v7 - Not very excited yet
 

As a non-HDV user, I'm sorry to say I can't get excited about any of the new features of v7.

I won't write it off until I've played with the demo but looking through the new (detailed) feature list today proved a big disappointment.

Simultaneous preview on external monitor and pc? Yeah, quite nice. Envelope brush? Might be useful.

That's about it for me. Might have been swayed more had there been some new bundled plug-ins, say NewBlueFX, or maybe support for After Effects-compatible plug-ins (that would be cool).

For non-HDV/XDCAM etc shooters I think this is more of a 6.5 than a full version level jump. For NEW users it's a cracking piece of software.

Just my opinion . . .

I can see your point of view, but for a HD-user like myself, it's quite something to get excited about. With a considerable portion of the people in this business moving to HD, it's about time the NLE's followed with a 'normal' workflow and reliability for editing HD.

I love to work with Vegas and have been doing so for a while, but I wasn't quite impressed with the way it handled HD. Nor was I impressed with the way other NLE's handled HD, it needs to be said (perhaps I was spoiled with how well and smooth SD is handled in virtually all currend NLE's). Finally there might be light at the end of the tunnel for HD-users...

Absolutely agreed! I've edited my post to make it clear that I'm talking about the enhancements for non-HD users.

Very few of my productions go onto a TV screen - they are almost exclusively web-bound - so I'm not in any hurry to go HD yet. In fact, I just bought an XL2 which I hope will give me a good three years of useful life before I will want to replace it.

Having had a play with the trial version, I can confirm that (at least on my system) that Vegas 7 delivers on the HDV front. This is a MASSIVE breakthrough for me and my workflow as I do big HDV projects. NO more intermediate/proxy rendering/swapping. Thank you, Sony (or more appropriately, Madison Media!)

I have to say that, like the next man, I enjoy getting something NEW and I feel for those who maybe won't be able to justify the new Vegas. However, I have noticed that there are some out there (not you, Ian) who are actively annoyed at Sony and may jump ship to make the point. Don't do it! Been there, done that - tried Premiere, Liquid, Edius - in fact I bought Edius. If you love Vegas there's a reason for it. My first thought is always "what was I thinking of?" when I come back to Vegas after tryng one of the others, even though I am easily seduced by the lure of the NEW. To those my humble advice is "save your money" - if you don't need 7 stick with 6. It's still the best if you don't need HDV or the other enhancements.

Well said, Michael.

I think that to jump ship just to make a statement to Sony is daft! I've been with Vegas since the very early days and have no plans to look elsewhere.

I think I'll hang on to see what's in the next version!

Ian, I also do not yet do HD but I can see several useful enhancements. I'm writing my first look for the next newsletter from that point of view. I hope to have it out by tomorrow (depends on how much work I can put into it today!)

Hi Edward,

Don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking the enhancements that 7 offers - I just struggle to see how a non-HD user would justify the cost of upgrade.

That said, I very much look forward to your first look article - maybe I've overlooked some fab new feature!

Ian . . .

Ok guys, not sure how scientific this is, but......

I just rendered a 60 second click of raw AVI (SD) captured from my Canon XL1s. I rendered it to MPEG2 CBR8 (No transitions or anything)....

In the trial version of Vegas 7 it took 2mins 23seconds.

The same piece of raw AVI in VEGAS *6* took 2mins 12seconds - 11 Seconds Less than V7.

Just thought i'd throw this one into the ring !

Maybe I'll stick with 6 for now.

Sorry, but the 11 seconds could easily be accounted for by the how fragmented you disk was when you ran the test.

To perform this test properly, one would need to ensure that the conditions were identical, with all of the remaining area of your disk completely defragmented. This is in itself is difficult to accomplish.

For example, if you ran the Vegas 6.0 test, then installed Vegas 7.0, then ran the Vegas 7.0 test, you disks could easily be very fragmented.

My guess is that if you reran the 6.0 test, you will probably get a different time.

On the other hand, Sony seems to be indicating the the improvements are in the HDV area, not SD.

