Vegas 14 problems with High DPI aliasing and blurriness

Someone else can test for you, because my trial expired. I used the "Compatibility" option for Vegas Pro 12, which had sharp text but tiny icons and cut off FX window controls. I tried it with the first version of 14, but it did not solve the problem.

Vegas 14 problems with High DPI aliasing and blurriness

The problem is with Vegas, not anyone's setup. But it's not important for me anymore, because I purchased DaVinci Resolve Studio for $300, and it's worked better than Vegas and Catalyst in many ways. They also develop quickly, and release major upgrades with new features, which are free. I'll try Vegas Pro 15, and possibly upgrade just to have it around, but right now I don't see anyone able to compete with Blackmagic Design. They're making better decisions to me, including the option to run Resolve on Linux. The interface looks fine on my Eizo display, and color management is easier.

Vegas 14 problems with High DPI aliasing and blurriness

Why do you think a lower resolution would  make sense? Software should scale independently of the resolution. All that the resolution should mean is the number of pixels per area. Most of the 21:9 3440x1400 displays seem to be 34". That's 110 PPI. In comparison, a 27" 2560x1440 display is 109 PPI. For that to look smooth, you'd need to be 32" away. If you have normal vision, maybe that's comfortable for you. But I like to get closer, where everything is bigger and I can see smaller details. I have an Eizo CG248-4K. That's 3840x2160 at 23.8". I got the smallest size I could, because then the pixels are packed tighter. That's 185 PPI. It looks smooth 19" away. But I can get even closer than that, and it still looks smoother than the old 92 PPI 24" HD displays. When I set scaling to 200% in Windows 10, everything looks normal like if I had a regular 24" HD display. It's just way sharper where the lines and text are smooth instead of jagged. It could still be smoother, because if I get too close I can see all the pixels like with my old displays. But this is what's practical today, and I'd never want to use HD resolutions again. As you can see in the screenshot above, DaVinci Resolve looks great. Everything scales properly, so text and icons are the normal size. With some handheld photos, you can get a sense of how it looks inches away from the screen. You can still see jagged edges up close, but it looks much better than HD, and someday higher resolutions should be available where even inches away it'll look smooth. Vegas 12 looks sharp, it's just tiny. It doesn't scale properly, so I had to right-click the shortcut and set "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" under "Compatibility". That makes text look the correct size, and it's sharp. But the icons are small, and some of the FX windows are cut off where you can't access the inputs to change the values. That makes Vegas 12 and 13 not really usable on HiDPI. Vegas 14 is so much worse though. It isn't sharp. It looks like if you take a picture of the HD screen, then enlarge it with a lousy algorithm so everything becomes fuzzy. It's unusable. It's more unusable than Vegas 12. In 12, the icons are tiny, but that doesn't interfere so much if you don't use them much. If you don't use the FX plugins where things are cut off, then it works. "Color Balance" for example works fine. You can see all this in the screenshots from the first post. I was expecting to purchase 14 because I thought it'd make it fully functional on HiDPI displays. But actually, I'm better off with 12. I still much prefer Resolve, and Catalyst looks good too. But if I need to use Vegas for something, it's still usable for most things in version 12. But 14 is so fuzzy it's not really practical to use because it's almost disorienting to look at. Catalyst and Premiere are forced subscription only, which I do not like. Vegas doesn't really work correctly with UHD. Resolve works great and I paid nothing. I feel like my money spent on Vegas and Catalyst lately was wasted. Neither software is fully functional on my PC, and I paid for something I can't really use for anything serious. Resolve is different. The audio and video tracks are segmented in the timeline, and the timeline feels more cramped, where I can't seem to be able to simply drag clips over each other for quick crossfades. But there might be shortcuts I don't know about, and the more I use it the more I learn. Then by the time Vegas works correctly, maybe I'll prefer Resolve. I'd probably still buy one last upgrade to be able to have it fully functional on HiDPI so I can keep it around for years to come. But right now as far as I can tell, DaVinci Resolve is the only option for video editing software today that fits my needs of HiDPI and no subscription. Which is why it's surprising that display scaling is not on the front page of this forum every day. I think most people agree that subscription is not a preferable licensing model for video editing software, but I assumed people would also agree that having the sharp smooth interface and video monitoring provided by UHD is also of critical importance.

