MSmart: Thanks for all your help; “AVCHD” yielded 259 hits over the last 6 months, “64bit” and it’s close cousin “64 bit”, yielded 1290 hits over the last 6 months. And I’m not sure any of these would really address my central question (difference between 9 and 10), in any case. Sorry this would be such a hassle for you, Merry Christmas.
If anyone else could find the time, and spare the effort, I'd appreciate it.

Hello Eig and Welcome Back.

I have VMS 9.0, recently upgraded to Pro 10.0. But in the interim I downloaded VMS 10.0 to see how that works.

I played with VMS 10 for about 3 weeks. I didn't jump through every hoop. My footage is HDV, so I never encountered any of the issues reported by the AVCHD folks.

I did find VMS 10.0 functioned pretty much the same as my trusty VMS 9.0 except it had more tracks and more features. (For that matter, Pro 10.0 behaves just like VMS 9.0 except it has unlimited tracks and A LOT more features, most of which I don't know how to use yet.)

If your footage is AVCHD, you will definitely want to read up on at least a few threads. I gather people have had challenges there.

But if you are using HDV, I'd say things will go smoothly for you. Remember, of course, that I did a trial only on VMS 10.0 so I may not have hit all the snags, but overall I liked what I saw. I would have upgraded to VMS 10.0 except Pro 10.0 sort of fell into my lap by unexpected good fortune.

Regards,

Kimberly

First there is more than one "version" of VMS 10.

You can compare the current offerings here:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope/compare

While it does not have older versions .. you should know what you have and what it can do .. so you can get an idea of what is new.

Thanks to both of you. Yes, I just finished looking at that site, and it would have been nice to see the compare between 9 Platinum and 10 platinum. I don't use it enough to really know everything I have. Is it written for (take advantage of) multicore machines?

Eig:

You've seen this on the SCS site?

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope/compare

I thought there was a link that compared VMS 9.0 vs VMS 10.0 but I cannot find it : (

You may already know this but maybe not if you have been out of touch . . . be sure to look at My Account, My Software for a summary of all the serial numbers on your registered software plus a list of upgrades and the promo price. These promo prices may be better than the price you get if you use the "buy it now" type window in other parts of the SCS website. It's like the rest of the website doesn't know who you are so you don't get the special price.

Hope that helps.

Kimberly

There always used to be comparison pages showing the differences between the prior version and the current version. These seem to have disappeared in favor of comparisons between all the flavors of the current version.

I suppose part of this might be a marketing decision because, as a lot of the Pro users have especially noticed, each new version seems to also have lost features that used to be there as well as gaining new features.

Kimberly, Chienworks, thanks for the info. Apparently I can upgrade to 10 platinum for $64. I haven't run out of tracks yet, so I'm not sure if I need it, but I might just do it anyway. I tested importing an AVCHD (that wasw my main concern) into an existing project, and didn't have any issue. Definately had to lower the quality on the preview to make it smooth.

Hey Eig:

If you haven't already upgraded, I suggest getting the Platinum Pro Production Suite (or whatever they call the Top of the Line offering) for VMS 10.0. That way you will have all the bells and whistles and the price is not excessively high. That may be what you are already getting for the $64 upgrade price.

Kimberly

I tracked down an old thread from when details about VMS 10 were first "leaked" on the web -- just before it came out. Among the new features I noted at the time were:

Slideshow creator, image stabilization, secondary color corrector, one-click white balance, etc., surround sound panning, New Blue FX.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=711754

I'm a Vegas Pro user, so I don't have any experience with VMS 10, but these seemed like very useful additions. And for me the jump from 4 tracks to 10 tracks would have been huge.

Tim L