Sony Vegas 10?

[Al Bergstein]

Norm, I use FCP on a dual quad core mac pro, and Vegas on a dual W7 w/64 bit Vegas. I don’t have the video preview problems ever on FCP. (I edited my recent video project on FCP and my latest Canon T2i on Vegas.) I find Vegas much easier to use in general than FCP, I get things done much faster in general, but this issue with Vegas not fully utilizing my high end graphics cards to be quite agravating. If Sony were serious about surpassing FCP or Adobe as the industry standard, they would solve this most basic problem of their software. I have no idea what the core reasons to solving this are, perhaps there is some fundamental issue that would require enormous rewriting and test matrix to implement. I’ve been through many software iterations in my day, and I am not damning Sony out of hand. But this feature issue is really cramping us in the high end use of their product. I don’t give a damn about 3d, but understand the programatic issues with them implementing it. If they can do 3d, why can’t they do decent preview with 2d on a high end graphics card? It seems idiotic on it’s surface!

Alf

[Norman Willis]

That’s well said.

Thanks for explaining.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Nigel O’neill]

Like Alf Hanna, I was extremely disappointed not to see the accelerated preview issue resolved. It worked fine in SVP8 but not in SVP9. Even hooking up to secondary 30″ monitor is not helping me and I have to put up with the fuzzy setting. Having to edit in draft mode or preview mode (at best) is crazy on an i7 920 system.

Adobe CS5 is looking more and more appealing… .

Intel i920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 9 (X64), Vista x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S 4.1

[Dave Haynie]

I don’t have any fundamental problem with stereoscopic support (aka “3D”). But really, compared to edit-time GPU acceleration, this is a relatively obscure thing right now.

And yet, this seems to be a big thing at Sony… they seem to be looking at 3D as the thing that drives another big round of hardware upgrades, just as HDTV (and even to an extent, HDTV without HDMI/HDCP, then with) has done — they’ve replaced TVs, Blu-Ray players, etc. They’re pushing into 3D gaming on the PS3, even that [finally] strains the hardware a bit, etc.

This is maybe the first time I think we’ve seen “Sony Media Software” move in a direction that’s more Sony Marketing Agenda, less “What Users Need”. Not that they have to be exclusive things, but if the GPU acceleration is missing, seems to me that’s one obvious place the resources went.

That doesn’t mean this can’t be good in the long run for Sony and Vegas… it could drive some new sales for people who might never have looked at Vegas. The question, though, is how many it’ll drive away.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Last I checked, FCP didn’t support much of any native AVC/AVCHD editing. So when you add AVC files to a project, it logs and transfers the files to ProRes copies. So yeah, fast edits. You can do the same kind of thing, at higher quality, using Cineform on the PC (Cineform Neo runs around $100).

For cheap, there are other options. One is, just using Vegas, transcode to a high bitrate MXF/MPEG-2 file. You’ll drop a small bit of quality, but MPEG-2 editing is pretty fast on a modern PC. Another option is the open standard DNxHD CODEC from Avid: https://www.broadcastautomation.com/dnxhd/

That’s high-end-ish, and since I use Cineform I haven’t needed this, but it’s worth a check-out, if your PC isn’t quite up to the demands of native AVC editing (as few are). If you install DNxHD, the version from Avid runs under Quicktime, not DirectShow or Video4Windows.

-Dave

[Bill Mash]

As a current Vegas 8 user I have to say I’m stunningly disappointed in how little I have to gain moving up two revisions in Software. Owned vegas 3 loved the upgrade to 4. Waited until six, which was in my humble opinion the most comprehensive update ever. In the good old days of Sonic Foundry I’m certain I would be salivating at upgrading versus scratching my blank-blank in 3D

That’s my two cents – Cheers.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

[Ron Palais]

Hey John,
Thanks for all the helpful information in your post. Would you be able to please inform me how to find the “Image Stabilization” effect in Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Production Suite? I was directed to your post as I was inquiring about a note on the Vegas box (for Production Suite) that states “Quickly remove video jitter common to handheld cameras for a smooth professional look”. Can’t seem to find it in my program. Thanks in advance for any help you could provide.
Ron

[John Rofrano]

[Ron Palais] “Would you be able to please inform me how to find the “Image Stabilization” effect in Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Production Suite?”

Sure. Just right-click on the event you want to stabilize and select Stabilize Media….

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ron Palais]

Wow! That easy! Thanks so much! That’ll do it. And thanks so much for the speedy reply!

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome. I assumed you were looking for it as a plug-in which would have been exactly where I would have looked if I didn’t know it was a “right-click thingy”. lol 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com