Vegas 14 problems with High DPI aliasing and blurriness

It's strange because I see people talking about how they're using Vegas 14. I guess it was also strange how they were using 13. Does that mean the problem is isolated to my setup, or are most people not using UHD displays? It's surprising people interested in multimedia would still be using HD displays when HiDPI UHD is available. I guess Vegas people are often stuck in the past, like how people complain that Vegas Edit won't work for them because they need DVD authoring. But they're really missing out. 4K video and HiDPI monitors are drastically better looking than HD. It's strange that HiDPI support for Vegas 14 was not such a top priority that it would be tested and made sure to work perfectly. Don't the deveopers use UHD displays? I don't get it. I can't be the only one using HiDPI. I guess they're mostly all using Premiere and Resolve.

Vegas 14 problems with High DPI aliasing and blurriness

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Vegas 14 problems with High DPI aliasing and blurriness

Editing posts

Resolved.

No "THANKS" option in First Post?

It feels like they envision the first post to only be someone asking for help, then people answer, and those who provided information get thanked, and the asker marks one of them as the answer that resolves the question. It's like this is designed to only be a customer support service where people work for "thanks". I think they misunderstand, that the SCS Vegas forum was a community. I saw a thread was locked here. I don't think I've ever seen any moderation in the SCS forum. As far as I could tell, they left it to the people to socialize, even when they would criticize Vegas. The first post was no different than any other. People could post because they had something on their mind. They could share some tips they discovered. They could tell people their workflow, or write a tutorial for how to do something. Or they could even post about competitor software, and expect an honest conversation from people without fear. Here it feels like it's a corporate support center, and you can't socialize, only answer questions for other customers for free. I want to delete my posts, because I was trolling, or sharing thoughts, where it doesn't feel appropriate here. The other one was more casual and open. But they treat the first post differently, so no edit, no delete, no thanks. Hopefully they'll change that so the first post behaves more like any other.

Editing posts

Yes, I see the red Edit button with pencil icon next to the comments too, just not the first topic post. It appears on the topic post for minutes after you've posted, then it disappears. I'm assuming they imagined it would be good to prevent people from being able to change what others then comment on. Like if someone posts, "I love Vegas!", and everyone comments, "So do I!" "It's the best!", and then they change the topic post to say, "I love Adobe Premiere!". But that's why it's too rigid. Sometimes someone will post a tutorial or article, where they want to revise it, or add to it. Then the "Tag as solution" doesn't make sense either. But as I said, if they want to transform what was a casual community into a customer support question and answer place, that's fine, just let me edit and delete my previous posts that don't fit that.

Editing posts

The edit button is gone. Looks like they're only allowing editing for a brief period. I don't like that. It doesn't work if someone wants to use the original post like an article that they edit as time goes on. For example, a bug list, or tutorial, or list of links. This is too rigid how it considers the only use is questions and answers. The other one was more free form where people could use it for casual conversation, or tutorials, or questions. That's fine if they want to change it to be what they want, but then I should be able to change my previous posts or delete them if it doesn't fit with the new template. Also, this textarea isn't a native one, and the web browser's spellcheck doesn't work, so tis easeir to write speling mistakes.

"Older versions will be activate-able for 5 years"

Sigh. If you cannot activate a software license after a period of time, it is essentially the same thing as a subscription model. When pirates provide a better experience, your business model is flawed and you're losing potential profits. Cracks and open source will survive the death of these companies. Consider paying developers who produce software without activation: [url=https://kdenlive.org/] [url=http://natron.fr/] [url=https://github.com/jliljebl/flowblade/blob/master/flowblade-trunk/docs/Screenshot-1-4-dark.png] [url=http://www.pitivi.org/] [url=http://openshot.org/] [url=http://cinelerra.org/2015/index.php/features/editing] [url=https://cinelerra-cv.org/index.php] [url=https://www.darktable.org/]

I hope Vegas Pro is NOT going down this path!

