I created a sample project in both Vegas and Catalyst.





I imported an XAVC S clip from my Sony RX100 III.

In Vegas I used 32-bit full range, linear 1.0 gamma, and no view transform.
(But I also rendered a 32-bit video levels version, as Catalyst appears to use video levels)

After adding some video FX, I noticed the preview was slower in Catalyst than Vegas. I used Prepare to quickly transcode an XAVC Intra version, and used the relink and replace functions in both to swap the video. Then Catalyst previewed smoothly.

I used the same numbers for the plugins, but some looked differently (because I was using full range in Vegas). I did not try to match the appearance, I just left it however it looked using the same numbers. I tried to repeat the same procedure on both, but the interfaces are different and I did not bother with frame accuracy.

Both Vegas and Catalyst crashed, but Catalyst crashed much more frequently. It must've crashed at least 20 times.

In repeating the same procedure, I noticed subtle differences. I would've preferred Catalyst in most instances, but its pre-release quality made some things annoying and unstable.

A few notes about Catalyst:

* Side panes can be hidden, but they do an animated slide that is slow
* Mark In/Out points don't snap to clip boundaries when moved with the mouse
* Mark In/Out points aren't saved in project for both Catalyst and Vegas
* No Ctrl+Drag to make a copy of a clip
* Projects don't reopen after crash and there's no auto-recovery if you didn't save
* Many of the conventions and keyboard shortcuts are the same for both
* Plugins don't have presets, and I don't care much because it's quick to adjust

One thing particularly annoying was how the Inspector pane changes whenever you click anything, but it does not remember your scroll position. I would have it scrolled down to work on adjusting the video effect parameters, then use the mouse to click an empty part of the timeline to relocate the play cursor to that point in time, and then the clip lost focus so the Inspector switched to the track tab where I clicked. Then I'd click the clip again, and it'd go back to that clip's inspector, but the scroll was reset to the top so I'd have to scroll down again. To prevent that you have to remember not to click in the track, but instead drag the play cursor. Maybe they should change it to only auto-switch to the track tab when you click the far left area and select a track there. I don't know yet, but there's a better way to do it, and it should at least remember the last scroll position you had for that clip's inspector. There needs to be more keyboard navigation for jumping between the Inspector and timeline, so I can change time position and such while quickly adjusting properties in the inspector.

Catalyst doesn't have all the mouse ways to zoom the tracks like Vegas has. That's alright though, because there's more efficient ways it could be done. I used the keyboard shortcuts primarily, Up/Down arrows for horizontal, and Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down for vertical. There should be more shortcuts to do things like, "Auto-fit the entire timeline into view", "Auto-expand the current clip to fill entire view", which toggle back to the previous view when you repeat it. So if I want to adjust a fade more closely, I can instantly make that area as large as possible, then jump back to the overall view.

For the keyframe animation, Vegas is more powerful with a curve editor, and a line visualization. However, the basic way keyframes work in Catalyst is much nicer for some things, because it's actually part of the timeline. In Vegas you have the keyframes in the FX window, and have to use the sync button to use the play cursor in the main timeline. But in Catalyst you go into a keyframe editor mode where it uses the main timeline, and just hides everything except the keyframes. It's easier that way to navigate at which times things occur.

I didn't like Vegas' interface with all the tracks separated that I needed to resize, and all the tiny buttons everywhere on everything, and separate floating panes jumping around everywhere needing management. Part of why I liked the Tracktion audio software GUI is because it put everything on one screen, and there were no floating pieces, it was just all these input elements built into the main interface. Catalyst is somewhat similar, where most everything is right there, and you don't waste time messing with the interface much. You can't resize the panes, or drag and dock things, and that's good, because it'll force them to make the workflow more efficient with powerful shortcut functions, and you to actually learn them and be able to do most things with the keyboard.

Catalyst has a separate fade tool. I pressed F, my cursor changed, I did the fade right on the clip like I would in Vegas, release F, and it switches back to the default cursor. When I went to do fades in Vegas, I had a more difficult time getting my mouse cursor in just the right spot on the clip to drag the fade points. That was easier in the past, but now with UHD display the interface isn't as optimal. I think maybe they changed it too, where you need to hit the corner in a way that maybe doesn't feel the same as I recall from older versions.

When it was time to render, I chose XAVC S for both. But the resulting file from Catalyst would only play for a second, then stop. I could drag toward the end of the clip in some players, but the thing was broken and most of it was missing. In Windows explorer the thumbnail didn't even appear for it. I was trying different rendering profiles to see which one I could match to a Vegas one, and Catalyst even crashed when rendering. But it's a separate process, so I saw the problem report window, and the notification in the top notification area showed it failed, but only for that one rendering process, so the entire app did not close.

