Overall feelings on MVP 14, please give me yours

[Francois Blawat]

From My Point of View,

I believe that VP14 was already “almost” completed by SCS before they sold it to MAGIX. I really doubt that MAGIX would have released something this quick if the product was not already mostly completed. There were other users who commented that they saw websites with info on VP14 way ahead of any “official” notice from SCS early this year I believe.

From the latest complaints on the MAGIX forum regarding the upgrade pricing and lack of offers to current users, a lot are saying they are not updating.

– – – – –
FixitMad

[Scott Francis]

That was my assumption as well. It really isn’t much of an “upgrade” and has bug and annoyances.
I did upgrade, but need Pro Res and that is worth it for now. Too many big projects to learn a new NLE, but I will likely be moving on.

Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind\’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[Mark Barton]

I upgraded for $199 more for the hope that another version of Vegas Pro will come out. It is sad to think of all the hours of of development to address the legal issues with the name space for scripting and FXs that could have been used to enhance the product. I’m able to use VP14 although I have to change the way I do most things until the VASST FASST apps are updated. In the meantime, I’m using Vegasaur 3.0 much more than the previous version as it seems to be handling many of my uses for the FASST apps and Production Assistant 2, I had purchased first. I also like having the native ProRes support since Quicktime on Windows is not supported.

My main pain points currently with VP14 ate:

NewBlue Titler Pro 4 QuickEdit mode does not return to the timeline and I have to quit VP14. When I go back into VP14, my title is there as expected. I have no problem with Boris Red 5.5 as I just used that for motion tracking last night.

When I quit out of VP14, I notice in Task Manager that vegas140.exe is still running and sometimes multiple copies (Vegasaur Transcoder). If I see strange VP14 behavior, I exit and then terminate all those processes before relaunching again (or just reboot).

[George Dean]

When I purchase products I value the resource (company) as much as the product. I haven’t ever found a perfect company with a perfect product, but there are reputations and minimal business practices which I consider. So what is my opinion of Magix and Vegas Pro 14…….

– Read Only native support is nice for ProRes, but most of my source is in DNxHD and that still requires the 32-bit QuickTime.
– Any bug fix provided is on the original version developer, so when Magix rebranded and issued updates to VP v13, they bought those bugs and they should be fixed as an update and not considered a part of the upgrade value.
– When Magix bundles 3rd party software/apps they need to work, some do not.
– 3rd party bundled apps which are already commonly used in previous versions offer little value to those upgrading from previous versions (namely Mercalli).
– Additional software bundled such as DVD Architect v6 relabeled as v7 (rebranding) with no changes other than taking away the ac3 pro is a downgrade and absolute insult to the product line and users, which may bridge on being a scam.
– During the little testing of the trial v14, I didn’t have any crashes (outside of NewBlue), but did have many error messages when exiting the program, which may be an indicator what I have tested just isn’t enough yet to stress the program and truly test the claimed stability improvements.
– Changing the icons to B&W making them harder to read and recognize was really something I would expect from the development team with no interest in using the product for production. It is clear they had no input from professionals as to how this was an improvement.
– Magix did little to nothing for 3rd party app developers or script writers.
– Magix did little to nothing for 3rd party support websites, educators, or those providing tutorials as had previously supported Sony products with an affiliated program.
– Magix completely fumbled the notification of users by email and have yet (over three months now) corrected that situation and have only feeble excuses.
– Magix completely failed, by misleading the community, with an upgrade purchase price policy which has overwhelmingly alienated the user base.
– Magix ported a well known and accepted website, from clean and efficient, to something created by a third tier developer and have yet to clean it up with common features acceptable to the forum user community.
– Magix has ignored direct questions from supporters to the point many have bailed with disappointment.
– Magix has created a spider web of various links and pages which are confusing to most who attempt to get support and pricing information.
– Magix has been terrible at responding to support email, tickets, and phone calls.
– A better deal for new users than they offer to their current user base and then question their loyalty was a slap in the face that became the final straw for me.

That’s not all of it, but enough time spent for now. I was one of those users who embraced the Magix purchase and held confidence in their ability to provide a splendid product with reputable business conduct. In my opinion they have failed overwhelmingly. I’m disappointed and disenchanted. I will not purchase v14 and doubt there is anything Magix can do to bring me back. It’s a disgusting development. When I heard Magix purchased Vegas, I thought very well, no one could mess it up worse than Sony……it appears I was wrong!

If Magix can correct their mistakes they have an opportunity to capture back some lost user base, I wish they well, from the stand point I now couldn’t care less. I’ll keep my v13 and I’m off to Resolve.

