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Videoon 6/24/2016
"Maybe too many"?
What I do with my external drives is I assign drive letters starting at "Z" and working down. The thing with removable drives is that if you let the OS assign drive letters then it'll just use the next available one. This may not be consistent from one machine to the next, especially if one has a 3-in-1 card reader and the other has a 10-in-1 reader, for example. So manually assigning your hard drives letters at the end of the alphabet gets around that problem. Rob
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Videoon 6/9/2016
Frgnd/bkgnd separation,Mocha etc. 4 Vegas 14?
It's worth thinking about, but if I was a program manager I'd probably be thinking about whether I could keep the staff on board to provide continued support and development over the next 12 to 20 years. Take, for example, the clunky bezier tools that currently exist. Keyframeable bezier tools are nice (essential) for grading. But if they need refinement that's a maintenance cost. Every new feature has a cost in terms of maintenance and support, and eventually you can have a product that's so broad that you can't keep up with maintenance. So, perhaps the better approach is to either work on your plugin architecture or to work on your round-trip workflow.
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Videoon 6/7/2016
SURVEY: Would you upgrade to VP14 if...
"That I haven't been able to use CUDA assisted rendering for my last 3 video cards is a big deterrent for me." Erm, okay, seems like there's more to this story. Vegas is more or less tailored to OpenCL acceleration. If you were looking for acceleration in Vegas you wouldn't buy a card for it's CUDA support, let alone buying three CUDA supporting cards in a row. I'm not saying this as criticism. If I were making a guess I'd say you're buying NVIDIA cards for gaming, recording your gameplay, and wanting Vegas to use your gaming cards for it's own acceleration. That's fine, gaming videos are a market Vegas could be targeting. It's just that, typically, edit systems don't have their GFX acceleration designed to support gaming cards, largely because the GFX drivers are a cr*p shoot, get updated too often, and are designed for speed over accuracy. It's fine to drop pixels and frames in a game but verboten in a render. You might very well be tied to CUDA for some other reason than gaming, but it'd be worthwhile to spell out what that is. Gaming videos are certainly a valid market for Vegas to address.
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Videoon 6/7/2016
SURVEY: Would you upgrade to VP14 if...
"I also wonder if a dedicated 10-bit editing mode would offer better performance than the current 32 bit floating point mode. If so, I would like to see that option added." I don't know if it'd be faster, but 32-bit float offers some advantages that 10-bit doesn't and seems more like the universal tool. I don't know if users really need to *see* that their 10-bit project is using a 32-bit float pipeline... but it's probably better to keep that fact visible. Basically, even if very few changes were made I'd still pay the version rent, as long as Vegas still works for my application. It's a fairly flexible can opener. Rob
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Videoon 6/6/2016
SURVEY: Would you upgrade to VP14 if...
"(what includes to rework both luminance and color correction filters but also be able to adjust tools like waveform and histogram to 10bit)." I'm going to assume you mean to be able to work in 10-bit value scales, which leads me to another thought. One thing I find difficult to deal with is the 32-bit float scales of color correction tools. There are many times when I'd really like to see 8-bit values rather than values between 0 and 1, although maybe it'd serve everyone's needs to show dual values simultaneously. So perhaps if you're working with 10bit media in a 32bit float project then maybe some means of seeing both values at the same time would be useful. For the most part I think grading issues are a larger project and shouldn't be addressed piecemeal. Good grading tools would be a big selling point in Vegas.
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Videoon 6/6/2016
SURVEY: Would you upgrade to VP14 if...
"Easy there guys..." Thanks Gary. User requests are often very personal needs. I think most of us realize that development for Vegas 14 probably stretches back to before the release of Vegas 13. Fixing bugs, making things bulletproof, adding useful features, and making Vegas more maintainable for your own developers would all be good goals. And as V-guy is probably trying to say, better interoperability with current outside software and hardware should always be a high priority. Rob
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Videoon 6/6/2016
SURVEY: Would you upgrade to VP14 if...
