View Full Version : What's the Verdict on Vegas 9 ?


Pages : [1] 2

Paul Kepen
June 16th, 2009, 10:55 PM
Currently using Vegas 8 Pro. Is it worth upgrading to V9 at this time? What does it do that V-8 doesn't ? (yes I know it has the 2nd monitor, but I can live without that).
I am thinking of waiting for V10, unless some one can tell me that there is a great performace boost or feature set in V9 that I am unaware of. I tried doing a search, but got almost every thread with V9 in it, so Thanks in advance for your helpful opinions - PK

Edward Troxel
June 17th, 2009, 06:50 AM
Vegas 8 has the "second monitor" as you put it. It's the TRIMMER. It's just docked differently in 9 by default than it is in 8. In fact, 8.0c added many of the new trimmer features now found in 9.

You could look over my April 09 newsletter which lists the major new features. Then you can make a better informed decision as to whether or not to upgrade.

Yang Wen
June 17th, 2009, 09:20 AM
Has anyone figured a solution for the decreased preview window frame rate in V9? I've disabled the automatic quality setting in V9 and that has made a little bit difference but my playback frame rate is still only 50% of the playback performance of version 8, for the exact same project. By anyone's definition, that is unusable..

Bill Ravens
June 17th, 2009, 10:22 AM
Sony Creative Software - Forums - Vegas Pro - Video Messages (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=659876&Replies=3)

Yang Wen
June 17th, 2009, 10:24 AM
Thanks Bill! I'll try that out tonight!

Paul Kepen
June 17th, 2009, 02:07 PM
Thanks Edward, I'll check that out this evening.

On a different note; I am having problems with DVDA. My AC3 audio sounds fine when played in VLC media player. It was encoded with V8, as was the Mpeg-2 Video using the BluRay Mpeg-2 encoding preset. The problem is, that in DVDA, almost all of the sound is in the right audio channel. If you look in the timeline you can even see the volume bars in the left channel are diminutive by comparison. What is causing this? How do you correct it? I can't seem to find anyway to adjust channel volume in DVDA. I should add, that the .ac3 audio is in 5.1 surround format. Thanks for any info - PK

Steven Thomas
June 17th, 2009, 05:34 PM
Nice find!
Thanks

Yang Wen
June 17th, 2009, 07:26 PM
Thanks Bill! that fixed my playback issue. I also found this page which seems to address the same issue but with a different resolution. Weird... http://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/sonypictures.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=4541&p_created=1242423710


Now rendering to Sony AVC and see if it crashes like it always does in Vegas 8c...

Kipjaz Savoie
June 18th, 2009, 11:03 AM
A big issue for me is the lack of Frameserver compatibility in Vegas9. I relied heavily on that in Vegas 8 and am very disappointed that I can no longer use it. Why this functionality isn't built in to Vegas to begin with is beyond me... Anyway, I'm still hoping for a solution to come along.

Mike Kujbida
June 18th, 2009, 01:32 PM
A big issue for me is the lack of Frameserver compatibility in Vegas9.

Be patient for a bit longer.
It was reported on the Sony Vegas Pro forum (May 30 of this year to be precise) that Satish is currently working on the Vegas 9 Frameserver.

Kipjaz Savoie
June 18th, 2009, 01:58 PM
Be patient for a bit longer.
It was reported on the Sony Vegas Pro forum (May 30 of this year to be precise) that Satish is currently working on the Vegas 9 Frameserver.

I'd somehow missed that, I hope it's true! There's no mention on the DebugMode home page that I could see. Really it can't come soon enough as it's making my work-flow significantly less streamlined without Frameserving. If I were Sony I'd buy the code from Satish and implement this from within Vegas. Does Sony have a suggestion box? ; )

John Wiley
June 25th, 2009, 06:25 PM
I've downloaded and have been using the trial of Vegas Pro 9 for about a week now. I've been doing a bit of playing getting to know it (previously using FCP on another machine) to see if I like it. However I'm having problems with it crashing fairly regularly, often when I hit Ctrl+Z to undo. Has anyone had any problems with this in the full version? My laptop is well within the recommended specs so I don't think that is the problem.

