supposed to justify its existence by continually providing fair value to be exchanged for enough money to sustain its operations, or it should go out of business.

Vegas has been garbage for years now. It peaked a long time ago, and its been buggy releases every year, without many new features, that cost the same upgrade price. I used to upgrade immediately, while they offered the introductory discount price.

But then I stopped, because I realized I was giving them too much benefit of the doubt. They were not releasing free updates that solved basic problems. They were not substantially improving very much to justify the cost. It was just, "It's time to pay."

It was an obvious cycle. There were major bugs, people would complain about them in the forum, there'd be some minor updates that did not solve them, and then there'd be a paid upgrade that people believed was what would solve those bugs.

But you shouldn't have to pay money for a broken product you already bought to be fixed. It should've been whole to begin with. Then when they fixed some issues, they introduced new ones, and the whole codebase felt like it was a disorganized mess.

Then they branched off to Catalyst, which was great. They could start more fresh, and make it cross platform, focusing on a more modern interface that works better with high-definition displays on touch-enabled machines. That would be worth paying for!

Except the first release was alpha quality. It was like a prototype, without even the most basic features, and full of bugs. I skipped that release. Then the next major upgrade, was looking promising. It had more of the basic functionality, and it had potential.

Except it was a buggy mess. It was beta quality at best, and I spent a lot of time reporting issues to them. Did they release a free update to fix those issues so the software I paid for would work and I might actually use it for something real?

No. They instead did the same exact SCS routine they've been doing with Vegas. They released another major paid upgrade, with some of the bug fixes I reported. They wanted me to pay for some bug fixes, that made the software I paid for useless.

But then they took it even further, and switched to a forced subscription-only model, where I'd have to pay every month for beta testing their work in progress. Then if I did somehow create something with it, if I can't afford to pay anymore, can I still open my project? Can I open it 10 years from now when SCS is gone?

It was bad enough being in the habit of paying them hundreds of dollars annually just to have the newest shiny version. I don't want to have that be a monthly affair. Especially when they've proven they just want the money and don't really care about their software.

There's no passion in these projects. Those people probably all left, and there's just people punching in, sitting in a quiet office hacking away at whatever little disjointed tasks are given to them, with no real vision for the software as a whole, or quality control.

I don't owe them anything, and don't need to upgrade to Vegas 13. I'm only going to upgrade to 14 because it will have support for hi-dpi displays. But then that's it. I'm not paying subscription, or upgrading anymore, unless they give actual reasons to.

I'd like a functional version of Catalyst. I'd support that project and give it more leeway in terms of its bugginess, if I could believe they were capable as engineers of one day solving the problems. I'm not so sure about that though, and they lost my support.

Hopefully though whatever happening will be a revolution at SCS, where everything changes. I'd like some big structural shifts, where everyone is fired and it moves in-house to Japan. Then maybe they'll focus on making Catalyst an acceptable replacement for Vegas for some people, and make subscription optional as part of their Ci network.

Then hopefully there'll at least be a semi-stable final release of Vegas, so even if they slow down on releasing updates for that it will still leave people with a working version that supports modern hardware and operating systems for years to come.

ever the pessimist - i don't think there is a future....

just finished a major project where i used 13 for fast cut of 4+hrs interviews down to 20 mins for a 15 min program. and that was it, everything else was in resolve*.

frankly there's nothing as quick as vegas for such basic work, and moving on, scripting is and has been a remarkable feature that certainly got many people involved in 'under the bonnet' additions that made editing a much simpler process. plug-ins have been an up and down affair, but on the whole a welcome addition in general. in its day vegas WAS THE nle.

unfortunately, as jamon points out, there's been no real movement from scs; we still have a plethora of ancient bugs, almost as old as the vfw code vegas is still using, and upgrades haven't exactly been that memorable - 3d? who wanted it, who needs it, and so on.

catalyst edit is beyond a joke, and the idea of it being subscription even more laughable. it's half-baked and seemingly dead in the water too. prepare is useful, but really, it's a utility dressed up pretending to be something more.

i still like sony hardware, nothing came close to my ex1 in hd at its price point, and if / when i move to 4k it'll be likely to a sony camera (unless i can afford a decent zoom on a bm ursa).

i think we're coming to the end of an era, and whilst we are looking forward, scs seems to be either standing still, asleep, or simply fading into insignificance...

*btw - another resolve release today. the program (FREE) is being updated every couple of months so it seems...

@chap "...The industry is 80% mac now..."

Where did you get this statistic? Would you please share?

>>>>@chap "...The industry is 80% mac now..."

Where did you get this statistic? Would you please share?<<<

He added a 0 by mistake and even that is pretty generous.

Industry is 90% CGI and almost all CGI is on Windows or Linux.
Even just editing, not even close.

"The industry is 80% mac now"

More of the now former Mac users I know, had to switch over to Hackintoshes and have now abandoned that and switched to PCs due to hardware and not wanting to take on the ricks of the hacks.

...had to switch over to Hackintoshes and have now abandoned that and switched to PCs due to hardware...

Did it also caused by recent MacPro 'trash bin' design which was not-expandable ?

Set

@deusx

You maybe right it was a typo, because the last time I checked, Mac OS market share was less than 9%, and Windows was about 93%. But in the video editing category, I think Mac OS has much more market share, maybe around 30% if I remember correctly, but Windows OS is still the dominate OS in that category as well.