While we still are waiting for the serial to arrive, many of us are using the trial version.
First of all i dislike that the purchase of the stand alone version is now a bit hidden in the shop and that the upgrade to VP19 is 120 USD, i will not go into further detail why i dislike it, but i assume many know why that is to be disliked (could have saved 30 bucks...).
VEGAS PRO Edit
10BIT EDITING: To the software itself. Well i am not impressed and hyped like many here. The performance is not drastically improved. I will admit, that finally i can PLAYBACK footage in 32bit mode to see 10bit footage. At least half resolution... but as soon as i apply a simple filter of any kind, there is no realtime playback anymore. I would understand it in 4K but its only half resolution of it...
Dynamic RAM: I am also absolutely not impressed with the acclaimed 'way better and superior' performance with the new dynamic RAM, i literally see no difference with it back to VP16 at all, and i had 4 different high end PCs so far over this time. Not only that, but it reinterdruced me back random frames from the timeline and or freezes...
VEGAS HUB: cant say anything about it. Since i watch closely every software communicating with the internet with 'simplewall' i will not open up random Windows Edge sub executeable apps.
Adjustment Tracks: Now this one i like. It probably makes some edits now more possible than before. Make the Adjustment Track a parent of, lets say 3 child tracks, group them and you have a better seperated editable experience, it may even solve the problem of making in some occasions nested timelines. I welcome the Adjustment Tracks!
Nested Timelines: Well i hoped they could be achieved now more in likes of Adobes way, but no, still to messy for me. I never was very into nested timelines. Althought the idea would be so good, but how to handle them is not so great. Mostly if you have to handle Full Range and Limited Range footage and the nested timelines are being handled by Vegas as if the whole timeline is one footage it can mess up your mixed timeline and apply either one or the other. What i mean is, you have to keep track and be very careful what you have in the nested timelines.
Refreshed UI: Not much has changed, but the subtle changes are good. I like that the track colors are now more visible on the track/footage itself. Which makes it a bit easier and faster to spot which track you have to select or which event etc. And many icons are more visable and clear now.
Artificial Intelligence: Well its a gimmick. I dont think it was needed and the time spended on the AI hype could have been invested in other things. Sure a few people will have their fun with it, but so far none of the AI features really seem to have a benefit for the broad editors-pool. Not to mention, that if you are in 10bit colorspace, forget playback. I think if its not exactly what you wanted, you will have 0 use for that AI stuff.
HDR: Still keep my fingers away from HDR. Since its connected to 10bit colorspace to take real advantege of HDR and the performance is not what i would call good, i have no need for it. But i say for anybody who wants it and has the proper equipment from start to finish, its always good to give options and new features. And since there is no clear cut one standard that is usable and will be displayed on every monitor/display/tv, and if you are not producing an on demand deployed movie, i think its a waste of time to put much effort into it, only to confront a viewer with your content who has the "wrong" HDR in his device.
Color Grading Panel: I am split on that. It seems the performance and the reactivity of the color wheel panel is way better now, that i like a lot, which probably now i will try more often, maybe. Also that it has the ability to clearly display where the range is in the RGB Parade and Waveform. But i would have liked a preset option, like select accurate 0-235 or 16-255 or the same on the 10bit scale. And that is one point why Vegas is different, it measures (still) many little things in the colorworld from 0-1, and that part i dont like, and here is still the same... why.
What still has not changed and makes it look in those parts like its still Sony Vegas Pro 8 or so...: The Mediagenerator. Especially the Gradients... half of that stuff there looks like it belongs into 2004 at best. But what annoys me really is 'Titles & Text', not the part that many of the presets look like childplay, i am ok with that, it can be on varios projects helpful and funny to use some of them. But that it has not advanced into a real adult tool to create quality titles. Here a simple example what i want. A tool that look visualy high quality meaning no alising and some small ability to make it look somehow 3D'ish. Also an adjustable box around it would it make possible to create simple and fast lower thirds. I may miss that option for such a box (like Adobe Premiere offers and it works flawlessly) and somebody can point me to it, but for now i would have to either use NewBlue Titler, for simple lower thirds..., or enable the background on the text event, and mask it. That means if i change the text, i have to adjust the mask.
Overall my very early thoughts are, meh, ok, some small things are good, many things are there, and some things are still bad. So far, its not worse and nothing can compare with Vegas Pro in the cutting department and grouping events etc. But i say, Vegas Pro also dont compare to performance of lets say Adobe Premiere and Davinci Resolve, they take 4K footage and you can bombard them with effects, colorchanges and transitions and still are able to playback in realtime. Next time spend really time to go deep on those things and dont waste to much time on Deep Learning AI stuff, just because its hipp and trendy at the moment...
My Machine:
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra
AMD 5950X
Palit RTX3080 GamingPro
64GB DDR4 3600MHz
Windows10 Pro