It's very obvious why Sony stopped developing Vegas. It wasn't cracks. It's because of illegal immigrants who would work for pesos. There's no way the Japanese can compete with that.

I hope Vegas Pro is NOT going down this path!

I've been struggling with this kind of thing lately. It used to be that if you had the disk, software would install. Then you'd need to type a textual key that was printed along with the disk, or some required a hardware dongle. But then you needed to activate it over the internet or telephone, and that's when things fundamentally changed. A key of some kind was something you possessed. If you had the text, or the hardware to plug in, then you could always use the software for the rest of your life. You could also sell it to someone else and transfer possession. But once it required online activation, it meant that it would only work so long as the activation server remained online, and granting you permission. There were times when there were bugs, or the activation server was offline, so people installing at that time could not use the software. Then it happened, where enough years had past where some software providers simply did not exist anymore, and the activation process was impossible. Then the software I paid for, did not work. I had projects I created with it, which could not be opened. Now, the trend is for all software businesses to move to a subscription model. But software is not necessarily a service, so they have to impose artificial restrictions by requiring periodic online activation. You download the complete binary. The software is all there, in your possession. There is no physical reason why it should not run for as long as your system is in operation. It could be on a machine with no internet connection, in a museum, to run forever. But they instead leverage licensing law to force you to pretend the software is a service, that depends on their existence. If the software provider goes out of business, you lose the right to run the program. So the software you paid for is held ransom where you must continue to pay or it won't ever run again. Suppose the software were a word processor, and you spent decades writing journal entries every day. Then you die, and a grandchild inherits your computer, and wants to read about your perspective on life. But the activation server does not exist. The data is saved in a proprietary format that requires the software to be read. The business is long gone. The information is lost, and for no necessary reason. But the trendy thing is for everything to be "cloud". Even when the software is not dependent on the internet, they see the software-as-a-service profits, where customers must pay monthly for it to work, and they want to benefit from that situation too. Except something like Netflix is actually dependent on the internet. It is a streaming media service. The program is a shell that enables you to stream media from a remotely stored library. For you to download Netflix would require far too much data storage, and updates would be expensive. Instead, you pay a monthly subscription for access to their library. That is something that requires the internet, and a subscription model makes sense, because there are physical reasons why there are monthly costs. If Netflix charged a one-time fee, they'd lose money because transferring the streaming media to you every day costs them money. But what does a video editing program need from the internet? It doesn't need anything other than updates. People have to work to fix bugs and provide those updates, but that is why the cost of the software is hundreds of dollars. You don't pay hundreds of dollars because of bandwidth fees, it's all the salaries and everything combined that went into its creation and distribution. Once software has been sold, it doesn't necessarily require updates. If the business worked, everything was paid for, along with extra profit, and the transaction is complete. The people can run the software, the creators can eat and buy new toys, everyone is happy. Except then the software company has to continue working on new features to entice people to rebuy again, so they can continue to receive money. Or they have to create a whole new program, and hope people want to buy that. If you compare that to something like Netflix, it doesn't seem fair. Some people create internet software, or a website, that depends on constantly updated data, so a subscription is logical. Then they can essentially automate it, where the money keeps rolling in and they don't have to keep adding new features or inventing new successful products. Why is that fair? These old school software businesses must see all that and be envious. If you created Vegas, why wouldn't you want to just kick back and not have to do anything if you don't want to, but still have money rolling in each month just because people are using it? It's the same sort of scam as intellectual property stars have used to become rich. Someone makes 1 hit song, 1 hit movie, 1 hit book, and they receive royalties for life. There's this new trend lately where some people feel like they're only supposed to have to create 1 good thing, and then they're just supposed to be set