With 20 years of Vegas experience, my perspective on Vegas Pro 23.

vagnerdesouza wrote on 10/10/2025, 1:55 PM

Hello everyone. I've been a Vegas user since version 4 in 2004. After submitting dozens of items on my "wish list" and seeing none of them fulfilled, I decided to switch video editing software.

Below is my technical evaluation of Vegas Pro 23 "Trial" (which is only "trial" in name!)

1. 30-DAY TRIAL? This is NOT true. VP23 only lets you try the program, but it doesn't allow rendering without a very huge watermark on the file, which is rendered useless by the presence of the "Vegas Pro" watermark on every frame. EVERY!

2. VP23 doesn't export markers as chapters in the MP4 file. (DaVinci Resolve does).

3. You can't change the software's language after installation. (DaVinci Resolve allows it at any time). When installing Vegas Pro 23, there's no option to choose the program's DEFINITIVE language. If you have a Portuguese-language Windows operating system but want to install Vegas Pro 23 in English to follow tutorials in English, forget it! No way!

4. VP23 only allows you to export MP4 videos with AAC-LC stereo audio. It has issues with HE AAC and HE AAC v2 audio in the timeline.

5. VP23 doesn't import or export MKV files. (DaVinci Resolve does!) Just to upset the critics: MKV DOES NOT MEAN PIRATE VIDEO FILE!

6. There's no LUT for videos made with the GoPro Hero 13 in LOG mode.

7. Most transitions of VP23 are from the SonicFoundry Vegas 4 era. They haven't evolved!

8. The upgrade price is barely different from the perpetual license price. I found the price too expensive!

9. After applying the stabilization effect, the video loses performance in the timeline, and this is on an AMD Ryzen 9 32-thread @ 4 GHz machine with an NVidia RTX 4060 graphics card. In DaVinci Resolve, it runs smoothly at 59.94fps after stabilization

10. VP23 still with only one timeline per project.

I stopped at item number 10. I only tested the program for less than 1 hour, but I was already able to form an opinion about it, and I already uninstalled the Vegas Pro 23 "trial"

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Comments

MikeS wrote on 11/13/2025, 8:54 AM

>our headcount has continued to decrease

Actually, that's worrying to hear

VEGASDerek wrote on 11/13/2025, 12:14 PM

Actually, that's worrying to hear

Honestly, it is sorta par-for-the-course right now in the software industry.

That said, I believe the team is in pretty good spot right now as we accelerate efforts to get some badly needed features done. The key for us is to focus on the core strengths of Vegas and continue to make them better. The team is gaining some good momentum right now despite some of the negative impacts of the restructuring. In the end, we will come out stronger from this process.

wjauch wrote on 11/13/2025, 9:31 PM

An Ai assistant though unlikely it could make sense of the VEGAS codebase.

VEGAS does have limited raw support (Braw, Prores raw, cDNG).

I would add that Red r3d raw has been supported by Vegas for about 12 years, and I believe about 1 year ago was updated to support newer Red Raptor and Komodo cameras.

bitman wrote on 11/14/2025, 11:53 AM

>our headcount has continued to decrease

Actually, that's worrying to hear

You could look at it the positive way: the less people tinker with the code, the less bugs are introduced!

Gid wrote on 11/14/2025, 1:13 PM

>our headcount has continued to decrease

Actually, that's worrying to hear

You could look at it the positive way: the less people tinker with the code, the less bugs are introduced!

One person could easily introduce just as many bugs as a whole group of people could, + a group of people's collective interaction & knowledge could pick up on & correct those bugs before they dig themselves into a hole too deep to get themselves out of.

Lloyd-Frost wrote on 11/17/2025, 9:03 AM

Full handling of 32-bit Float audio would be a major improvement for those of us who direct, shoot and record audio, often while performing in front of the camera. Recording myself performing in a club would be far easier if I didn't have to worry about clipping in 24 bit. My Lumix XLR-2 module (with my Lumix GH7) allows for 32-bit Float to be recorded to 4 tracks, direct to the in-camera file - Can this mov file with 32-bit Float now be opened in VP23 and also show the wave form changes as I adjust audio levels? If not, when will the Vegas team update? (Taking a round trip to Sound Forge is a time waster.)

RogerS wrote on 11/17/2025, 3:13 PM

Not supported last I tested. Did you add it to the feature request thread?

