Vegas 4 or 5?

[hienben]

Can anyone tell me if Vegas 4 handles 24p/25p or will I need Vegas 5?

thanks...

[Barry_Green]

If you get the update to version 4.0b or later, yes it has full 24P/25P support. 4.0 and 4.0a didn't offer it, but 4.0b and later do.

[scharky]

the update is free BTW. Sony doesn't charge for updates like some companies do :( ;D

[Barry_Green]

Minor revisions are free, yes, but major revisions (like 4.0 to 5.0), they charge for.

[scharky]

True, Barry, But I don't consider 4.0 to 5.0 an update, it is an all new program that is worth the "Upgrade" price. I am talking more along the lines of a company that releases a program, and then a few months later charges for bug fixes and very minor updates, including 24p timeline ability. Sorry, still a little sore, but I'm trying to get over it. Vegas rocks.

[hienben]

Thanks for your help guys. I think I'll go straight for Vegas 5. I've been using Premiere 6.5 up until now but I had a look at Vegas 4 and I really liked the feel it.

[J_Barnes]

Oh, yikes...you're in for a world of difference!

I'm surprised they even classify premiere 6.5 as a working piece of software. How can the company that makes such an inherrently functional piece of software such as Photoshop, also turn out the trainwreck that ammounts to premiere? That software must really be an embarassment to Adobe, as everything else they make seems to be so well engineered.

Anyway, yeah...Vegas is great, if for nothing else then it's stability. I think you'll be pleased with your choice.

[Barry_Green]

Hey Scharky, no problem at all, I just wanted to clarify because in this thread they were talking about Vegas 4, and I didn't want the guy to buy it and then think they could update to Vegas 5 for free, then get a nasty surprise when he finds out there's an upgrade fee.

Vegas does rock. The bezier masking and the Chroma Blur filter are worth upgrading from 4.0 in and of themselves!

[scharky]

Like I said in another post, the Chroma blur filter is an absolute must for any DVX user. Colors are so saturated that the DV compression really just can't handle it. Yeah for the chroma blur.

[J_Barnes]

"Help desk" is comming around to install our Vegas 5.0 upgrade today. I'm looking forward to checking out the bezier masking.

[Barry_Green]

I can't imagine how I got along without it before...

[kplo]

I'm using Vegas 4.0e. Having read posts about 5.0 problems with various functions, I'm a bit woried about taking the plunge to the new version. How stable is 5.0 and is anything "broken" from 4.0e?
Thanks for your input.
Ken

[scharky]

Problems? Having upgraded to V.5 from 4, I have never experienced any functional problems with 5.0. Can you explain more?

[J_Barnes]

Okay, I thought we were upgrading, but help desk just gave us a trial version of the program to test before they buy the boxed copies.

We had a severe system crash with complete memory stack dump lockup about 20 minutes into using Vegas 5.

I'd blame it on the fact that it's a downloaded trial version, but they're very aprehensive now about upgrading.

[Jive]

There are some issues with Vegas 5. Some issues seem to be isolated to just a few users, while other issues appear to experienced by a mass amount of users. Just look on Sony's forums to get an idea of what those issues may be related to.

From what I have seen, no functions appear to be "broken", but stability seems to be an issue for some users.

[Fred_Plowman]

Why is it the first one Sony puts out is plagued with these problems??? And also why is it there isnt a fix as of yet?? Grrrrrr

Maybe ill just stay with 4 it works flawlessly

[Jive]

I wouldn't say it's "plagued" with problems. There are some issues, but still, it's a whole lot more stable than so many apps out there. It's just that v4 was known for it's amazing stability, so anything less is an issue.

Also, there have been updates. They have already released 2 updates to fix issues.

[David Jimerson]

Hmmm . . . gotta wonder about the horsepower of some of the systems these problemed users are running Vegas on . . .

[J_Barnes]

well I'm running a dual xenon 2.4 with 2 gigs of ram, 3 scsi internal media/system drives, 1 external firewire and a $900 video card.

I'd hope that my system would be sufficient to run without issues.

[Student]

I sure would like to hear from anyone that has had specific "issues" with Vegas 5 - good or bad - and the systems they are running on. There is a long list of issues on Sony's web site but it's not clear which one have been cleared up. I have Vegas 5 sitting on my desk now, but unless it's just as stable as Ver. 4 no thanks.

[David Jimerson]

I dunno, J; I’m assuming that with your experience, you’re running a pretty clean system without anything else running in the background to sap processor power. Why you’re getting these long render times and experiencing these problems, I can’t say. I can only say it’s not consistent with my Vegas experience.

[J_Barnes]

David...we have an extensive IT/Help Desk department...so NO, it is definatly NOT a clean system. (isn't it funny how computer guys can't ever seem to keep a system clean?)

However, there aren't a lot of processor intensive items running in the background or in system memory...certainly not enough to impact vegas's operations.

I think the long render times are just long because of windows...again, me bashing windows. But in this case, I'm suspecting our problems with vegas 5 lie in the build, not in the software. For some reason, they decided to download the trial version rather then just buying a box, and I don't ever trust software that's downloaded.

Error checking can only go so far, and it has to introduce errors in the binaries at some point.

[Jive]

Actually, in the case of Vegas, the downloadable full version of Vegas 5 was better than boxed version when it was first released. The boxed version had bugs that were fixed within days of the release of Vegas 5 and made available as a downloadable full installation.

I'm not sure about the trial version, but as far as Vegas is concerned, whenever I do a system reinstall, I always go to Sony's website and download the latest revision of Vegas to do my Vegas install.

I too am curious as to why you're experiencing such slow rendering on a system such as yours. I worked on Macs and FCP for years (since version 1) before I started using Vegas on the PC so I'm fairly familiar with rendering on a mac. I find Vegas render times to be at least on par with FCP and a comprobable Mac system. Nonetheless, the newest G5's do allow FCP to do some mighty fast renders! :)

[J_Barnes]

Raw horsepower of a dual 2.4 xeon with 2 gigs and scsi internal drives

vs.

A dual G4 1.2 gig Mac with 512 gigs of ram and two internal ata drives.

You wouldn't think the Mac would kick the tar out of a dual xeon, but that's what seems to happen in my case. I also don't like the method that vegas uses to render, as it seems to recompile the video from start to finish regardless of changes.

Either way, we're not getting a mac here, so I'm stuck with what I've got.

[David Jimerson]

I also don't like the method that vegas uses to render, as it seems to recompile the video from start to finish regardless of changes.

That, I agree with. It would be nice to be able to move rendered clips around.