up for life. But I'm struggling to justify subscription business models for software that have no actual requirement or dependency for anything ongoing. It's like if someone built a coffee machine, and it worked completely on its own, but they added WiFi where it has to be activated over the internet every morning before it'll make you coffee. If you miss your monthly subscription payment, you won't get your coffee, so you freak out and pay. Then instead of making the $x amount of money up front, they can charge less to get you hooked into this cycle, where in the long run you end up paying $x*y, a much higher amount. Why charge $500 once for some PC software, when you can force an artificial restriction that holds their data ransom and requires that amount annually for life? Then where you might've only got $500 before, some people will end up paying thousands. They justify it to themselves because running a software business has ongoing costs. They have to fix bugs, and release free updates. They have to keep the web server running. They have to respond to support requests. They also have to keep producing something people want to pay for, or the income disappears. Except the bugs are often at the fault of the developer, and people expect a fully functional product, or else it's considered defective. If most of the bugs were fixed before sale, then for the more obscure ones that only affect a small number of people they could potentially charge for patches. The web server and support aren't really necessary. Software doesn't necessarily require internet activation, so paying to keep an activation web server running isn't a necessary cost. A regular website with info and store is only dollars per month to maintain, and the help documents can be concluded prior to sale, and most help is provided free from other customers in forums. So I'm having a hard time accepting this new paradigm. I stopped using Adobe software, and although I've bought some software recently, the whole PC scene is feeling dead to me. I'm feeling a much stronger incentive to put up with the problems with free open source software, and donate to the developers or help them make it better, because in comparison the commercial alternatives are seeming decreasingly worth the cost. I don't understand why Catalyst is forced subscription. Some businesses prefer to pay smaller amounts periodically due to their accounting. But that doesn't explain it, or why it isn't optional. I don't understand why Vegas would go a similar route either. Requiring routine activation is another one of those things, where it's an artificial constraint that doesn't really make sense. It's like if a husband is dying, so he shoots his wife. Requiring routine activation does not prevent someone from cheating, and there is no fair reason to prevent people from using software you created after your business is gone. It's just more fake dependencies to push people toward this false notion that all software is a service. Because that's what's trendy today, and people just follow along with the movement without understanding why that's actually legitimate for some businesses. Everything is just supposed to be "cloud" and "SaaS", whether it actually depends on constantly updated internet data or not. Even Microsoft is pushing Windows into that paradigm, where it said there won't be anymore upgrade releases, it is now Windows OS the service, where you're dependent on constant updates from Microsoft. That makes somewhat more sense, because so many people depend on them for security patches. But it's changing the paradigm where now everyone is trying to force the thin client and mainframe model on everything, even PC workstations. All of the big players have these "AI assistants", and cloud storage, where they're trying to put the computer in their control, and have everyone interface with it. That's fine for some things, but the PC was created and developed for many years as something independent. To change that now is too disruptive. Which is why the PC scene feels terrible now. FreeBSD and a couple Linux distros are all that's really left for something that fits the traditional PC paradigm. But the multimedia software isn't very good. Yet, as more of Apple and Microsoft moves toward the internet subscription service model, that is less of an option also. It used to be that Adobe software was a main reason why someone would still use Windows or OS X instead of just using Linux. But now, I can't even install the latest Adobe software, because I can't yet wrap my mind around why I should pay a subscription, and have the software dependent on internet activation. This whole thing is depressing, and there's no good solutions, so I think a lot of people are in a kind of unproductive limbo without good options. Compared to the mobile market, PC users are a small group, so a lot more attention of developers has shifted to consumer devices. But when the few remaining PC software companies want to pretend they're Netflix or Farmville or whatever, what are we supposed to do? If we invested in open source software, then we'd still have access to all that was built, and we could slowly improve it even when most stop using the PC.

