I've been a Vegas user since the very first release of the original Sonic Foundry Vegas that was really just multitrack audio recording software. From that first release through to Vegas 6.0 it was a pretty rock solid piece of software. From the point I made the jump to Vegas 8 onwards the software has in my opinion become a real trial to use due to an increasing array of bugs and instability.At one point I was complaining about it so much in the forums that I was banned for several years for 'being negative'. When I got to Vegas 12 I decided that I would avoid any further updates and try and phase the application out of my workflow. Despite that, Vegas remains the best application for audio editing, in my opinion. You would be mad to try and using it in anything other than a very basic recording scenario. It lacks basic functionality for a music recording studio application for instance, like midi support, VST instrument support, VST3 support that Reaper and Cubase and Pro-Tools all support out of the box. But if I need to edit a finished master, then I will always do it in Vegas as I think it offers the best graphical solution for creating musical intelligent edits that are hard to hear.
But where Vegas falls down is its unreliability, its bugginess, its constant lagging behind what is happening in terms of standards and codecs. It falls down in the hours you have to wait for a render to complete because it does not support any GPU hardware properly, and because it is based on now ancient Video for Windows architecture, and then the time you have to spend meticulously checking your render for faults because something has quietly fallen over in the render process, and then the time you have to render again and again hoping that pot-luck will eventually reward you with a flawless render.
With each new release you get the promise of some pie in the sky new features, and you can be almost assured that they will be buggy to the point of being useless, while at the same time some basic features will be broken. For instance, I have had problems with Vegas 12 being unable to handle basic compositing and movement of images over a certain size. Seemingly randomly the compositing engine falls over and elements of the composite will flicker in and out. Recently I had a project where I needed to deliver some titles for someone. I had replaced Vegas in my workflow for nearly every element of the production except for the very final stage where I combined the top half of one video with the bottom half of another video. Everything done outside of Vegas went very smoothly. When it came to that final stage with Vegas involved, everything fell over. Each time I rendered I got random image corruption. I disabled the GPU support, I made sure there was tonnes of space in the temporary folders. I ran the machine with every extraneous task disabled (on Vegas 8 it became routine for me to disable Explorer.exe, I found it that fussy). It took several attempts to get the thing to render properly (which happened on the third or so time I completely reset the machine and started again, does that imply strange clean-up problems in the temp folders?) and by the time it did, i had lost several hours, all for a clip lasting a total of 15 seconds, Originally it was supposed to be 30 seconds and hold with a static shot between about 12 seconds and 30 seconds, but I shortened it at some point just to try and get the animated section rendered in some form.
So when I get offers emailed to me for getting Vegas 14 at a discounted price, I barely look at the new features. What I do is come here to see what is broken and to consider installing the trial version to see if the basic bugs that are driving me mad at present are resolved. And when I get here, yes I see lots of reports of broken basic features. The one that particularly catches my eye is the one regarding the removal/missing due to a bug (depending on whose explanation you read) of the Dolby Digital Pro codec. Just to make it clear, without that codec you can not do Dolby Digital properly, and you certainly can not do 5.1 on a Blu Ray. You can not work professionally with the medium without that codec. That is the truth. To the best of my recollection there are a few flags that are only available to configure in the Pro codec, and you need those flags. Not everybody understands how they work, and they are set wrong on a lot of commercial releases, but without them you are not going to be able to configure the render of your mix correctly. Dolby Digital Pro being missing from the software is therefore a major problem. Reading some of the descriptions of the problem in the forum, it appears that some people were resorting to trying to get their surround mixes encoded to Dolby Digital in DVD Architect itself, the result being that the mix was getting collapsed to two tracks of the 5.1 in a messy fashion). In my book this is extremely bad practice. You should not have anything rendering in DVD Architect, be it video or audio. Any video for DVD Architect should be rendered in Vegas Pro using the DVD Architect templates provided as a template, and the sound should be rendered separately as another file in the format intended to go directly onto the disc. If DVD Architect reports it is rendering one of your main media files something has probably gone wrong.
