Is Upgrade from 7 to 8 or 9 advisable?
 

I have had Vegas 7 (with Excalibur added on) for several years, editing SD multi-camera shoots to DVD. I have a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 machine with 2 GB of memory.

I'm contemplating getting an HD cam just to feel my way around before investing heavily in the transition. Is there any compelling advantage to upgrading Vegas to 8 or 9 at this point?

V8 had some nice-to-essential changes that dramatically enhanced HDV editing in terms of responsiveness, preview quality, and fixed the problems in V7 with red and black frames (not all thumbnails render on the timeline, and sometimes random black frames in renders, especially with underpowered systems that worked in SD - ouch).

V9 users have posted that it has some pretty important changes for AVCHD editing. And V9 is an industry leader in support of Red files, further extending Vegas' swiss-army-knife utility. And 64-bit support is reported good by most users, very important in a production environment where time is money.

9 is still relatively new, and there are definitely some users with significant compatibility or other issues with it, especially 64-bit.

I've not yet made the upgrade to 9, still working with HDV for some time to come... Although a switch to a 64-bit OS may cause me to upgrade sooner.

PS. If you find you like working in HD, your P4's days are numbered!

I used (and still occasionally do, for fun) a Pentium 4 (3.0Ghz Dell with 2.5GB RAM and 2 internal hard drives) with a HDV camera (Sony HC1) and have had much fun and success editing fairly complex timelines in Vegas 7e. It's still a very useful and usable system, albeit now overshadowed by my more "serious" HD cam and Mac hardware/software.

Depending on the HD variant of the cam you are considering (you could be fine if it's HDV - but AVCHD is a different issue) you might be OK to start off with your existing Vegas 7 set-up and just see how you get on. But as Seth points out, don't plan anything long term on a P4 if you get serious about HD!

Thanks guys.
I am thinking more in terms of an AVCHD cam. I gather that I can capture that natively then convert to a Cineform .avi for editing and rendering ultimately to mpeg2, although it's not quite clear to me whether I'll have to downconvert out of the cam first.

So I'm a greenhorn all over again. I figure at least I'll have my foot in the door and can capture some nice stills. 8>)

Hi David

I had to upgrade to 9 so I had AVCHD support but even with SD files the BIG thing I seem to notice is that the preview video (both on the interface and external monitor) is decidedly bad in version 7 yet is crisp and sharp in version 9. Dunno what they did but even DV-AVI files look as sharp as HD in 9 but look like VHS in 7!!!!

I think only version 8b or 8c onwards supports MTS files so an upgrade to 9 is logical!! I just had to get used to the upside-down interface because I became so used to the media and preview on the bottom and the timeline above which is reversed now!!!

I may also be guessing but 9 seems to do a better render too!!! Just beware that under Preferences.. the default settings cause the media files (and audio) to go offline if the application loses focus!! (say, if you minimise Vegas and open something else) I often need to minimise to create music tracks in SmartSound and used to come back and find all my media closed!!! Make sure you uncheck options 4 and 5 in General Preferences!!

Chris

Thanks Chris.

Doesn't 9 allow you to adjust workspace / docking options? Vegas doesn't usually go backwards on user friendliness. In 7 you have to hold down SHIFT while clicking "Preferences..." in order to get the "Internal" options tab to appear, and that's where it is. There's a search box and I enter "top" as a search item to quickly find the switch. I know, because I like having the time line below and have to change 7's default after an install.

Yes it does.
BTW, this became an option in Vegas 8.
Options - Prefs - Display - Display timeline at bottom of main window.

Thanks guys!!

Actually it was purely the fact that I worked with both version 5 and 7 for years and got used to the timeline at the top!! Nice to know that you can change it but I think that I'm now used to the default timeline under so I'll keep it that way!!

Anyone know why the external preview is so poor on version 7???? On my LCD (I know I should be using a CRT for decent quality) the quality just leaps up 200% in Version 9 (Just asking as the wife does slideshows now and again and uses Version 7

Chris

I don't know how they work it in version 9, but in version 7 if the Video Preview frame is docked and you have it in "preview / auto mode" (or "good / auto" or "best / auto"), note that it continues to contain the whole image as you make the frame smaller and smaller. And meanwhile the external view gets more and more pixelated. So I keep it in preview / full mode. Then the local monitor shows only part of the picture in the video preview frame if I dock and reduce the frame, while the external monitor enjoys full resolution. Preview gives much faster response than best with very little sacrifice in quality.

Hi David

In Version 7, I had to have the preview window set at best Full to get even a moderate image. With the same setup in Version 9 the preview is great on the external LCD!!

They obviously decided not to link the preview window size to the external output any longer and that must account for the better quality!!

Chris

I am editing AVCHD with version 8c with no problems.

I can also edit AVCHD on 9 BUT Infinitcam doesn't yet work with 9 so I am not using 9 for the moment.

Danny Fye
VidMus Video - Music Productions

The default setting for the preview window in Pro 9 is now "Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback".
This can be disabled (i.e. back to the old way) by right-clicking in the Preview window and deselecting it.