Is Sony Vegas discontinued?

M

mitteg

Active member
It has been a looooong time since Sony released a new version of Sony Vegas. What is happening? Seems like Vegas is lagging behind other NLE's and I'm just thinking of switching to a more "active" NLE. The problem is that I'm so used to Vegas that I find the other NLE so cumbersome.

Premiere CC: fresh and new from Adobe but it is still Premiere. I hate it years ago and I cannot stand the way it does simple things like how to apply a single transition...
FCPX: this magnetic timeline is a nightmare
Davinci Resolve: like it! Professional color correction, nice editor, professional codec support, but it does not accept XAVC HD codec
Avid: expensive, rigid timeline, old-fashioned

No NLE seems to tick all the boxes . What are your thoughts? Thanks.
 
Did they make it into the Catalyst edit product?

You are missing Edius and Lightworks from your list. Lightworks and Media Composer can both be purchased month to month, so you only need to pay for them when you are using them.
 
I don't think Sony Vegas has been discontinued, and am happy that Sony is no longer pumping out a new version every year because often the version improvements were pretty minor. I don't think Sony has been too successful at getting anyone to switch to Catalyst ( for me the cost was too much for an unproven system ), but they might try and push it in the future with a lower price for Vegas users. I have not read too many nice things about Catalyst, so I'm going to ignore it for the next year or two.

What I would like to see is a recoded Vegas that will take proper advantage of multi-CPU and multi-GPU systems. I find it difficult to get Vegas to use more than a third of the processing capacity of my computer, so things take longer to render than they should.

While I own Vegas Pro 13, I do most of my editing with Vegas Pro 11 because it's been the most stable version of Vegas I've used to date.
 
They did offer a nice discount for Vegas users a few months ago, before the edit product even shipped. Haven't seen anything lately and haven't even considered this new edit product. I only concern myself with any of it because we use cameras that record to XDCam EX and I like to make sure their is a product that students can get for free to view the recordings on their own computers so that they might actually check what they shot while they still have time to reshoot, and maybe log their stuff to help them edit. We even have assignments based around doing these things yet the majority of them won't bother even looking at the recording until they sit down to edit.
 
It is not discontinued.

Catalyst is not a replacement. It's an entirely different set of programs for very different purposes.
 
David Jimerson said:
It's an entirely different set of programs for very different purposes.
Click to expand...

Really ? ...Because it looks like a set of three programs aimed at doing everything Vegas Pro does and a lot more ( using an entirely different workflow ), and the promo material I received from Sony as a Vegas Pro user described the Catalyst suite as the next generation of the Sony video workflow.
 
Yeah, it's intended as a more streamlined workflow at a specific type of user. Events, reality, news, corporate . . .
 
To the OP: In what way do you feel Vegas is lagging behind other NLEs? I've always felt Vegas is more feature rich than the competition. Are there any specific things lacking in Vegas that you'd like to see?

My biggest issue with Vegas is frequency of crashing. I'm often pushing Vegas very hard and I do feel like I'm on a knife edge sometimes! But having said that, I have used Premier and find it to be quite crashy as well, particularly with third party plugins (which I believe is often the reason Vegas crashes - I rarely see it fall over when I am editing a vanilla timeline).

I go along with TheDingo in that the annual releases of new versions were less and less enticing. I would be quite happy if Sony went the way of Adobe or Cakewalk and introduced a rental plan with frequent minor updates and improvements.

If Sony ever decides to drop Vegas I would use the opportunity to jump ship to a more industry standard NLE - probably Premier - but it would be reluctantly. Catalyst doesn't do it for me.
 
Well, things like:

More advanced color correction tools (no way to natively apply LUT's to S-log2 footage)
More codec support (need a solid intermediate format like ProRes or DNxHD equivalent).
Multiplatform (Mac and Windows versions)
Media management tools (tags, labels, something more advanced than just a explorer window)
Possibility to have multiple timelines at once (no requiring to open various instances of Vegas)
Collaborative editing (similar to Avid Unity, etc)

Basically more professional options. Have a search at youtube looking for "Sony Vegas" and you'll only find kids gameplays edits. Do the same for Avid or FCPX and you'll find a ton of useful tutorials. Sony Vegas is not taken seriously at all by the industry.

Ian Stark said:
To the OP: In what way do you feel Vegas is lagging behind other NLEs? I've always felt Vegas is more feature rich than the competition. Are there any specific things lacking in Vegas that you'd like to see?
Click to expand...
 
mitteg, Vegas aint perfect, but you might need to look further into it's capabilities. Vegas media handling is really what makes it's workflow so fast - it does have tags, labels, smart bins, etc. I'd be surprised if there weren't Youtube tutorials on these features. Final Cut Pro isn't cross platform either. You want Apple, you makes your choice. Vegas intermediate codecs, you can of course use DNxHD or ProRes, but have a look also at the free Cineform or Matrox MPEG-2 I-Frame HD.
 
Off topic, but I'm puzzled at the OP's for Premiere transitions. You drag the desired transition onto the join of two clips, and adjust its start and end point. How could it be any simpler?
 
Some personal observations, based on your reply. I stress personal because what is important to some isn't so important to others and in the NLE v NLE world there is too much trivial bickering already! :

I have no opinion about S-log capability as I don't use Sony cameras. I agree this would be useful to many;
I use 10-bit DNxHD footage from a Samurai Blade perfectly well in Vegas every day;
Personally I have no need for multi-platform so that doesn't affect me;
Agree that better media management tools would be useful, although there is already something slightly more comprehensive than just an Explorer-style window;
Kind of agree about the multiple timelines, but I don't have any issue with multiple instances of Vegas - actually makes it easier to copy and paste from one project to another (if you have multiple screens)
I almost exclusively work alone so collaborative editing isn't of interest to me.