Thanks in advance
John

Jeff Harper
June 26th, 2009, 08:19 AM
For me, Vegas 9 is terrible, bad, crappy.

I've found it's timeline performance is the worst I've seen. I just installed Windows 7. Initially Vegas 9 64 bit Vegas 9 ran a bit better than it did on Vista, but 32 bit is bad.

Others say it works fine for them. I run a i7 processor, lots of ram, and the only program I have that gives me issues is Vegas 9.

Adobe Master Collection runs perfectly, and that says a lot about the state of my PC, as that collection of programs can be pretty buggy.

Perrone Ford
June 26th, 2009, 09:09 AM
There are a number of compelling features that make it a "must buy" for me. Several things I opined about on the Sony Pro forums got included including DPX and OpenEXR, REDCode compatibility, and XDCAMEX native compatibility.

I'll live with the growing pains for a while.

It's still missing some critical items (especially for broadcast work) but is really shaking off it's also-ran status to play near the front of the pack. I just wish Sony and Avid could bury the hatchet on the MXF format and read each others formats. That would make me VERY happy and keep me from jumping through dumb hoops every time I wanted to share something with the local TV stations.

Gene Gajewski
June 27th, 2009, 12:18 AM
For me, Vegas 9 is terrible, bad, crappy.

I've found it's timeline performance is the worst I've seen. I just installed Windows 7. Initially Vegas 9 64 bit Vegas 9 ran a bit better than it did on Vista, but 32 bit is bad.

Others say it works fine for them. I run a i7 processor, lots of ram, and the only program I have that gives me issues is Vegas 9.

Adobe Master Collection runs perfectly, and that says a lot about the state of my PC, as that collection of programs can be pretty buggy.


Timeline performance? What's that?

Certainly, it can't be the UI of the timeline.

Adobe apps are famous for being obtuse. But oh, when you finally get used to them you get to enter the priesthood - and you must cling to your obtuse app like a unix programmer to emacs, lest someone pull aside the curtain and find out it's just another NLE, abeit with a crotchedy UI.

Adobe bombs out all the time. Vista's got it's problems, but it don't take no Data Execution Protection lip from anybody, and Adobe's no exception.

I'm getting ready to try Win 7 myself.

Danny Fye
June 27th, 2009, 01:49 AM
Currently using Vegas 8 Pro. Is it worth upgrading to V9 at this time?

NO!!!

Vegas 9 just sits on my computer. I am using Vegas 8. So far Vegas 9 was a 100% waste of money!!!

Danny Fye
VidMus Video - Music Productions (http://www.vidmus.com)

John Wiley
June 27th, 2009, 02:53 AM
Hmmm. Pity I can't find a copy of Vegas 8 still on sale anywhere. Just heard yesterday from a friend that colleague of his is looking to sell an older version of Vegas so I will have to contact him and see if it is version 8.

Bob Thieda
June 27th, 2009, 06:55 AM
Vegas 9 just sits on my computer. I am using Vegas 8. So far Vegas 9 was a 100% waste of money!!!

Danny Fye
VidMus Video - Music Productions (http://www.vidmus.com)

Same here...using 8.0c and waiting for an update to 9.0....

Jeff Harper
June 27th, 2009, 07:05 AM
I would love to sell mine, but I don't use Vegas 9 at all either; like Bob I'm waiting for 9.0a.

Edward Troxel
June 27th, 2009, 07:46 AM
In my case, I've been using 9 for months! It does what it's supposed to do. Plus the 64-but version is MUCH better than 8.1.

Gene Gajewski
June 27th, 2009, 08:14 AM
Loaded Win 7 yesterday. Noticeable performance improvement so far.

Project loading snappier. Moving thru transitions which normally bog smoother.

Not bad so far.