One thing interesting about how it renders, is you can continue to edit, or start multiple renders, and it will put them in a queue. Since I was trying to compare rendering profiles, I could start multiple ones then walk away and come back to multiple files done.

I found I'd have to use AVC, and it appears to use the MainConcept approach, so I inspected the resulting file to try to set the Vegas rendering profile to match. It was close enough, and in some parts of the videos where there's no FX when comparing they look identical.





(I figured some of the FX looked different because I originally used full range, and that changes the ranges for the numbers in the FX parameters. So I rendered again using 32-bit video levels, and now they look more similar. If you want to see the full range version, it's .)

I used fades, but Vegas has presets for velocity-curved "smooth" fades. I left some of that in Vegas, because my goal wasn't to make the videos identical, but to see how the process and results differed between applications right now. That the fades can look nicer in Vegas right now is an advantage for it, and something Catalyst will probably have in an update.

I was going to use velocity envelopes to ramp up and down the speed, but Catalyst does not have that, it only has a flat rate control for clips. Another thing I was going to use is the track compositing modes in Vegas, but Catalyst does not have that, only clip opacity, and not even track opacity. There also isn't a reverse clip feature in Catalyst.

But I could use clip opacity, which I did, and the HSL plugin, Glow, Starburst, title generator, solid color generator, and clip rate.

I did use Stabilize, but they worked differently. In Vegas, it needed to be a media FX plugin, and seemed to apply to everything that used that media file. Whereas in Catalyst, I could drop it on a specific clip, and it seemed to only affect it, because when that clip played I noticed the jump in video because it scales and crops to allow for room to rotate the video to make it appear stable. But Vegas didn't have that jump, so I ended up disabling it to make them more similar. It's easy to bypass the plugins, just click the eye icon.

I think a point of the renders is that there's a lot of similarity between Vegas and Catalyst when it comes to the basics. When things are equal, I prefer Catalyst, in theory, if it didn't crash and annoy.

A lot of the micromanaging in Vegas is gone in Catalyst. I have no idea what bit depth Catalyst uses for processing, or the motion blur algorithm. There's not really any settings. It doesn't ask when you import your first clip if you want to match settings, it just does it. I don't know how it's doing color management; there's a "Grade in" option, which I left at Rec. 709, but there's no color space dropdown for the media file like there is in Vegas. All that complexity is missing, and it felt a little weird to just trust it to automatically do things correctly. But the end result is the same. The final render didn't come out with different colors or anything, and I didn't need a hack with a video levels plugin for studio to computer RGB. Everything just worked.

Well, it worked for a few minutes, until it'd crash, and I'd have to restart, re-open the project, do a little more, hitting Ctrl+S after every modification. It seems to save the undo history in the project file though, so after a restart of the app I could still use Ctrl+Z to undo steps that happened before I saved. Maybe some of the Vegas/Catalyst code they're reusing in both apps doesn't like a chipset or something, where it'd work better on other people's machines.

This little sample project taught me that Catalyst is very much like recent versions of Vegas, where it looks like a nice tool to have, and I pay money with that belief, but in practice it's unstable and unrefined. SCS seems to have this pattern I'll call a fumbling release cycle, where it's like a disorganized frantic kitchen with a deadline, where even when food is half cooked they still plop it on the plate and serve it to hungry people. They have a fancy menu, delightful atmosphere, and polite waiters. They even smother the uncooked food in seasoned sauces so it really looks and smells like it should be a good meal. But then when you're sinking your teeth into it, and taste the uncooked goo, you're filled with that mixed feeling like, "I should be loving this, but I'm also not." Yet you're already seated, already familiar, and there's nowhere else to go. So you eat it anyway, and keep coming back, thinking surely it's temporary, they're just too busy, but next time things will have calmed down, and the chefs will get it together, so it'll be the complete dining experience you expected. Except it's not, and I'm impressed with a lot of what they're doing, but also baffled why they can't get the basics perfected before releasing to the public for sale.

Maybe some of the crashing while editing is just my machine. But major things like rendering to XAVC S and the file not even playing? That has to be deeper than some odd hardware conflict.

I like much of Catalyst better than Vegas, but neither actually work for me right now to produce a little video without hassle on my current computer system.

If you like Vegas though, and haven't tried Catalyst, I'd give the trial a shot. There's been a lot of undeserved negativity in this forum about Catalyst, when really if you just compare the screenshots and renders you can see it's very similar, and a lot more simplistic, which can be refreshing depending on which features you use most. If you don't encounter bugs, I could see it being a favorite piece of software, especially once it's refined with more updates, which I'm sure they'll continue to produce in the months and years to come.