Now if you believe as been suggested in a response from support to one user that the codec was removed by a management decision, that indicates some serious shortsightedness and a disconnection from those of us who are actually trying to use the application in the field. If it was due to a bug that has accidentally made it unavailable, it indicates that the software is not getting road tested sufficiently before release. We are a long way since the initial release of Vegas 14 and for this problem to still remain just ignores the basic fact that many of us use the application for a purpose. We can not wait for months on end for the issue to be resolved. Pretty elementary problems like that should be identified one day and resolved the next. The reality is, those of us that need the feature usually need to get stuff done in a pretty narrow time frame.
I have one project on my schedule that would be useful to use Vegas, and the only reason I was considering using it is because it is a legacy Vegas 6/8 project that I would otherwise need to export wholesale to another editing application using EDL format, and I would have to start from scratch with all of the effects, fades and most likely audio sync. I actually originally bought Vegas 12 solely to work on this project that has been put on the backburner for several years. I needed Vegas 12 to enable the use of a single OFX plugin. However, in the process so many other complications arose, I never actually moved the project beyond basic preparation of the project file and a few failed test renders.
Most of the rest of my work now revolves around Youtube videos with a very short turnaround time. Every time I introduce Vegas to do anything it adds several hours of rendering, even it is just a matter of adding a couple of simple text titles. There was a time when Vegas was pretty much the fastest and most flexible editing solution on the block. Now it is utterly pedestrian. I have actually come up with an alternate workflow using OBS Studio which allows me to produce a shoot almost live, adding prepared and live rendered titles flown directly into the material at the time of filming the talent, so once we signal the cut, I have a file ready to upload pretty much instantly. I would much rather shoot, edit, render and upload, but the critical factor on many of the projects I am working on is time. If you don't get that video up fast then nobody will see it, so it is better to have it seen and have it cut in a live style rather than to fight with Vegas for the perfect cut, and then wait several hours for it to actually render and upload.
So with that in mind, this is what I personally think Magix need to be doing to make Vegas relevant and useful and to justify years of future development:
1, Fix all of the reliability issues and bugs affecting basic functionality. Open out the beta test group to more people and have targets to act upon their reports with minimal turnarounds. Never forget that many of us rely on this software for our bread and butter. When the software stops working, we get hungry.
2, Sort out the speed issues and hardware support. You need to be able to render quickly from reasonable hardware in decent quality. Graphic hardware needs to properly supported, which leads to:
3, Transition the architecture from Video For Windows to whatever is newer (Direct X, surely?). Adopt frameworks that allow wider ranges of codecs to be supported and used effectively.
4, Add features that are going to appeal to a modernising industry where individuals have the capacity to produce both pre-recorded and live content. I think Vegas should certainly be developed to add live broadcast features (potentially in a separate release). With that in mind, live acquisition show be revisited and proper modules that handle this in a way that is relevant to the current era is desirable. An additional module that allows streaming to Youtube, and perhaps even a system that allows you to render a video whilst simultaneously uploading it to Youtube would be extremely desirable.
5, Some well trodden and tested routes to hardware controllers; It always disappointed me that the previous owners, even though they were primarily hardware producers, did not actively market any particular hardware control surface to go with Vegas. It would be nice if there was a goto hardware controller that worked out of the box with Vegas. I have seen today that someone has wrote an application for editing shortcuts for iPad and Android tablets, and I know there is support for certain third party hardware controllers, but it would be handy of there was something marked 'made for Vegas' that you knew would work without any fuss.
I know it is a long post, but I have not dumped my ideas on here for some time, and I will not be suprised if I get a lengthy ban again for doing it. I like the basic audio editing of the software and I will probably always use it for editing stereo and surround masters for as long as I can keep my current license alive, but I am very much wanting to transition away now as i have spent too much of my life and energy fighting frankly stupid bugs that get in the way of the basic business of productivity. I would be absolutely delighted if Magic finally rallied and put out a rock-solid Vegas that fits what we need to today.