Ben Longden
June 27th, 2009, 08:16 AM
I was apprehensive about updating from Vegas 8.0 Pro to 9.0 after all the negativity Ive read here.. but i jumped in and to be honest its fine.

All but one of the presets for the rendering migrated over. Thats been the only problem, and it took a couple of minutes, literally, to fix.

Ben

Eugene Kosarovich
June 28th, 2009, 12:18 AM
I've hit a few bugs in 9.0 that I've reported and that will be fixed in 9.0a, but overall, I use 9.0 all the time now and it's working well for me with XDCAM SD and HD.

The only thing that really disrupts my workflow is not having Satish's frameserver working with it yet, I hope he fixes that soon.

And there is one bug I can't really report cause I can't explain how to trigger it... There seems to be some sort of memory or resource leak or something... Basically, sometimes after editing for a while, my playback rate will slow to half what it should be based on what I know my computer can do. When this happens, I have to save what I'm doing, shut down Vegas, reboot the computer and relaunch it and reload my project. At that point, everything that should be playing back at full framerate will. This same problem actually causes it to not be able to temp render to AVI on disk, it'll lockup when trying. And the RAM temp render was playing much slower than normal, too.

I'm gonna try that new aviplug.dll mentioned earlier in this thread and see if that helps.

Danny Fye
June 28th, 2009, 07:04 AM
In my case, I've been using 9 for months! It does what it's supposed to do. Plus the 64-but version is MUCH better than 8.1.

Being that I am still on a 32 bit system I cannot realize the advantages of 64 bit just yet.

Once Windows 7 is officially released and I build me a new system with the latest and greatest goodies then maybe Vegas 9 64 bit version will shine through for me?

For the time being it will have to be Vegas 8 and my current 32 bit system.

----------------------
I can forget about that so-called special price on the Windows 7 upgrade because and from what I read that won't happen from Windows XP Pro OEM! If I had the non OEM version it would still be a problem because I would have to go to Vista first and tests have shown that Micro$oft is full of it when it comes to their claim that it works. At least on older systems. Even so, why the 2 step non-sense when it should be a 1 step? Sorry about the off-topic but it relates to what I can do in the future with Vegas.
----------------------

I noticed that my favorite settings for my layouts are not in Vegas 9. How do I get them there?

Such things should be more automatic with the upgrades!

Danny Fye
VidMus Video - Music Productions (http://www.vidmus.com)

David Wayne Groves
June 28th, 2009, 11:59 AM
Just purchased Vegas 9 with the free New blue pak, completed my newest project without issue, sold my Vegas 8 to a co-worker, only complaint thus far is the runup time in the preview window during multicamera editing, should be fixed in the next update, Vegas 9 is a keeper for me....

Bob Thieda
June 28th, 2009, 02:05 PM
Tried it again...
Because Ed said it should work and because I installed the new .dll to solve the playback issue.

9.0 64bit will not work with my neoscene transcoded clips. I only get audio, no video on the timeline.

9.0 32bit does appear to work with the neoscene clips, but it constantly crashes before I can do anything with them.

So...back to 8.0c until 9.0a comes out.

Perrone Ford
June 28th, 2009, 05:14 PM
I gave up on Cineform ages ago. Too many issues and too many limitations. Now I cut proxies or I used DNxHD if I need full HD.

Yang Wen
June 30th, 2009, 11:18 PM
Looks like I spoke too soon about Vegas 9.. I was all clamoring in another thread the ability of rendering to Sony AVC without crashing... well my Vegas 9 just froze up while rendering..(I had to do a hard reset on my PC) same as v8c, and on the same project which I had previous rendered without any issues.. man I hate this thing! I have no confidence whatsoever in them.. Don't tell me they'll fix it in version a.. if version "C" of 8 had the same issue what makes us think version "a" of 9 will contain the fix?

Jeff Harper
June 30th, 2009, 11:29 PM
Yang, what is Sony AVC and what is it used for? Never mind, I googled it. Its basically a format for blu ray discs, is that correct?