Vegas Pro - Time To Think Again

I get it, loud and clear. I just don't understand why you came here to tell us that you hate video editing. You don't like video editing and moved to Photoshop to edit still photos and now you think you're better than us? I went to Harvard. You're not better than me. Look, if you ever want to give Vegas a try there's lots of friendly people here who can help you get started. It's not that difficult, you just need to give it a chance. Or you can stick with Photoshop. It's your choice.

Am I missing something?

Uhh, I guess you didn't get the memo, as they do not "expect to stay in business". They sold the business. They already said they're understaffed during the transition and so support requests will be responded to slower.

Just curious - How Much?

> My guess is MAGIX picked it up for a song. A song? No way. It was $100K. What song is worth that much? I don't know. Maybe one of Bieber's songs I guess. Hmm. That's a good point. I guess you could be right. I did a search on Wikipedia and saw this, 'his most successful single to date, "Baby".' I think probably what happened was MAGIX settled with them because they used Samplitude for the recording without permission. Then they probably just figured that Vegas was a better investment than holding onto the song since it was getting old. I think it was a smart move. MAGIX is definitely going to make more money in the long run having Vegas.

Just curious - How Much?

I figured Catalyst was worth around $1,000. I think Vegas has more like 100 users. Upgrades are around $300. $300x100=$30,000. Then we need to double it, and it's $60,000. Then double it again, and it's safe to say they paid around $100K.

Bye Sony, Hi Magix !

My impression is that there's not enough info about the SCS side of things. Personally I don't care much about Vegas anymore. I want to know what's happening with Catalyst, and this website. They mentioned response times being slower due to staffing changes. There's just one moderator posting in the Catalyst forum, and all the activity is on this side of things. How will SCS change? What are their plans? What exactly is their intention for Catalyst? I think the MAGIX forum is difficult to read, and this forum software is much better. I hope they consider not importing all this onto there. It is an embarrassing looking website, and I don't want my posts on there. https://www.magix.info/us/forum/ If they need help, and send me sample database dumps, I can recode this forum in an open source language instead of the ASP it's using, so they can put up an archive if they want instead of importing. I think importing is a bad idea, and you cannot just shoehorn a culture from one place to another when the software style is so different. They should either have a read-only archive of this and start fresh by adding Vegas to their existing forum, or they should have this as a separate site for these people to continue on.

Bye Sony, Hi Magix !

It's their property, they bought it, they can redirect to any IP they want. I found this http://www.sonicfoundry.com/community/ That's most likely where the new site will be.

Bye Sony, Hi Magix !

They didn't have to buy the IP. They could do a redirect to their own website. Most likely they're going to rewrite Vegas. But why would they start from scratch? They wouldn't. That's why they also bought Sound Forge. What many of you do not know is that Vegas used to be an audio only multitrack recorder. MAGIX is probably going to go back to the roots and rebuild Vegas starting from the Sound Forge code. They mostly just bought Vegas for the name, logo, and to use it as a reference. I think this is going to be great for Vegas. The biggest lacking with software like Resolve is audio. By starting from Sound Forge, MAGIX is sure to have a winner.

Bye Sony, Hi Magix !

I think you underestimate the irrationality of the group. I once saw someone from SCS post to share some information, and he was suddenly running from mobs hurling flames at him. That's a big part of why I think they're so quiet, even if they give a little piece of truth people will twist it all around into some drama. As for my understanding of software companies, I know how to program HTML, so I know what I'm talking about. I don't even use Vegas much. But it's one of the few applications I kept up with throughout its lifetime, another being Photoshop. I only paid for 3 cycles of Vegas, since 2009, according to the orders page. It's kind of strange though to watch everything familiar die out around you. Vegas is part of that PC identity that was flourishing, and now feels old and left behind by mobile development. There's far more people with phones than workstation computers. This forum is like a time capsule, left mostly unchanged, with its outdated style, and feels shaded, mostly undisturbed, until there was uncertainty, and now an official ending. Transformations can be interesting, but everything moved to subscription, which is so incompatible with the old PC culture, where for a long while even internet-activation was perceived as a violation that many protested against. They didn't want it to go down that road, where it'd end up as it is today, a monthly service to license software that phones home every time you open it. Where you need to reactivate it if you change OS or hardware, and can't run it in an emulator after they go out of business. Vegas has gone from SF to Sony to MAGIX. But it's not the same world anymore. It doesn't fit in my Windows 10 UHD setup like it once did. There's more people interested in filters and touch editing on mobile apps than the multimedia production of the past. The latest fad is live mobile video broadcasting, where there's no editing, low resolution, and often the lowest quality content ever. Yet that's where a lot of the cutting edge development is focused. People in the PC realm seem to be dinosaurs in comparison, and headed back to the pre-.COM days, when it was a quiet area for niche enthusiasts. As big as this SCS acquisition is for us, it's off the radar at large. Even the tech news site don't mention it, except Engadget, and there's only 19 comments. Sony makes these expensive professional broadcast cameras, and many of us don't even watch TV outside Netflix, and our live video is displayed on a screen only inches wide being streamed from other phones. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are in a race to acquire the live video market, and there'll be professional hardware released soon that interface with them, so those Sony cameras will be streaming to Facebook. It's all changing, and nobody really knows what's going to happen.