I stress these are my personal opinions!

Where my opinion strongly differs is in the belief that it's only kids that use Vegas and that it's not taken seriously. I can't see how you can judge the 'professionalism' of a product on how many YouTube videos there are with 'Vegas' in the tags! Personally, I don't feel the need to stamp that for the last fifteen years my output has been edited in Vegas. All that's important is that my end-product looks great, my workflow is tight and my customers are happy. It does, it is and they are :-)

I guess this all depends on how you define 'the industry'. If you are in the cinema-release film industry, you would probably be wise not to choose Vegas. If you are delivering for broadcast TV, again, there are more appropriate tools than Vegas. But if you're making corporate videos, educational, weddings, commercials, events, documentaries or low budget shorts then Vegas is a viable contender. As long as it has a broad range of tools and support from the major third party developers (such as Boris, GenArts, NewBlueFX, HitFilm, ReVision, Red Giant etc) then I can get on and produce great looking material that keeps my clients happy. As a solid all-rounder I think I would struggle to find a single tool that offers as much as Vegas. Are there features lacking? Of course. Is there an NLE that does everything I want? No. If you find one and it's as easy to learn and use as Vegas, do let me know - I'm not so naive as to stick with Vegas just because it's Vegas! I make a good living from all this - if I can make a better living by using a different NLE, I'm there :-)

I am a freelancing professional producing approximately one corporate project every two weeks for a repeat client base of major businesses including IBM, Arrow, Dell, Kaplan, attracting between £2500 and £15000 per job, average per job £4100 so far this year (that includes pre-production, shoot and post-production). I have also produced long- and short-form documentaries (including 'the Best Aviation DVD of 2012). Last week I was in Spain filming a promo for a sailing holiday company. This afternoon I fly to Denmark to shoot a third case study for the Danish Co-op. I'm not bragging, I just want to make the point that I've used Vegas professionally for years, I'm not a kid and I am in 'the industry'. There are lots of us :-)

Vegas is an outstanding work-horse for the jobbing freelancer and while it doesn't have the industry status that Premier or FCP or Avid have, that should have no relevance for people like me.

Again, just my personal opinion :-)


mitteg said:
Well, things like:

More advanced color correction tools (no way to natively apply LUT's to S-log2 footage)
More codec support (need a solid intermediate format like ProRes or DNxHD equivalent).
Multiplatform (Mac and Windows versions)
Media management tools (tags, labels, something more advanced than just a explorer window)
Possibility to have multiple timelines at once (no requiring to open various instances of Vegas)
Collaborative editing (similar to Avid Unity, etc)

Basically more professional options. Have a search at youtube looking for "Sony Vegas" and you'll only find kids gameplays edits. Do the same for Avid or FCPX and you'll find a ton of useful tutorials. Sony Vegas is not taken seriously at all by the industry.
Click to expand...
 
Chances are, many, if not most, of the "Vegas" videos on YouTube are done with Movie Studio rather than Vegas Pro.
 
Thanks for your response, I will dig further into these features.

DNxHD and Vegas not a good combo because vegas does not handle mov formats very well. But now, I think that XAVC Intra could be the new "intermediate" codec.

Rainer said:
mitteg, Vegas aint perfect, but you might need to look further into it's capabilities. Vegas media handling is really what makes it's workflow so fast - it does have tags, labels, smart bins, etc. I'd be surprised if there weren't Youtube tutorials on these features. Final Cut Pro isn't cross platform either. You want Apple, you makes your choice. Vegas intermediate codecs, you can of course use DNxHD or ProRes, but have a look also at the free Cineform or Matrox MPEG-2 I-Frame HD.
Click to expand...
 
mitteg said:
DNxHD and Vegas not a good combo because vegas does not handle mov formats very well.
Click to expand...

I think it's Windows does not handle MOV files very well, as I don't know of many Windows apps that love the MOV format.

I've been using Cineform for more than 5 years now, and it's been great for me. ( cross-platform too )
 
+1 for Cineform.
I just mastered a 10 1/2 min show (shot on DVX100a SD) to the Cineform "High HD" quality setting. File size was 2.6+ GB, as opposed to a 23+ GB file if mastered to DV Uncompressed.
Image quality identical to the original on my reference monitor. The Cineform codec might perform a bit differently with other source formats ( I seem to recall a very slight contrast shift when converting from GO Pro 1080p60 files), but it's really minor.
Ken
 
I've been meaning to explore cineform to see if it will help me as I add more 4k into projects but so far I've had zero problems with DNxHD. I do have a brute of an edit pc though :-)
 
I have a theory about Vegas users (I'm one of them) ... whereas other NLEs follow the user interface pioneered by Avid as a means of moving from a film paradigm, Vegas started out as an audio editor and those who come from that background find that its way of doing things suits what they are used to. On a Vegas forum recently someone suggested that FCPX is more like Vegas than other NLEs so maybe more non-Mac people might give it a shot!
 
Coincidentally I just discovered that Magic Bullet Looks allows you to apply LUTs to raw footage. I am guessing, but presumably this includes S-log.

On a related note, I basically understand what LUTs are, but do they offer anything different to, say, a preset film look in MB Looks etc?
 
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