Eugene Kosarovich
June 30th, 2009, 11:29 PM
Ah well, I tried the new dll to see if it would help me with another problem I've been having, Vegas Pro 9 crashing when rendering to AVI when it changes from normal render to no recompression parts. Unfortunately, the new dll didn't help me. SCS did say they have some issues with AVI no recompress rendering that they are working on from a recent bug report I put in.

So now I'm rendering out a long project in Vegas Pro 9 in pieces and putting it together in Vegas Pro 8.

Yang Wen
June 30th, 2009, 11:33 PM
Yang, what is Sony AVC and what is it used for?

It's an H.264 codec that you can render to from Vegas.. You'd use it for Bluray authoring or for posting HD content to Vimeo or YouTube..

When I rendered my full 4 minute project, the progress bar was stuck at 8% but the remaining time kept decreasing - A well known bug in Vegas 8. I haven't experienced this in version 9 until tonight.. sigh..

EDIT: looks like I found a post which might help with the Sony AVC crashes.. http://www.avforums.com/forums/camcorders-video-editing/1019616-sony-vegas-9-possible-solution-rendering-issue-sony-avc-format.html

Eugene: Sorry to hear your workaround.. your story is making me sick.. I hope I don't have to go to that length when I edit my first long form project in version 9... :(

Jeff Harper
June 30th, 2009, 11:40 PM
Yes, I would bet that lowering your number of threads to 1 or 2 would help immediately. There are lots of suggestions that would appear to work actually.

Yang Wen
June 30th, 2009, 11:55 PM
Yes, I would bet that lowering your number of threads to 1 or 2 would help immediately. There are lots of suggestions that would appear to work actually.

Well first of all, I'm not convinced that lowering the threads will help..(due to past experiences with version 8) Second of all, why do we still have the attitude of accepting the fact that version 9 can not utilize 4 or more cores? I mean it's 2009... most users who are editing HD videos have multi core systems.. since Vegas is allowing us to set multiple cores, it should simply work! We're not expecting Vegas to support leading-edge technology, just mainstream technology that is current to its time.

Edit: I should add that I'm very happy with everything else about Vegas.. it's just the horrible Rendering component that is dragging the entire application down. Version 8 has been horrible for rendering and so far looks like version 9 is about the same..

Jeff Harper
July 1st, 2009, 12:07 AM
You don't have to try it Wen. It's an idea for a workaround. If you are like me with lots of work to do you do what you can to get the job done.

That Vegas should work as it is, that is quite obvious.

Lowering the number of threads takes approximately 10 seconds to try. It costs nothing.

Jeff Harper
July 1st, 2009, 12:10 AM
Wow.

I just discovered Windows 7 shows m2t files as thumbnails. Nice surprise.

I also just tried editing m2t files in Ultimate S Quad Cam and it seems to act the same as SD on the timeline...seems to be fine. This is a nice development...it would be nice to not have to make proxies. We'll see as this progresses.

Yang Wen
July 1st, 2009, 12:10 AM
No what I was say is that I've tried it in version 8 for when I had strange rendering crashes and that never solved the problem for it... It was a constant battle.. multiple attempts until it gets rendered without any crashes...

You using 7 RC? I was thinking of installing that but didn't want to deal with the reformatting since RC doesn't have an upgrade or uninstall feature.. I placed a pre-order for $50.. nice and cheap!

Jeff Harper
July 1st, 2009, 12:33 AM
Yes I'm using the RC and it is awesome. I quoted an Hewlett Packard Tech chief earlier who praised it and I am seeing more and more why he did. It is so much more responsive.

It is a no-no to run the Aero theme in Vista because of the resources it hogs, at least I found it to cause intermittent issues, but with Windows 7 I'm running Aero with a desktop background slideshow that changes images (cool images by the way) every so often, and I've burnt DVDs while rendering another project on the same PC at the same time (another no-no) and the DVDs came out perfect. In other words I'm pushing it beyond reasonable limits and it is performing like a champ. For it to burn good DVDs while rendering HD to SD is pretty darn cool. I will not do that routinely, as I was just testing it, but still I'm impressed.

