Vegas Pro - Time To Think Again

xdcamer wrote on 6/5/2016, 10:28 PM

As a vegas pro user for over 12 yrs i have mixed emotions about the news that Sony have sold out Vegas Pro.
I could never see myself moving from SCS Vegas Pro untill now.
I have held out for v14 with the hope of a huge leep forward but now it all looks like it will be all too late as a new company have to pick up the pieces.

Its disappointing that Sony who sell us Professional and bradcast cameras cant deliver the advances needed and i for one no longer feel like waiting around for Magix to decide on the future of Vegas Pro when Sony couldnt do it.

I have just done what i least expected and switched to Premiere Pro cc and wow... This is light years ahead with slip and slide, ripple edits, scrubable timline and thumbnails in project and media folders, realtime rendering and more.

I guess i never delved into anything else in a serious way while i had confidence with Vegas Pro. I did fool around with Premiere, Avid, Edius and others on the windows platform but now i see clearer in that there is a better NLE when i am not blinded by my one track vision and forced to step out of my comfort zone.....

So glad my eyes were opened so in a bizzare way i should thank SCS for leaving us in the dark for so long about the future development of Vegas Pro and the sell out really only ads further uncertainly in my opinion.

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Comments

Steve_Rhoden wrote on 6/8/2016, 5:50 AM

Oh please, No one here took your post out of context! And stop whining because
everyone didn't agree with you... What was the purpose of your ranting post mmm?
For all of us here to agree with you and switch to Premiere because we were blinded?

All of us here are equally disappointed in how Vegas was treated, and was also
utterly frustrated with the silence and slow pace for the many months of neglect
by the Sony team. So in essence its good it went to Magix, because Sony did not
care one hoot about Vegas nor us their loyal customers... So get over yourself!

Looking intelligently on the big picture, Magix has the capability and passion to take
Vegas where it should be, while they themselves can also grow further as competing Media company. I am optimistic on this new path.

deusx wrote on 6/8/2016, 9:06 AM

>>>>This is light years ahead with slip and slide, ripple edits, scrubable timline and thumbnails in project and media folders, realtime rendering and more.<<<<

That's all stuff that's been in Vegas since 2007 or so.

Real time rendering? Sure, if you use clip xyz on tuesday between 2:45 pm and 2:56 pm. Otherwise it works just as it has for years on all other NLEs

jwcarney wrote on 6/8/2016, 6:23 PM

I have the Adobe subscription and like what I"m getting for the money. If the 49 dollars a month was for Premier only (sort of like Avid) then I probably wouldn't bother. But the rest of the tools make it a great value and Adobe is making them more powerful with every release (not just Premier). Plus the free tools for my iPad makes for a pretty compelling system.

But I still prefer Vegas and Soundforge for video and audio, and hope Magix has it catch up in the features department. Time to upgrade to 7.1 surround support for instance, support latest VST plug ins, HDR support (new 4K video standard)...They already have an NLE that has lots of cool features, so maybe there is hope. I"m keeping an open mind on the whole thing.

zdogg wrote on 6/9/2016, 12:48 AM

Also an Adobe Cloud subscriber, and I use Davinci Resolve as well.

Nothing is as direct and to the point especially working on the time line and doing basic
track to track compositing as is Vegas. There are so many antiquated routines (at least to me) in Premiere that it is just a joyless tool...I have used it for a couple of things I could not do otherwise....

Davinci Resolve is very clunky on the timeline, though it is improving... and their color correction/grading and forground background separation tools are pretty good, though the way it deals with Bezier Curves is not very elegant. After Effects and Mocha for that, though again, in a pinch, you can do things with Resolve and it may get you what you need for some basic separation.

(Ammended 6-10 NEW RELEASE Davinci Resolve 12.5 with reportedly 250 new features which do address some of the "clunkiness" and we'll see. They are, for sure, aggressively seeking the NLE market epecially for those already inclined to use Resolve as a grading tool.).

Anyway, an improved Vegas would make a lot of people happy.

Terje wrote on 6/29/2016, 7:45 AM

>> I remember similar fears when Sony took over Sonic Foundry and that turned out fine.

