Any Hope for Vegas on the Mac

[Roger Shealy]

Ken,

At work we recently purchased a dedicated system for CS5 and after talking with Adobe, they recommended the HP800Z over the Mac as their preferred platform. Another person in the company went for the Mac desktop for the same application. I've been meaning to run a few render comparisons, but haven't gotten around to it.

[David Jimerson]

Adobe CS runs better in Windows, especially Premiere, and Premiere has a bit more functionality in Windows as well.

Plus there are more GPU options for taking advantage of the MPE for Windows machines.

[Leslie Wand]

(is there) Any Hope for the Mac? ;-)

[Steve Game]

Not really, once it ceases to be regarded as a fashion accessory. I doubt that Job's successor will have the same religious following.

[Roger Shealy]

Does anybody know whether VMS and Vegas Pro's market share is growing/shrinking and by how much?

[Leslie Wand]

i would think with the problems plaguing 11 that pro's market will be shrinking, if not now, then upon next version release.

okay, that isn't based on anything but my, and few other peoples opinion (i don't think there's any 'official' release figures for scs). we will NOT be buying into 12 until it is proved stable and reliable. i expected some hic-ups with 11, but we're nearly a year into release (?) with a couple of updates and it's still dodgy - most certainly for many NOT enterprise ready.

[Gerald Webb]

Im writing this on my Hack Pro.
I use both platforms, Ive tried a few times to get Vegas going on the Mac side with VMware fusion, the closest to usable was a very light install of XP on an SSD with Vegas 9.
Was ok for quick edits, but anything heavy would slow it right down.
Mac's are nice, no doubt, installing and un installing software on OSX doesnt seem to wear down an OSX install like it does on Windows.
Pretty as they are, I dont think they are worthy of the 'Fanboy look down my nose at Windows users', type attitude that some people have. It is changing now though, the amount of guys coming back to Windows after the FCX release is amazing.
The handy part about having a Mac in your arsenal is that when you have to deliver to somebody else in Pro res you can just say....ok.
But now I think you are good anyway with 5DtoRGB to convert to Prores from Windows.
FWIW I have just ordered a new system, For fun I tried to configure a new Mac Pro to get similar performance to my new box, 3930k 32 gb ram etc
The cost of mine was sub 3k
I stopped playing with the Mac configurator when it got past 10k.
Interesting thoughts about Vegas 12, is 11 that bad? Ive had issues with the GPU but apart from that I thought it had been ok.
Vegas 12 will be up against a whole new OS (Windows 8 ) which will have to make things more complicated for everyone concerned, there are enough bugs now on one OS apparently, soon the SCS boys will have to chase down W7 bugs AND W8 bugs.... fun times ahead, lol.

[Leslie Wand]

hi gerald,

my observation was based 'loosely' on info gleaned from assorted user groups, friends, and somewhat on my own personal experiences.

11 has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride for me. at present we seem to be on a straight ;-) and going smoothly, even if i can't see what's ahead, i know what's behind was a mish-mash of bugs, bad communications from scs - and still is regarding gpu technicalities - combined with additional 'junk' suck as 3d which, afaic, should have been spruked in vegas studio rather than a pro nle WHICH still doesn't have any, even basic, collaborative tools such as edl export import.

so, 11 isn't that bad NOW, but if 12 + win8 is in the least bit like 11 + gpu, i'll give it a miss till i read that it IS solid and truly reliable.

i make my living from vid production and i am NOT a beta tester for released software!

[Gerald Webb]

I agree completely Leslie,
if a guy relies on his software to get the jobs out the door day after day all year you absolutely have to have something you can count on ALL the time. (Prob why the previous versions of FCP were so loved in the industry ).
I'm only really busy a cpl of times throughout the year, and then have the December rush of concerts and Weddings where the pressure is really on.
In my quiet time Im trying to learn other systems with the dream being, If one lets you down, change!
Already got my head around Premiere, Going to try LightWorks next.
On the exporting EDL front, Im sure I saw on another forum somewhere there is now an AFX script that will import a Vegas EDL.
If it goes into After effects it should then go into Premiere then you can get an XML and then and then..... lol jump through a hundred hoops.

[Mike Kujbida]

Originally Posted by Gerald Webb

On the exporting EDL front, Im sure I saw on another forum somewhere there is now an AFX script that will import a Vegas EDL.
If it goes into After effects it should then go into Premiere then you can get an XML and then and then..... lol jump through a hundred hoops.

You sure did see it Gerald.
I grabbed this script off another forum some time ago and stuck it in a folder on my hard drive "just in case".
That "case" came up on a different forum a few weeks ago, I posted it and the guy loved it.
Here it is, just for you :)
Do a 'right-click save' as on the following link.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20488019/ImportSonyVegasEDL.zip

[Gerald Webb]

thanks Mike,
awesome :)

[Leslie Wand]

mike, i think you should post over at scs as well ;-)

[Randall Leong]

Sony Creative Software still has a lot of bugs to fix in their Vegas software...

On the other hand, there is good news for those who is considering purchasing a Mac (an upgradable tower Mac Pro, at that): Apple is reportedly working on a new line of Mac Pros, which will reportedly use Intel's new Ivy Bridge CPUs that are scheduled to be released this April. And even better: Apple's new 2012 Mac Pros will reportedly switch back to nVidia for their discrete GPU brand of choice, meaning that we may see those cross-platform editing apps such as Adobe's forthcoming Premiere Pro CS6 "officially" support CUDA acceleration on more Mac-specific nVidia GPUs than just a limited number of Quadros.

EDIT: I take back what I stated here. The above was based on rumours at MacWorld. Nothing has been confirmed as of yet.

[Roger Shealy]

So I've played with FCPX, and although very clever, isn't for me at this point. I've also downloaded CS6 and it looks fantastic. It combines upgrades from CS5.5 and incorporates some of the best things from FCPX - and works well while keeping some similarity to the NLE workflow that I'm used to - and its dual platform. Hate to relearn editing, but it doesn't seem to be a huge deal.

I think I'm a CS6 convert after using Vegas for many years.

[Danny Fye]

Originally Posted by David Jimerson

Vegas leverages too much of Windows for there to be a Mac OS version.

Going a bit Off Topic, when one considers the threads about ‘compatibility mode’ to help cure Vegas crashes and the explanation being that Vista and Windows 7 have eliminated certain legacy parts of Windows AND considering that my system is Vista with Windows 7 on top of it as in upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 instead of a total re-install and Vegas does not crash on my system, it is no surprise to me that with the various ways of installing Windows that some have a lot of crashes, some have few crashes and some have none.

Might also in addition to workflow be a reason for the replaced events problem?

Note: My work drives are kept clean. I have a T drive and a V drive. TV drives LOL!

T is for temp files and V is for video files. There is only one project on my system at a time. All other projects are on backup USB 3 drives that are offline while I edit. There are no available events from other projects to replace the ones on my current active project.

Sorry about the OT here but I thought this might be helpful.