@Deva-Bida you can trust the comparison page to see what is included.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/sem/vegas-pro/product-comparison/#productMenu

Just be aware that Boris Continuum is not the complete Boris continuum FX, but selected elements from the Boris complete continuum FX as stated correctly in the comparison.

Thanks. And thanks for pointing out that it's not Boris Complete. Purchased and looking forward to exploring.

@Deva-Bida you can trust the comparison page to see what is included.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/sem/vegas-pro/product-comparison/#productMenu

Just be aware that Boris Continuum is not the complete Boris continuum FX, but selected elements from the Boris complete continuum FX as stated correctly in the comparison.

Okay, first time trying to use a Suite on two machines. It appears I am only able to activate some of the 3rd-party items (Boris, SpectralLayers, and Zynaptiq) on one of the machines, with attempts on the second machine showing the licenses as in use.

Is this WAD or is there some other steps needed to have all the included 3rd-party elements active on both machines? (NewBlue products seem to work on both installs.)

Unfortunately, each company has their own policies when it comes to how many systems you can install something on. Magix allows 2, but folks like Boris have differing policies so you may have to purchase a second license. Another thing to note about the suites, many times these companies also lock those bundles to the version of VEGAS you bought, and won't honor the upgrade to a new version unless you actually buy the plugin from them full price.

The downside of bundling with third parties, everyone has their own way of going about things.

Does Vegas Post 18 support boris fx plugin such as continuum or mocha pro?

Does Vegas Post 18 support boris fx plugin such as continuum or mocha pro?

Yes

Some advice please: I am a writer who has had to learn video over the past few years. I am a (more or less) competent editor but not high end. I use Vegas Pro 17, (probably about a half of what it can do). I haven't seen anything in Version 18 that shouts 'must have' at me for my purposes. However, I am wrestling with some footage shot under difficult conditions where there is a lot of wind noise and have to get to grips with making the best of it. I keep getting offers from Magix for Sound Forge, which is not expensive. However, we are also being offered Spectra Layers with Version 18 of Vegas Pro. How easy will each be to get to grips with and will I get better results with Spectra Layers than with Sound Forge? Where should my limited funds go? (By the way, I do know the best way is not have wind noise in the first place - the circumstances were difficult.). Advice welcome.

Hiiiiii peter-mcintyre,

I'm a Vegas Pro 15 user. I never could get the noise (i.e., wind, ceiling fans, air conditioning, etc.) reduction just right with the Vegas built-in plug-in's. I would end up with so much reduction that the voice audio would have annoying "squeaky" audio artifacts. So, I would open the video file in Audacity (freeware), which would display the audio track of the video. Then, I would use the built-in noise reduction effect very successfully. Finally, I would export that audio file as MP3/WAV/etc. and replace the audio track in Vegas Pro.

I bet Spectra Layers could do this as well, but Audacity is free and has been around for years. It's a good product too.

Hope this helps! :-)

Many thanks for this Douglas. Time to do a bit of research. Maybe try Audacity first. I suppose there are online treaching aids for each of these options.

Just upgraded from Vegas Pro 15 to 18.

* The media window scrubber in/out thing is frustrating to use and I haven't found a way to turn it off.

* The automatic multicam/audio sync tool has failed to produce a single correct result. Except once or twice I get that failure pop-up.

* Sometimes images on the timeline are rendered as black boxes in the preview. A mix of JPEGs and PNGs. These images are larger than the project's set resolution.

* The Hitfilm Movie Essentials plugins no longer work (I have past projects with the mosaic plugin... so I'm going to assume those are broken now). I've been considering buying PluralEyes, but will the $300 spent be worth it in the long run if Vegas can drop support for a given plugin whenever it feels like it?

Overall, it does feel a bit more prompt when editing, but things like the media window do seem to slow things down a bit to counteract that.

Hoping to eventually find some value in the upgrade expense...

The media window scrubbing lets you press i or o to set in and out points in your media before you drag it onto the timeline. It takes some getting used to i order to train yourself to grab your media by the title and not the thumbnail, and perhaps this could be aided by the user holding a button down to grab it by anywhere.