My answer is a conditional Yes. The main thing I need is the ability to read DVCPro HD quicktime files. I use DVFilm's Raylight Decoder codec for this. So essentially it's a question for me of what's done with Quicktime in Vegas. If a quicktime fix is implemented but it messes with third party Quicktime codecs then that's a problem. If that were the case then I'd hope that continuing to use Quicktime would be an option. Rob
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Videoon 6/2/2016
Just curious - How Much?
"They paid $18M+ 13 years ago just for sound forge." That's not correct. Vegas and Acid and a slew of smaller pieces were all developed by Sonic Foundry and part of the deal with Sony. But, yes, this is all speculation based on very little information. Some of the disgruntled posters here are making pretty ridiculous claims, and I'm not even sure that this forum represents the entire user base. One thing I noticed yesterday, apropos of very little, is that Magix has several applications included in software bundles on new computers.
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Videoon 6/2/2016
Just curious - How Much?
I really don't know what SCS was worth in the last year, but these deals are probably pretty well researched as the buyer and seller both want as much as they can get. Sonic Foundry was evidently worth 18 million to Sony 13 years ago. I'd imagine that it's still down in that range, give or take 10 million. On the other hand, Grass Valley was worth 220 million just a couple of years ago. They have a hardware business and a high-end clientele that SCS lacked.
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Videoon 6/2/2016
Just curious - How Much?
Dunno, but here are some past sales for comparison: 18 million, 2003: http://www.itworld.com/article/2805336/business/sony-to-buy-sonic-foundry-desktop-software-line.html 2.5 million, 2004: http://www.macworld.com/article/1033960/media100.html 220 million, 2014: http://www.tvnewscheck.com/playout/2014/02/by-combining-grass-valley-with-miranda-belden-will-create-the-largest-broadcast-supplier/ So the prices are kind of all over the map and spanning a decade. Media100 went for a penny and a song, but they evidently had a lot of liabilities and had the poor fortune to be dependent on Apple when FCP was in its ascendancy. Still, I was kind of surprised by how little Media100 sold for and how much Sonic Foundry brought in. Rob
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Videoon 5/27/2016
Hey Magix! Add this to Vegas MX:
Vegas has the ingredients for this but the implementation was a bit hit and miss. In the Vegas Explorer window you can chose to display regions within a clip. The regions' heads and tail marks are adjustable in the trimmer or if you drop them onto the timeline then you can easily adjust the heads and tails there as well. This was a feature from way back. A subclip feature was added later. Like Premiere ( I guess) it sets hard ins and outs on the subclip. I think this allows certain FX to function properly on it. One of the problems with subclips (at least when I created a bin containing the subclip and then copied the bin to a new project a moment ago) is that any custom name you gave the subclip will revert back to a default name in the new destination project. That makes it a pretty raw deal if you're working on a big documentary with multiple project files. So, why would you want subclips and why would you want custom names? Well, first of all suppose you just want to give meaningful names to all your footage other than what came out of the camera? You could do that by making subclips of entire media files. Or, if you have long rambling interviews with specific little bits you know you'll use you can create subclips of those bits as well. You can also pop them into bins if you like. What you can't easily do is drag out the heads and tails, nor can you copy them to a new timeline and retain a name you gave them. You also can't place those regions you see in the Vegas Explorer into bins. They're effectively locked away from media management, although they usually can travel with the copied media into new projects. So, pick your poison. It'd be nice if subclips were more maleable than they are, certainly. Rob
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Videoon 5/23/2016
Article: Why Video & Film Have Lost Their Value