I'm sorry. WHAT? Vegas has the best editing experience of any video editor I've ever tried, but the SCS transition was, if you look at the result, a cluster...k. Sorry. Vegas has basically been "add dumb-ass, non-relevant features one after the other, but totally ignore serious issues that have plagued the product for years and years".

When Sony took over SCS all MY fears came to pass and a bunch of new ones to boot.

I am hoping that the Magix acquisition is going to go well, and I am certainly going to upgrade to the new version no matter what quality it is when released (I want to help them succeed) but I am not going to cancel my CC subscription in September for sure.

Terje wrote on 6/29/2016, 8:01 AM

>> an improved Vegas would make a lot of people happy

Indeed and absolutely. Until the Magix acquisition I had decided that no matter what happened (and I wasn't expecting much to happen) I was not going to upgrade to VP14. I've upgraded from VP10 to VP13, though rarely using VP at all in favor of Premiere. I don't like editing in Premiere much, I like the integration with After Effects, I think the Adobe Media Encoder integration is also great where I can work on multiple projects, send a single project off to be rendered to a multitude of formats etc, queueing them up etc. I don't like the editing process in Premiere Pro at all though. It is far more intuitive in Vegas, even after several years now of Premiere work. The difference can be basically described as: When sitting down with Vegas I was looking forward to a few hours of work, I was happy to fire it up and I couldn't wait to get started. With PP it was more like a chore. I chore that had some pleasurable moments, but a chore all the same. Vegas is fun, PP is work.

Sadly, Premiere has a feature that I am sorely missing in Vegas, so PP it is. The feature is: PP works, Vegas doesn't. It crashes, can't import my footage properly (SCS had apparently never heard of a camera manufacturer named Panasonic) and is generally a fun way to make my day eight hours of utter frustration. PP is a chore, but I have always been able to sit down, do the chore, and finish the day. I have not had that ability with Vegas since VP9 and SD footage.

I hope, with all my heart, that Magix will fix important parts of Vegas in the next 12 months. Don't bother with new features at all, just fix the stuff that doesn't work. Remove the dumb titler that nobody ever used. Get rid of the 3D nonsense. Clutter is clutter. I want a fast, efficient, stable video editor with a core set of functioning features. Make sure you can use standard plugins, and voila, I will become a Vegas user again.

John_Cline wrote on 6/29/2016, 8:04 AM

Oh, please! I've used most every one of those "non-relevant" features.

Guy S. wrote on 6/29/2016, 2:57 PM

<< just trying to understand motivations behind posts.>>

That's a fair question, here's my take.

Many years back I read a post about Vegas in the Canopus (Grass Valley now) user forum from someone who was as disappointed with the Canopus/Premiere editing experience as I was. Then a couple more users chimed in that they had also started using Vegas.

I had seen Vegas at NAB a few times but ignored it because at that time most NLE's were buggy and/or poorly executed and I didn't believe that an audio company could turn a multi-track audio program into a decent video editor.

I decided to try Vegas because it was recommended by peers, and its speed, workflow, and reliability has been a real game changer, allowing me to quickly and reliably produce high quality work under tight deadlines.

But I'm not a "Loyal Vegas User". Far from it. I'm an editor who uses the best tool to accomplish the task at hand and for years (since ver 4) that tool happens to be Vegas.

My motivation for posting is to thank the members of this community who have helped me immeasurably over the years. The transition to Vegas could have been painful but you helped make it painless.

Secondly, as a working editor I rely on the ideas, insights, and opinions of other professionals and would like to continue hearing them. Could I glean insights elsewhere? Yes, and I do. But the ideas I value most are from working professionals using the same editing app as me, whether that be Canopus/Premiere or Vegas.

Finally, to the OP, thank you for posting. I agree that Adobe is doing a nice job with Premiere. I recently compared several DSLR and mirrorless cameras and appreciated Premiere's editing performance with 4k native and ProRes 10-bit 4:2:2 files. I could easily apply custom 3D LUTs I created in Photoshop, and having Lumetri color grading integrated into Premiere is very nice. I'm sticking with Vegas for my next project but feel a backup plan is wise "just in case".

Guy