Since I don't have Vegas Image, it would be nice if the icon for it were disabled like the 360 and HDR icons are greyed when disabled. The design is distracting and is becoming very annoying when trying to judge colors in the video window. Try to make the icon fit it with the other icons. Let's keep the design consistent, please.

Hoping to eventually find some value in the upgrade expense...

@ccscotty
For me, trying the free trial for 1 month worked well.
I skipped some versions when it was of no use to me.

I was also unfamiliar with the scrubber because I adjust the events in the timeline.
I have now made a habit of clicking on the clips in the lower area.

The media window scrubbing lets you press i or o to set in and out points in your media before you drag it onto the timeline. It takes some getting used to i order to train yourself to grab your media by the title and not the thumbnail, and perhaps this could be aided by the user holding a button down to grab it by anywhere.

Thanks! Going for the textual title does help.

I do wish there was an option to disable it. At least with my workflow I tend to pull what I need to work on into the timeline and splice it up there. That said, maybe there is some workflow benefit to the thumbnail scrubber for long clips to find a specific one.

Actually my biggest gripe about the media window is that it re-renders the thumbnails quite often. You'd thing if it generated a thumbnail it wouldn't need to re-render it. Especially for stuff like PNGs or JPEGs. Now it's constantly refreshing PNGs and I'm like... come on. I guess there is some type of temporary cache for those instead of something that can stay semi-permanent.

I just found one thing that speeds up my process. In the render pop-up there is a new button called "Project Location" next to "Browse". I usually edit my vocal audio in Audacity by exporting a 48khz 32-bit wav, so that button saves me quite a few clicks!

* The Hitfilm Movie Essentials plugins no longer work (I have past projects with the mosaic plugin... so I'm going to assume those are broken now). I've been considering buying PluralEyes, but will the $300 spent be worth it in the long run if Vegas can drop support for a given plugin whenever it feels like it?
 

While plugins bundled with old versions of Vegas usually don't work in new ones the same is not true for ones you pay for licenses for. I don't see Vegas going out of its way to break anything. With the Sony to Magix transition plug-ins needed to be reworked for folder names and the like. PluralEyes handled this well with updates on their end. I went from 12-15 and now to 18 and the Vegas plugin continues to work and be supported by PluralEyes.
(FYI- RedGiant has periodic sales with a 40% discount if you are patient)

* The Hitfilm Movie Essentials plugins no longer work (I have past projects with the mosaic plugin... so I'm going to assume those are broken now). I've been considering buying PluralEyes, but will the $300 spent be worth it in the long run if Vegas can drop support for a given plugin whenever it feels like it?
 

While plugins bundled with old versions of Vegas usually don't work in new ones the same is not true for ones you pay for licenses for. I don't see Vegas going out of its way to break anything. With the Sony to Magix transition plug-ins needed to be reworked for folder names and the like. PluralEyes handled this well with updates on their end. I went from 12-15 and now to 18 and the Vegas plugin continues to work and be supported by PluralEyes.
(FYI- RedGiant has periodic sales with a 40% discount if you are patient)

Thanks for the tip and general info on RedGiant. Much appreciated.

I don't agree with the situation of older plugins, whether bundled or not. Even bundled software likely has money being exchanged between companies. I did do research after noticing that the plugins didn't show up. ( https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/a-reason-of-why-vp17-not-load-hitfilm-movie-essentials-pack--117341/ ). From that thread, it looks more like bureaucracy than anything. Someone made a fix that had to pull down their files (I made a quick attempt to edit the OFX file but it didn't work for me... not sure exactly sure what he did).

Neither company wants to take responsibility even when users have asked for help. That shows me Magix isn't taking their users into much consideration. While I've used Vegas, mostly movie studio, for a really long time... I can force myself to eventually learn something like Resolve or get back into Premiere. I've done software development for a long time and do understand the difficulties of supporting legacy software (From V15 to V17 in this case), but in this case it seems like company policies rather than difficulty of adjustments to make it work. There likely would have been a slight cost (worker hours) on one side or the other of these companies, but it looks like something else was at play. My point is that I don't appreciate that my older projects now have breaking changes. My main focus is YouTube, but I also upload to places like Facebook eventually. I did uninstall v15, so I'll probably have to re-install that if I can get the install files again. Or I can implement the plugin in a different way at the expense of more time. I'm voicing my issues and thoughts here with the hope that either Magix or the team in Wisconsin sees it (if they still exist).