I'd say Yes and No, which is a little weasely and not too helpful. There are markets and there are market segments in this business, and those segments have a bit of ebb and flow to them. For example, many of my friends who worked as 1st ACs got out of the business during the recession at the start of George W's presidency. There was a general collapse in the market for commercial spots at the time and there was, perhaps, a glut of talented people in that market. On the other hand, I was having no trouble finding work as a grip or electrician in the Silicon Valley market for industrial video at that time. I think perhaps that market might have contracted during the recession at the *end* of George W's presidency. (Not to blame him for both recessions, but he was kind of unlucky to have his 8 years bookended by those downturns.) The main thing here is that parts of the market see changes, and in some cases those changes come about because consumers didn't *need* what they were getting 5 or 10 years earlier. For example, most computer users bought desktop computers to browse the internet and read their email. When cheaper tablet alternatives came along those users bought tablets rather than desktops and laptops. This market hollowed out because people didn't really need what they'd been buying in previous years. The same is true in different ways for the film and video industry. Consumers can do a lot of cheap production for Youtube to show you how to cook an omelette or iron a shirt, and some of our paying clients would like to have that kind of spontaneity. Since the person paying is also an individual, they look at prices in terms of what they personally can afford.In part, the market has actually expanded into lower-end markets and the low and the high ends nibble at each other on the margins. There are a few truths you have to remind people of. First, there are a number of things that you can't get from joe schmo with a cellphone. That's good writing, good job planning, good post production, and a little bit of experience. If the job doesn't *need* any of that then maybe you're the wrong person for the job. (Also, the brightness of the sun hasn't changed so if you need to do lighting in the sun you still need a bit of lighting gear and experience. Physics hasn't changed.) Once you convince someone that you're bringing actual skills to the job then you need to convince them that they actually need to pay you for ALL of your time, and you need to know what your time is worth. If they can't pay for your time then maybe you shouldn't be taking their work. And yes, it might mean that you can't compete at the low end. Anyway, as an analogy, cheaper production gear has allowed us to set up pup tents and bivouacs when we used to only build bigger structures.
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Videoon 4/21/2016
cant render a video in sony vegas pro 13
Great to hear. It seems like the odds of a GPU rendering logjam go up when you have a lot of varied media on the timeline.. Rob
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Videoon 4/20/2016
cant render a video in sony vegas pro 13
i wanted to render it in 1080-30p because it's HD. i always like for my videos to be in HD and as a wmv file. So you've done similar projects in the past and had successful renders? My first guess would be some sort of memory issue, perhaps with a piece of media on the timeline although it sounds like you're ruling that out. Another possibility might be that it's a GPU acceleration failure, in which case you'd want to toggle that feature. A workaround might be to render to some other format as an intermediate before going to WMV. It'll eat up disk space but it's temporary. If you wanted to test it you could just try to render out a region that you know is big enough to cause a crash. That way you don't waste a lot of time. Then put that on a new timeline and render *that* to WMV. Maybe render out to any of the templates offered if you were to "Selectively Prerender Video". I find WMV to be a bit dodgy sometimes, but that's as source media on the timeline. It don't think it plays well with others. I don't really have any experience trying to output it. Rob
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Videoon 4/19/2016
please explain what to do re QT?
Probably what you'd *really* want to do to test this is to rename the entire quicktime folder, just to be sure that other applications don't use the libraries. I don't think they do but better safe than sorry. The other piece of the puzzle is to make sure your web browsers don't have access to a quicktime player plugin. The potential exploit payload (which doesn't yet exist as far as anyone knows) would be in a *.mov file. That file would then exploit a flaw in the quicktime player or maybe an associated library. So, controlling whether a foreign MOV file can get onto your system would be a start. The nuclear option is to just uninstall quicktime player. As a side note, I was looking at Edius forums this morning and it appears they're pretty well tied into quicktime. They were advising to NOT uninstall quicktime. It kind of seems to me that *someone* is going to have to pick up the Quicktime ball on Windows, assuming Apple will even allow a third party to do it. Maybe Microsoft would be a good candidate for that.
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Videoon 4/18/2016
please explain what to do re QT?