The only issue I've had is that every time I boot up the internet connection is dead, and I switch ports and it is fine. Strange, but I'm loving it so much I don't care.

Just the fact that it plays m2t files in windows media player natively and shows them as thumbnails is big to me.

Gene Gajewski
July 1st, 2009, 05:20 AM
No what I was say is that I've tried it in version 8 for when I had strange rendering crashes and that never solved the problem for it... It was a constant battle.. multiple attempts until it gets rendered without any crashes...

You using 7 RC? I was thinking of installing that but didn't want to deal with the reformatting since RC doesn't have an upgrade or uninstall feature.. I placed a pre-order for $50.. nice and cheap!

This is a common misconception on Win 7. It does have an upgrade, and it can do a clean install too without a reformat.

As for an unistall - no. I don't think there's ever been such a capability. I made a backup first.

Yang Wen
July 1st, 2009, 07:39 AM
This is a common misconception on Win 7. It does have an upgrade, and it can do a clean install too without a reformat.


Incorrect - You can ONLY do a clean install of the release version of Win 7. In other words, there is no ability to upgrade from RC. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/faq.aspx

Can I upgrade from the RC to the final version of Windows 7?

When you install the final version of Windows 7, you'll need to do a clean installation. So plan on backing up your data then reinstalling your applications and restoring your data.

Yang Wen
July 1st, 2009, 07:50 AM
Timeline performance? What's that?

Certainly, it can't be the UI of the timeline.

Adobe apps are famous for being obtuse. But oh, when you finally get used to them you get to enter the priesthood - and you must cling to your obtuse app like a unix programmer to emacs, lest someone pull aside the curtain and find out it's just another NLE, abeit with a crotchedy UI.

Adobe bombs out all the time. Vista's got it's problems, but it don't take no Data Execution Protection lip from anybody, and Adobe's no exception.

I'm getting ready to try Win 7 myself.

Photoshop, After Effects, Flash are industry standard applications and every version I've used over the years have been flawless in the sense that they have always been stable enough for me as a user to concentrate on the creative aspect of the work as oppose to always be mindful about the technical working of the application. "Oh if I do this, will it crash? Maybe I should save now before I do this because it usually crashes right about here...". The best rendering bug in Vegas is when the progress indicator bar freezes at different and random points everytime you attempt to re-render. If you get lucky, you might be able to render the entire segment without it freezing up :) You can hardly put Sony Creative Studio in the same category as Adobe..

Try this in Vegas 9.. undo 2 or 3 times consecutively which involves shifting around video events... that always results in a forever frozen app, which requires a kill from the Task Manager.. Pretty ridiculous IMO.

Edward Troxel
July 1st, 2009, 08:26 AM
Try this in Vegas 9.. undo 2 or 3 times consecutively which involves shifting around video events... that always results in a forever frozen app, which requires a kill from the Task Manager.. Pretty ridiculous IMO.

Not for me. Undo simply undoes! Just like I expect it to. There was only one exception to that and that was when I was running a script that was automatically doing something. I would click undo and the script would automatically redo - sort of caught in a catch 22!

Gene Gajewski
July 1st, 2009, 11:55 AM
Incorrect - You can ONLY do a clean install of the release version of Win 7. In other words, there is no ability to upgrade from RC. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/faq.aspx

Seems like a little language tense issues. I was under the impression that we were talking about the RC in particular.

You specifially mentioned that "RC doesn't" but you must have meant the "release version doesn't" - have an upgrade path from the RC. That may be a genuine issue for you - I'm simply going to do the clean install as expected.

Jeff Harper
July 1st, 2009, 12:31 PM
The retail version will not have an upgrade path because of anti-trust issues involving ie8, but Microsoft will make one available in months following the initial release of 7.

Upgrade installations are often rife with problems and are absolutely asking for trouble. I have read in Windows 7 forums of people complaining they don't want to lose their settings, but how lazy is that?