In my fantasies, I would love to be able to click a button and have the track level all sound automatically. Tell me...there is such a thing? I looked for ten seconds, could not find an answer and gave up.

Some advice please: I am a writer who has had to learn video over the past few years. I am a (more or less) competent editor but not high end. I use Vegas Pro 17, (probably about a half of what it can do). I haven't seen anything in Version 18 that shouts 'must have' at me for my purposes. However, I am wrestling with some footage shot under difficult conditions where there is a lot of wind noise and have to get to grips with making the best of it. I keep getting offers from Magix for Sound Forge, which is not expensive. However, we are also being offered Spectra Layers with Version 18 of Vegas Pro. How easy will each be to get to grips with and will I get better results with Spectra Layers than with Sound Forge? Where should my limited funds go? (By the way, I do know the best way is not have wind noise in the first place - the circumstances were difficult.). Advice welcome.

If it's not crashing...dont bother upgrading.

In my fantasies, I would love to be able to click a button and have the track level all sound automatically. Tell me...there is such a thing? I looked for ten seconds, could not find an answer and gave up.

There you go: https://alexaudiobutler.com/

But where's the fun in that? 😇

There you go: https://alexaudiobutler.com/

It looks absolutely great, but it seems to be aimed at Premiere, Resolve and Audition. The Professional version says "and many more" and "future NLE and DAW integration". But @adis-a3097 - does it actually fully work in Vegas Pro 18 from your experience?

And does it do 5.1 etc? - there's no info on their website about mono/stereo/surround sound.

There you go: https://alexaudiobutler.com/

It looks absolutely great, but it seems to be aimed at Premiere, Resolve and Audition. The Professional version says "and many more" and "future NLE and DAW integration". But @adis-a3097 - does it actually fully work in Vegas Pro 18 from your experience?

And does it do 5.1 etc? - there's no info on their website about mono/stereo/surround sound.

I don't know.

I only watched clip or two on YT, and at first I thought it's great, which it is when working with small numbers of stems, and all you do is short YouTube clips, bombastic trailers and advertisement, but for a feature? Where the soundtrack is so complex and layered, nuanced and dynamic, where the soundtrack needs to be customised to the picture that it takes a period of several weeks?

Nah, AI still gotta lots to learn. My 2c. :)

In my fantasies, I would love to be able to click a button and have the track level all sound automatically. Tell me...there is such a thing? I looked for ten seconds, could not find an answer and gave up.

Do you mean normalize? You can use the multiple selection tool and right click one to access normalize (switches, normalize). The problem there is that short clips will be normalized in such a way that they will end up louder than longer clips most likely.

I assume Vegas has a good amount of audio adjustment tools/filters, but what I do is extract the vocal track near the end of my edit so I can fix it up in Audacity. It is a process, but at least with what I've done over the years there isn't some type of silver bullet to getting vocals that stay consistent over a long video. I shorten the worst waveform peaks by hand and then I do: compressor, equalization, normalization, and noise reduction. The compressor is what mostly smooths out loudness so things stay consistent over multiple cameras and filming areas. The equalization filter can be used to pull out frequency range of the human voice. I use that to further separate out my voice from the background. Check out Alex Knickerbocker's channel for tips on audio. He is well above my knowledge level on audio, but I've learned quite a bit. So I think he has a knack at helping people understand more advanced topics.

I own Vegas Pro 16 Edit (along with a few previous iterations from Sony/MAGIX !)

I'm looking at VP 18 Suite (trialing actually but its only Edit, duh).

Question: If I purchase the VP Suite are the "add-ons" from other providers permanent, or just "limited" and then I have to buy? I have been "caught" too many times with MAGIX ...