Thanks Marco, I'll have to look at it. I'm thinking that perhaps since I have to use the Raylight Decoder to view DVCProHD.mov files that even ffmpeg may not be able to open the files without Quicktime being present. But there's no substitute for actually trying it. Rob
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Videoon 4/18/2016
Quicktime security and flaws...
In the "other" thread on this topic it has been reported that Vegas Pro requires the QuickTime Player.exe be available. VMP and I both reported this. A clarification is in order. There are some encodings (mp4, for example) that Vegas can (probably, I didn't actually test but I think others have) decode even if it's wrapped in quicktime. There are other encodings like ProRes, DVCProHD.mov via Raylight Decoder, Animation Codec, etc that require the quicktime player. So, this is simple enough to test. Just rename the "QuickTimePlayer.exe" to something else and then open Vegas and try it. If it throws an error then you still need the quicktime player. In the mean time let's hope SCS can tell us whether they plan to address this. They might feel that they shouldn't if they see Vegas as EOL. Rob
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Videoon 4/18/2016
please explain what to do re QT?
IMHO, it was overreacting to a "possible" threat that doesn't "exist" yet. As an antivirus vendor and supposedly security experts, it's their role to say "uninstall the software". They can't really say anything else. On the other hand, it's NOT the role of the press to unequivocally say "uninstall it now, now, NOW!!!" They could say something a bit more rational and nuanced. However, most of these publications are looking at this with the understanding that Quicktime is just a player to watch your cat videos at home. In that context it's trivial to uninstall it. You don't need it for your cat videos, although you can have multiple instances running and it's a well featured player so it's great for watching several cats at once, with basic color tweaks and JKL support. I also wonder if there might not be a little animus towards Apple here. Not an outright assault but a "serves 'em right" sort of satisfaction that might cause the press to rush to offer unconsidered opinions. In the mean time I've got a question in to the Raylight folks about their decoder. I don't really expect much since this mainly services tape-based Panasonic DVCProHD cameras. There's probably not much in it for them to spin out a non-quicktime version of the decoder, nor does it seem like there's much value to SCS to configure .MOV support to use something other than Quicktime. My understanding is that Vegas is EOL so why address this at all? What I'd like to see is a standalone transcoder that will convert MOV files without installing Quicktime. Rob
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Videoon 4/18/2016
please explain what to do re QT?
I can corroborate what VMP reported. I'm using a codec that is specific to Quicktime. Vegas 13 throws up an error if I put any of that media on the timeline after having renamed the player.exe file. So, if you're working with people on Macs and they're giving you ProRes or something else in a MOV wrapper then you either need to ask *them* to transcode it, find a non-quicktime transcoder or keep Quicktime Player installed on your system. Getting them to transcode for you is unlikely, in my experience. As far as Trend Micro having it in their interest to spread fear and panic... this is orphaned software with known security holes. What else can they say except to tell you to uninstall the player? It's really not their place to take a liberal and open minded attitude. I honestly don't expect SCS to do anything about this as there are plenty of other codec options to use, and they haven't made a commitment to ProRes output. However, I'd love it if they took some time to look into the issue and provide some guidance, maybe in the form of a white paper. Rob
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Videoon 4/15/2016
Quicktime security and flaws...
