So do I need Vegas 7.0?

[MiniMan]

Well, I'm editing and I'm going to be editing for a while only in SD from my DVX, outputting to DVD. Is there really any point of upgrading to 7? I don't feel like I'm missing anything in 6.

[HorseFilms]

I don't think you'd need to upgrade if you're happy with 6. I'm going to wait until I hear about the DVDA 4 upgrades to decide if I need it or not. Probably not, though, from the looks of things so far.

[SafetyO]

"Well...it's 7. It's 1 louder isn't it?"

I was thinking the same thing. I'm also just editing SD, however, I have plans for HD within 6 months so I'm tempted to upgrade. That being said, Vegas 6 seems to handle anything I need, so for now, nope. No upgrade yet.

[David Jimerson]

From my experimentation with the demo, there's not a whole lot added in the DV realm. A couple of workflow tweaks, but not too much else. Most of the improvement appears to be with HDV.

There are some additions to DVD Architect which intrigue me, like the buttons on your video.

[HorseFilms]

There are some additions to DVD Architect which intrigue me, like the buttons on your video.

That's one of the things I want to play around with. That could make me open the wallet.

[MisterCat]

I'm glad to see someone talking about DVDA; I tried to open a couple of discussions about it and no one responded. I'm completely inexperienced with any other DVD authoring software, but there's certainly some things I can't do in DVDA that I see on plenty of discs out there. Is everyone using just DVDA or are you using something else for better menus, buttons, transitions, etc?

[David Jimerson]

I use it frequently. It's far more flexible than it appears at first blush; you can create your own menus, for example, in PS and then import it, and DVDA will recignize the layers. You can customize your button masks to match whatever your buttons are, etc., and the backgrounds/music are whatever you want. Navigation setup is generally a snap, too, especially since the addition of a GUI for assigning buttons.

Most "high-end" authoring software REQUIRES you to create menus in PS or something similar, so being able to create a basic menu from the presets is actually nice.

What I don't care for is something that Vegas is often criticized for, and as much as I defend Vegas against the criticism, it actually applies to DVDA -- the titler. It's limited. It's a pain. And unlike Vegas, you have no ability to add other effects to it.

Still, you can get around that by creating menu screens in PS, and like I said, most high-end authoring apps require that anyway.

[MisterCat]

David,
what about transitioning from the main menu to scene selection, or cast bios, etc? I'd like to have some cool motion graphic things as transitions but DVDA just does immediate cuts. I know there's workarounds for this, such as rendering the transitions onto the front of scenes and whatnot, but being able to just put them in place through DVDA would be much easier.


Steven

[David Jimerson]

No, DVDA can assign transition videos (in fact, I have one in Disc 2 of the upcoming HVX Bootcamp DVD set). Look in the Help section.

[MisterCat]

Hmmm, need to look at that again then. I even asked that question in another Vegas forum a while back and was told it couldn't be done in DVDA.

[David Jimerson]

I don't recall if every version could do it, but DVDA3 can and I'm pretty sure DVDA2 could.

[Slimothy]

I have Vegas 5 and am looking to upgrade to Vegas 7. Where is the best place to do that at?

[Barry_Green]

Don't, until NAB. Sony has said that they would be updating Vegas "in the Spring" to support AVC-HD, and that hasn't happened yet, so I'm expecting some NAB-related announcement about a new version next week.

[David Jimerson]

Would be kinda soon for a Vegas 8, though. If it's a 7.0x upgrade, it'll be free (if you have 7, of course).

But, it's only a week, so no reason not to wait a few more days.

[Barry_Green]

I don't expect it to be Vegas 8, but I do expect it to have AVC-HD and V1U/HV20 support...

[USLatin]

When should we expect the 8.0 release?

[David Jimerson]

Vegas 7 came out in September. Anything sooner than a year after that would be very surprising.

[David Jimerson]

I don't expect it to be Vegas 8, but I do expect it to have AVC-HD and V1U/HV20 support...

OK. Just saying, if it's not an 8.0 release, then there's no harm in getting 7 now, because an upgrade to 7 would be free.

[Barry_Green]

I never like to count those chickens before they're hatched. The FCP upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1 wasn't free. Sure Vegas "dot revisions" have been free in the past, but does that mean they'll continue to be? Panasonic rebates used to automatically renew and get better, they didn't expire (oops -- looks like they did!) See what I mean? I say if you can wait, wait; that's the only way to know for sure.