Vegas 7 officially announced
 

Here is the link over at
Sony Media Software in the Vegas forum.

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/for...9877&Replies=0

Try as I might, I find little to get excited about. ATRAC3 support...woohoo! Perhaps the new workflow features will offer something.

Here is a link for Vegas 7.0 with more information.

http://dv411.com/vegas7.html

I called Sony Media Software (4 PM EDT September 7, 2006).

They said is it not currently available for sale, and will not divulge when it will be, nor will they release any pricing information.

A lot of people are still using portable Sony Audio recorders for professional use. PSP might not matter much in the future since SGI announced they are ceasing production on their MIPs processor.

The other stuff in the NLE itself seems more like cleaning up and tightening. More of a .5 release instead of a full point.

Many are happy with the new features in DVDA4.

Surround audio encoding for WMV HD (Important to me on that one).

It appears they will be the only NLE with 'FULL' support of the XDCAM HD and all it's features.

Have to remember the press release is for everyone, not just existing users. My initial reaction was negative, but I'm going to ask some more questions and wait for a full review. Then make my decision. Upgrade or go back to Adobe. No threats, no whining, just wondering.

They had better support XDCAM--they invented it!

So what we have here is a paper release? I thought only ATI did that :).
Just kidding...

previewing
 

I hope "enhanced video previewing" means something like "we'll use all the CPU(s) and maybe event the GPU to deliver full frame real time previewing."



Scott

From what we've seen with the various announcements (particularly the detailed one from yesterday at IBC), enhanced video previewing includes:

* faster playback rates with HDV
* simultaneous previewing in Vegas and on external monitor
* automatic sizing of preview in window (or something like that)

I've seen the timeline playback of unrendered native HDV clips (including effects, music, etc.) at almost 29.97 fps in V7 on a Sony Vaio laptop (sneak preview courtesy of Spot). You can edit native HDV as easily as SDV. Performance is greatly enhanced. Cinescore is also embedded as an option on the menu (plug-in). Lot's of other enhancements. Can't wait to see how much faster SDV performance is.
Randy

Spot has been against native HDV editing for a long time, arguing that it creates a lot of problems in the Editing process. He's recommended Cineform or other intermediate codecs. Is Vegas becoming better at editing HDV ?

Based on a conversation with Sony Media Software, I expect Vegas 7.0 to be announced next week (September 11 through September 15).

We can expect the announcement to appear on Sony Media Software's website:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/

There will be an upgrade program.

Sept. 12 is the release date.

As far as HDV being bad for editing, this depends largely on what you are doing. If you are doing simple cuts and edits, there's nothing wrong with editing HDV (once we are done with the performance issues of the past, which it sounds like V7 may accomplish).

All MPG2 formats (HDV included) suffer from generation loss. That's the kicker. Maybe one re-encoding is inevitable, but second and third generations of the MPG2 will suffer more and more due to resampling of the color space and decompression followed by recompression of the image and audio data.

Where the intermediates make a big advantage (besides performance speed) is when you are doing something more complex, especially compositing or resizing video. Without an intermediate, your editor can create generation loss in these complex operations as a consequence of what it is doing internally (i.e. decompressing a frame, resizing/interpolating and then recompressing it into MPG2 with a color resample and the works).

So I might suggest that if you want to do some simple cut edits you could go straight with HDV but if you want to do more complex stuff you should use an intermediate.

This is just a summary of discussion from folks who are hugely more knowledgeable than I am. For more discussion, do a search on "intermediates" or proxy or CFDI on the official Sony Vegas forum.

The estimated retail price is USD699.

based on our conversations with Sony we'll be launching Vegas 7+DVD @ $499.95

While supplies last we're selling off our Vegas 6 + DVD inventory at $399.95 after $50 mail in rebate. Plus you get a free upgrade to Vegas 7 and DVD arch 4.

http://www.videoguys.com/vegasvideo.html

We hope ot have upgrade pricing for exisiting Vegas 6 +DVD and VEgas 6 owners (as wella s owenrs of older versions) later today. We're alos trying to put together some cool upfgrade offers/ bundles.

Gary