The RC of Windows 7 does have an upgrade option, but why in the world would anyone want traces of Vista left behind?

If you have issues that you cannot solve with Vegas, etc, you often must reinstall the OS anyway, so why not start clean.

Upgrade installations are well known to be the worst possible way to install an OS, it doesn't even make sense to bother.

Sometimes even a clean install will not install properly and has to be redone.

I have reformatted my HDs and reinstalled Windows 98, XP pro and Vista dozens if not a hundred times, and on occasion the clean install doesn't take properly. I cannot even imagine thinking an upgrade would be worth the effort.

Yang Wen
July 1st, 2009, 12:45 PM
Jeff: I meant to say that I'm anxious to try RC... However, if I install it today, I won't be able to easily migrate to the full version of Windows 7. I'd have to wipe out Windows and reinstall all of my applications... <- That's what's holding me back.

Jeff Harper
July 1st, 2009, 01:58 PM
Yang, I see what you mean.

Eugene Kosarovich
July 1st, 2009, 11:42 PM
Yang: The random freezing up of the progess bar while rendering bug seems like one I remember well in Vegas Pro 8.0c. I haven't actually seen it in 9. If this is the same bug that I'm thinking of, I had a rather odd way I accidentally found that fixed it for me. Again, this "freeze" shows that the Vegas process has dropped to 0% of your CPU use, it's just sitting there in limbo.

My magic fix was: Launch another session of Vegas. As soon as the second one launched, the first render would continue. It's a weird fix, but it worked for me many, many times.

Just in case you hit it again, give that "fix" a try.

Gene Gajewski
July 2nd, 2009, 12:30 AM
Well folks, I can give an update on a strange issue that that caused be to completely redo my Win 7 installation.

Jeff - you're no fool....

I had a problem where whenever I selected a video track or media effect and then clicked on the icon to 'add' an effect - the dialog would stall, sometimes more than a minute. This was long enough to have windows report it as not responding. Having been around the vlock a few times - I decided to let it wait - ure enough it eventually came up.


I tried to trace it back by doing a system restore to an earilier time - no luck.

To hell with it -let's do a clean install.

Bingo - that did it.

I can't fathom why this occured other than something screwed up in DirectX

Jeff Harper
July 2nd, 2009, 05:32 AM
Gene, I have had to reinstall Windows in the past many times. I have an issue right now where every time I shut down and reboot my internet connection is lost.

I don't know about you but it takes me hours to reinstall everything: Adobe Master Collection, Office enterprise, plus about 6 vegas plugins, etc. all told about 30 programs. then I have 10 hard drives and they all must be renamed in Disc Manager each time as well.

Since I just installed Windows 7 for the third time I REALLY don't want to do it again as I'm about 11 weddings deep, maybe more and reinstalling means almost an entire day lost.

I do love this version of Windows but these little bugs are a reminder this is a test version of Windows, so how can I be angry?

Gene Gajewski
July 2nd, 2009, 10:05 AM
The internet is a terrible place for conversation - but we do it anyway.

Just in case Jeff, I merely meant to extend a compliment about your wisdom with clean installs.

I seem to be doing OK at the moment. Like you, I'm running out of available time to do things like reinstalling all the applications that I use.

Seth Bloombaum
July 2nd, 2009, 10:21 AM
I'm a little hesitant to post this suggestion, because the one time I had a system drive failure my archive turned out to be corrupt...

Jeff, Gene, have you ever looked into products such as Acronis? (Norton Ghost was the standard for many years...)

Once you have your system/drivers/apps cleanly installed, you use this software to create a compressed archive image of your entire system disk, written to an external drive.

Then, when it's time for a clean install, you run the restore utility - voila, back to the good, clean install.

Though my experience wasn't happy (probably because I split the archive over several DVD-R, bad practice), I have a Vegas buddy who swears by this approach. Any time he perceives "windows rot" (his term), he restores the archive disk image. I think he does it about every 60 days.