Best Regards…….George

[László Kovács]

I have mixed feelings with Vegas 14 and DVDA, but I am more positive, than negative.
I planned to upgrade to VP13 this year later, for the reason it has GPU support. The Magix deal just brought it sooner, the “deal” price (for what I get V14 for free later) I had to pay, was very close, or equal to the upgrade price I would have paid for SONY to upgrade my V10. So I took it, and invested in a cheap, yet capable video card.
I was completely disappointed with Vegas 13, because the set of bugs it had made impossible to work with it as I used to with Vegas 10. Disabling GPU solved all these problems, but with disabled GPU I see no improvement at all over Vegas 10.
Fortunately, in Vegas14 those bugs that hurted me so much are now fixed.
And I really appreciate it! Vegas 14 currently is a usable, useful tool for me.
Of course I don’t like the new bugs introduced in V14, like the problems with .mxf and .m2t files – these bugs don’t hurt me now, but may do in the future, and I expect Magix to fix them.
I don’t like that AC3 pro encoder is completely ripped off.
Before, it was part of the DVDA, and after installing DVDA it got available in Vegas too. Now this is not the case with DVDA7.0 and V14.
(Currently I can workaround: render audio to wav, then render wav to ac3 pro in vegas 10 or 13 – but I need to have installed previous, otherwise useless versions for that.)
I don’t really like the supports response time, which is about a week or so.
I don’t really like how V14 looks with this new flat gray icon set, V13 looked much better I think.
There’s definitely many room for improvement in both the product, and the support.

Best regards

László Kovács

[Steve Rhoden]

Many room for improvements are still needed. I am still pleased with the direction Magix is taking Vegas, but
now that Vegas 14 is released, its very much clear that their are many, many more work needs to be done,
And i am confident they are gonna get it right, when they cross this early Vegas acquired stage.
Unlike Sony, Magix listens to its user base….. They also need to get on top of their game with communication
and interacting with third party software developers, so Vegas scripts, Extensions and plugins developers can
have everything ready for Vegas at any given time.

Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia

[John Norton]

Magix 14 …

My 2 cents …

Pros ..
1. Very generous offer, I paid €199 last summer, and went from SVP EDIT version to Magix Vegas PRO version (Mercalli very nice bonus) plus ver. 13 that I didn’t need.
2. New users can now get, until the 16th-October, Magix Vegas PRO version for €249, no previous version needed.
3. Some new features, HEVC, PRO-Res, Smart up-sampling, (Smart-zoom? maybe).
4. Keeping layout UI similar to old, so for now no big change, (black icons, yuck).
5. No interference with existing ver 13, can be run on same PC as ver 14.
6. Vegas Pro is still alive, at least continued development is assured.
7. More devices/codecs supported.
8. Bug fixes.
9. Still allows install on 2 machines, as long as only using one at any one time.
10. Very good tutorials available.
11. Same development team I understand, thats good for sure.

Cons ..
1. Graphic card support still 2010 era, my biggest disappointment by far.
2. Black icons are hard to differentiate from each other when they’re small on a high res. monitor. Maybe give users the option to change, or just go back to previous.
3. NewBlue Titler bundled with MVP 14 is buggy, v/poor or maybe non existing testing with MVP14 prior to launch.
4. Some new bugs.
5. Some may disagree with this but perhaps the project file extension should have been changed. Double-clicking on a .veg project file loads ver 13, maybe not what’s desired. After all, ver. 14 projects are not compatible with ver. 13, and thats ok, but, a different extension would allow seeing at a glance which was created with which version, going forward.
6. Previously the full program was downloaded first, then you would run and install in one go. I don’t know where the full program is kept, just the stub downloader, maybe this is to prevent bootlegging?
7. Communication in general leaves something to be desired.
8. Is their a .pdf manual available for version 14? If so where is it? If not, why not?

Anyway, I’m delighted that the show is on the road again, best of luck to all, developers and users …

[Antonio Souto]

In the beginning I was linking this new version. It is not a huge departure from VP13, but it adds some nice functionalities. However, I just noticed that VP14 produces interlaced-like results when I render a project with images captured with my Canon 60D. I have tried everything but interlaced-like lines keep on showing up. The same files in VP13 produce pristine results.

[Scott Francis]

I noticed something similar with footage from my Atomos Ninja 2. Hope they fix it soon!!

Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind\’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[Antonio Souto]

Good to know it, Xavier. Well, at least, no such interlaced problem when using 4k material from my other camera, a GH4. Probably 1080p files from the GH4 will also work fine.