This is hitting just before NAB and I think we'll see it addressed by many stakeholders in the next two weeks. If you never view MOV files then I don't see the harm of leaving it installed and waiting for more information. However, I did just check to make sure it wasn't the default player for anything. I don't know what happens when you start Vegas without quicktime installed, but I DO use DVCProHD MOV files on a regular basis so I personally can't just uninstall quicktime. Also, this news is kind of more like third parties saying "Vulnerabilities are appearing, Apple isn't patching it, everyone should uninstall it." None of this is information from Apple. Rob
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Videoon 4/11/2016
OT: Flash vulnerability to ransomware
Kelly, your example illustrates why Flash will linger for quite a while. There's a lot of installed instructional material that was authored in Flash over the last decade or so, and a lot of institution-like entities that have no real plans to re-author material, or redevelop it from the ground up. For example, I still work in Flash most days of the week. It's all production work with no budget for redevelopment, and that's probably the key stumbling block with complex animation in HTML5/JS/CSS. Lack of production level tools. Would I be open to delivering something else? Sure. As soon as my client is ready to host it. I can easily imagine that taking another 10 years for clients who have no desire to pay for a change. Rob
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Videoon 3/25/2016
Test Sony Vegas: rendering i7-4790, GTX-580, Quick
...SCS would have better spent their resources secretly rebuilding Vegas Pro from scratch... Maybe they did spend their resources that way, and then called it a sunk cost. If it was secret, we wouldn't know. Rob
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Videoon 3/22/2016
VGA Vs. HDMI - Best Display to Edit on?
You've already gotten good advice but let me run a couple of thought experiments past you. How do you test your VGA and HDMI outputs to see if there's a difference between them? You should run them both to the SAME display and then switch between them. My expectation is, all other things being equal, that there would be a pretty minimal difference between the two. That leaves you to consider the differences between the two displays. Ideally, you want to calibrate both of them so that they'll be as accurate as they can get, but you'll probably find that they'll never match. Even two identical monitors are hard to match. TV's are notoriously inaccurate, and they offer profiles like "Vivid", "Cinema", and "Normal" so that you can get several flavors of inaccuracy. You probably want to calibrate the Normal profile and then assume that it's showing you the same sort of happy medium of inaccuracy that any average person will see on their own differently inaccurate TV. Yes, TVs usually don't look great but these are what people have so you want to do your best to make sure your picture looks "okay" on a TV even when its poorly adjusted. I've never calibrated my own TV so I can't provide advice but the internet is full of it. I don't keep the TV near my computer so I never compare the images. Whatever you do, you want to have one display whose color you trust and then grade for that. Professional graders put a LOT of money into this but as a hobbyist or small-time pro you need to just do your best. And pick one display to judge color from. Back when I was lighting professionally in a largely analog world, I found it easy to tell at a glance whether a field monitor was right or wrong. Is there detail in the blacks? Should there be? Are the bright areas blowing out? Should there be detail there? These are real basic considerations that you should be able to ballpark just by eye. As for VGA, this is an analog component-type signal. It can degrade over long cable runs or over faulty cables. The digital HDMI signal would also degrade over distance but 1's and 0's are still 1's and 0's. Digital doesn't degrade so much as it just fails. Rob <edit> Actually, I only found it easy to tell at a glance when a field monitor was wrong. This was an objective truth. Judging a field monitor to be right was mostly subjective.</edit>
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Offtopicon 3/20/2016
Photoshop competitor is coming to Windows!
The software itself looks reasonable, at least in their demos and in the Lynda.com tutorial. It's curious that they're asking for half the dollars of their main Serif image editor app but maybe they're trying to get some market share. Where it gets hairy is in trying to work with other people. For example, I upgraded my CS4 suite to CS6 at work because I needed to keep up with a contractor we were hiring. She couldn't downgrade for us and some of the work files she needed to deliver weren't readable in some of the CS4 apps. For 50 bucks you can actually buy the Affinity image app for a regular contractor, but since by their nature *you* can't be their only client, this just adds up to another bitmap editor they have to get familiar with. I've also played with Gimp over the last decade or so but the main thing that stopped me was the way it used up screen real estate. It's very easy to get stymied by little details in a new software candidate when you're already proficient in something like Photoshop, which I am. All that said, my workplace doesn't even want to upgrade their adobe suites past CS4. There's just no obvious reason if unless you actually use the apps, which they think they do, but not really, and in that case it's just incremental improvements. Rob
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Offline, Last login 7/16/2022, Member since 8/23/2016