Bye Sony, Hi Magix !

It seems weird to me that SCS engineers don't have much insider knowledge. Aren't they a small place? This seems like a big event that must've taken a long time to unfold, where there'd be a lot of back-and-forth communication, and people discussing it internally. Where talks about the future should've come up. From the outside, I get this feel that people go to some small building each morning, walk through an empty hall to their quiet office, close the door, and work in their little private room. Then maybe there's a routinely scheduled meeting where they're given small pieces of information, and assigned their tasks for the month, then go back to work. Now that Vegas is gone, I wonder how SCS culture will be going forward. I'd like to see more "personal opinions" from software engineers working on Catalyst, and public discussion with managers who are deciding things like the subscription model. I'm used to everything being out in the open with public trackers, forums, and open source code. I don't really understand why closed software can't use some of that approach. It doesn't seem like an all open or all closed situation to me. At the very least they can just post more frequent news updates to share some facts about what they're working on. I wonder if they all had to sign some contract that makes them afraid to talk. If I worked there, I'd find it difficult to resist telling everyone the truth about things they keep getting wrong or are missing information about. Someone's probably going to read that Google+ post and fire him because he dared mention SCS outside the office. I'm going to start a petition, to get him his job back. Everyone sign it. He probably has 3 children and one of them is sick. How could Sony do this to him?

Bye Sony, Hi Magix !

You're all running wild with speculation again. Why is that such a common hobby on enthusiast forums. You were all way off these past months, even holding a petition. This news should've been a wakeup call that you don't know what you're talking about because you lack too much information. Nobody had any clue this would happen, and Catalyst would be all that remains. Now you're jumping the gun again with all this talk about merging of products? You have no idea what they're going to do. You don't even know what the code is like. Programming isn't just copy and paste. It's highly unlikely many components can easily be mixed and matched. They could've already implemented most of Vegas Pro features into their software if they were going to do that, they didn't need to buy Vegas itself. You don't buy something to rewrite it. But even if they did, then it's not Vegas, it's something else with the Vegas branding. It's not like Vegas had anything so unique about it that they needed to buy the rights so they can build those same features without being sued. But I don't even know that for sure, because it's all a black box. They don't share anything with us. It just sounds like you're all crazy. I wish these businesses would have more of an online presence where they openly talk about things. I don't understand why it's in their interest to have a bunch of people anxiously imagining every possibility because they're kept in the dark and can't know what's really going on. But regardless, Catalyst is subscription beta quality software, and Vegas doesn't play nice with high-dpi displays, and this acquisition doesn't help with that right now. If there's going to be a good Vegas 14 update, it's supposedly not going to be out for several months, and it might be subscription or flawed in some other way. For me personally, I'm going to take a more serious look at Resolve, and read more to see how the Vegas methods translate to that interface. People say you can't easily drag clips where the overlapping region automatically cross-fades, but maybe it can do something similar or even in a better way. I didn't look very hard because I liked Catalyst more, but their subscription move excludes that as an option. I'll also see what else is available. Because the truth is, none of us can speculate about the future with the info we have. I have no idea what these companies will do in the coming months. But I do know Resolve is downloadable for free right now, and I can learn more about it right now, and I can work with it tonight, while people are wondering what will happen with Vegas and Catalyst.

Bye Sony, Hi Magix !

What happens to the forums? I'd guess this will be removed, and linked to https://community.sony.com/t5/Catalyst-Software/bd-p/SonyCreativeSoftware