Plus, Vegas 7 has more MPEG2 rendering features - such as I-frames added whereever markers are on the timeline. This feature alone will help make your DVDs much more professional. The chapter points will start AT the marker - not anywhere from now up to 1/2 second later.

If you have to do all that to see a even a "slight" gain in performance- isn't the point moot?

Granted I don't want to take one user's account of sluggish rendering as gosple but I'm definitely interested in hearing others' experiences as well.

Personally I'm not impressed with the SD and/or standard NLE additions either. As always DVDA is more impressive of a change.

In my humble opinion, Sony has not done a very good job of promoting Vegas 7.0.

The best info that I found so far is at:

http://dv411.com/vegas7.html

Editing HDV with Vegas 6.0 has been painful. So upgrading, for $149.95 to obtain help in this area is worth it to me. (Sony's website price is higher, but when I called this morning, an upgrade only cost $149.95.)

But, if we ignore all HDV improvements, the following appear to be worthwhile (or important) enhancements to me:

(The items marked with an asterisk are very important to me)


• New! Improved multi-processor support (For Audio) ***
• New! Broadcast Wave format multichannel support ***

• New! Save and recall window layouts
• New! Flexible window docking
• New! Enhanced video previewing ***
• New! Improved cursor object “snapping” ***
• New! Envelope brush “painting” ***
• New! Enhanced keyboard mapping
• New! Improved project copy and trim operations
• Improved multiprocessor rendering ***

• New! MPEG-2, Insert I-Frame at markers ***
• New! Enhanced capture and print-to-tape tools ***
• New! SDI deck insert editing per channel

• New! DVD-R DL ***

Hmmm . . . I just got the promotion email.

The download version of the upgrade is $134.95 - around £75 - even from v5. Although I use v6 at work I personally own v5.

Now I have to say that aggregating the improvements in v6 and v7 and bearing in mind I only have Vegas, not Vegas+DVD, £75 to go from v5 to v7+DVD and it's all looking rather a better deal!

I submit this observation with all due apologies to those that pay their 'annual upgrade fee' and will be getting exactly the same price by upgrading from v6+DVD to v7+DVD (or so it seems from the promo email).

Done. Bought it. Boy, am I fickle.

A couple of initial (twenty minutes worth of playing) observations:

1. Disappointed to note that my toolbar is reset to default, rather than carrying settings from previous version.
2. Impressed with the video preview enhancements (I like the After Effects style Full/Half/Quarter choices and the ability to simultaneously preview on an external monitor is useful to me).
3. Can't find the envelope painting tool!
4. The red eye reduction tool? Why bother? I can think of hundreds (OK, three or four) areas where the developers could have better spent their time.
5. Gracenote? Surely if we've bought the licence to use the song in our work we already know it's name ;-)
6. More flexible window layouts - like it. Ability to save layouts to key commands - love it.
7. Credit roll still rubbish.
8. Cosmetically almost identical but I *think* I'm happy about that.

Still go along with my original whinge that there's nothing mind blowing for the non-HD user but I haven't looked at the snap-to or other editing enhancements yet so I may still be swayed. Somehow I think not . . .

However, for £75 I get DVD-A plus a leap from 5 to 7 and all the good things that came in this and the last release, so any complaint I have about this release being light on new features is kinda negated.

For painting envelopes, just hold Shift while hovering over the envelope, and draw away!

Many of the extra things in Vegas 7 are not so much extra features as such, but workflow enhancements.

For example if you click on a video event and delete it, Vegas will now delete the audio that is associated with it too. Note that this can be changed in the Preferences.

There is of course the multiple layer snap with colour codes as well. Spot will be able to fill people in on everything. I keep discovering stuff as I go along.

Something that XDCAM owners might not be aware of because it is in the Preferences is that when an MXF file is dragged onto the timeline Vegas can be set so that it will drag all the sound channels into their own audio tracks too. So if you drag an IMX50 MXF from a PDW-530 camera you will see all 8 channels of the audio on the timeline. Alternatively (and this is the default of the program) it will only create one audio track for a clip. If you right click on that audio not only will you get the usual options of Left Right Combined etc, but you can also specifically select which channel you want (eg 1, 2, 3, 4 etc).