Joe-is-Hungry-Channel wrote on 11/17/2025, 3:45 PM

Love these people who think that everything so simple to instantly implement or fix. We use AI tools to generate and analyze code and over time, as we train models on the 10 million lines of code that we maintain, these AI tools will increase in their effectiveness for us. In fact, we have had no choice by to use AI tools to aid in our development as our headcount has continued to decrease. At this point, while AI has benefitted us in much of the redundant coding tasks, it has only been marginally helpful so far for the more complex stuff like implementing new codec support.

well keep working at it, waiting for the next version of 23, it is a little crashy and the video take information was removed from minimized tracks other wise I love the work flow. I have noticed that when it crashes it is not giving me the option to restart an autosave

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 11/18/2025, 10:00 AM

Full handling of 32-bit Float audio would be a major improvement for those of us who direct, shoot and record audio, often while performing in front of the camera. Recording myself performing in a club would be far easier if I didn't have to worry about clipping in 24 bit. My Lumix XLR-2 module (with my Lumix GH7) allows for 32-bit Float to be recorded to 4 tracks, direct to the in-camera file - Can this mov file with 32-bit Float now be opened in VP23 and also show the wave form changes as I adjust audio levels? If not, when will the Vegas team update? (Taking a round trip to Sound Forge is a time waster.)

@Lloyd-Frost If you post a sample clip that can be downloaded, it would give developers something to work with.

johnny-s wrote on 11/18/2025, 11:21 AM

@Lloyd-Frost

I previously posted here about this. 14th-August-2024.

MarkAnthony121 wrote on 11/18/2025, 2:47 PM

Actually, that's worrying to hear

Honestly, it is sorta par-for-the-course right now in the software industry.

That said, I believe the team is in pretty good spot right now as we accelerate efforts to get some badly needed features done. The key for us is to focus on the core strengths of Vegas and continue to make them better. The team is gaining some good momentum right now despite some of the negative impacts of the restructuring. In the end, we will come out stronger from this process.

Is there any outlook for optimizing playback for HEVC 422 or just 422 files as those are some of the most common coming out of canon cameras and still no smooth playback without proxies. Forget transitions, unneeded bells and whistles, I feel like getting the absolute basics down like playback performance is critical. Also someone mentioned optimization for playback or rendering with 5000 series nvidia cards. Is that something for later builds of VP23 or something that's not being considered until VP24?

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 11/18/2025, 10:33 PM

@Lloyd-Frost

I previously posted here about this. 14th-August-2024.

@johnny-s the clip you posted elsewhere sounds similar to @Lloyd-Frost but appears to have a stereo float32 audio stream. You can repackage the mov with an 24bit pcm audio stream using Shutter Encoder so it opens with Vegas. I just did it with an ffmpeg script that transcodes to audio while leaving the video stream untouched:

ffmpeg -i "01 Float 32 bit-PGH70213.MOV" -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s24le "24bit.mov"

johnny-s wrote on 11/19/2025, 4:12 AM

@Howard-Vigorita

Excellent workaround Howard.

Amazing that I use ffmpeg a lot and never thought of it. Well done.

So that's two workarounds, Sound Forge Pro and ffmpeg.

johnny-s wrote on 11/19/2025, 11:30 AM

@Howard-Vigorita

However.

Using the sample previously supplied, ( 01 Float 32 bit-PGH70213.MOV ) the video doesn't play.

For example, VLC reports ..

Codec not supported:

VLC could not decode the format "aivx" (No description for this codec)

Video
ID : 1
Format : aivx
Codec ID : aivx
Duration : 30 s 240 ms
Bit rate : 149 Mb/s
Width : 4 096 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 1.896
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.673
Stream size : 536 MiB (98%)
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

johnny-s wrote on 11/19/2025, 12:26 PM

Sorted. Simply add -strict -2

I came across this before and just forgot about it.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 11/19/2025, 12:41 PM

I also forgot about that bug where ffmpeg v7 and earlier made 24bit pcm's that were non-extensible. I've been using ffmpeg8 which apparently fixes it without the strict option.

johnny-s wrote on 11/19/2025, 2:24 PM

Good to hear re: ver 8. Haven't yet started to use it.

13Year_User wrote on 11/21/2025, 10:50 AM

In my case i work like youtuber and tiktoker and vegas is one of the fest video editor software justnnot have good marketing team. And the update are little bit slowly. If we can get weekly updates or dsily updates for fix the bugs maybe csn be one of the most usefull editor software in the market. And we like user need promote a little jit more the software.