Seeing as how Acid and Sound Forge have all been updated, it's safe to assume that Vegas 5.5/6 should be the next app coming out of Sony's gates (Plus the timeframe is about right, give or take a few months). Vegas is great as it is, but here are some things I'm really wishing for in the next version:


- Nested Timelines (or something similar, nestable Veg Files)
- Track Motion Presets (What happened to these anyway?)
- More Cusomizable interface (Like the option to make the window darker, a la Adobe After Effects & Premiere)
- Support for After Effects Filters (Yeah, I know you can if you buy Boris, but having it intergrated would be nice, like Final Cut Pro)
- Preview Window Resizing (Instead of snapping to certain percentages (like right now), having the ability to have the video scale to what ever size you want (like in Final Cut and Premiere)
- Star Wipe Transition (I'm serious! I actually needed one a few months ago, and had to make my own with a mask)


Also, for DVD Architect:
- Intergrated Menu Transitions (Even if they were really simple ones (fades, wipes, etc), it would be a great time saver as oppose to having to created an intermediate menu trasition video in a motion graphic app, or vegas)
- Dual Layer support would be cool


Any ideas from you guys?

PS:
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/support/productsuggestion.asp

- More Cusomizable interface (Like the option to make the window darker, a la Adobe After Effects & Premiere)

You already have this. Vegas supports XP "themes" allowing you to create many different looks for Vegas including "darker" ones.


- Star Wipe Transition (I'm serious! I actually needed one a few months ago, and had to make my own with a mask)

There ARE a couple of options related to this. For a bunch of the old-style "cheesy" transitions, you might want to check out Adorage. For a ton of transition flexibility, you might want to check out Pixelan.


Definitely send in suggestions. If they don't hear from the user's they don't what's most important to *us*.

DVD Architect

1. Transitions (even if simple, like you mentioned,) are a must.
2. DL support is also a must.
3. Support for multiple video angles.
4. Support for more than one video file per video track.
5. Ability to export menu's and/or menu text as .PNG files for masks (I know this can be done in Vegas, but why shouldn't I be able to do this in the actual DVD authoring program).
6. Hook up with Cinema Craft or Canopus and include CCE SP or Procoder as the internal video encoder instead of the current encoder.
7. More button highlight options. The options right now are so simple. I want absolute craziness like "earthquake" to make the button shake when it is highlighted and stuff like that. I want to be able to do everything the big boys can do (well, everything except master the learning curve for Scenarist and pay for it).
8. More maneuvarability between links. Feel free to give me suggestions, but if I want button 3 to link to button 14 when the user hits the "up" button, then that is my decision. Never tell the customer what they want. JUst provide the help to make it happen.
9. More themes. Not five or ten more. Give me a couple dozen for all kinds of situations. And give me at least three for the big occasions (birthdays, weddings, etc.)
10. Do not change the interface. It is so intuitive, considering it is a semi-pro DVD authoring program. Add features, but do not mess with the GUI.

I would like to see

- Proper, scrubbing without affecting events. i.e. Click and drag on the timeline to scrub. They half implemented it, so you click once then click again on the timeline cursor and you can do it, but it's cumbersome to the point of being almost unusable.

- Some sort of decent media management.

Support for After Effects Filters
Seconded! This is a matter of the utmost urgence; Vegas badly needs plug-in support.

I would also like better color correction tools (like Color Finesse... oh wait, it is an After Effects plug-in!) and the ability to output 5.1 sound tracks to separate WAV files.

I'd like to see motion tracking and the ability for it to track masks. This would be really useful for color correction, as you could isolate the color correction to one area even on panning shots.

Color Finesse: It's nice, but Vegas can do the same things. Vegas can also do things Color Finesse itself can't do.

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel : - More Cusomizable interface (Like the option to make the window darker, a la Adobe After Effects & Premiere)

You already have this. Vegas supports XP "themes" allowing you to create many different looks for Vegas including "darker" ones. -->>>

I realise this, but my point is to have an option to do it without effecting Windows on a global level

<<<-- Originally posted by Barry Lajnwand : DVD Architect

8. More maneuvarability between links. Feel free to give me suggestions, but if I want button 3 to link to button 14 when the user hits the "up" button, then that is my decision. Never tell the customer what they want. JUst provide the help to make it happen. -->>>

DVD Architect can already do this. It is in the Menu Properties box under Button Properties / Navigation. From each button you can specify where the menu goes with each of the Up/Down/Left/Right buttons.

It's nice, but Vegas can do the same things.
Like perform corrections in HSL, CMY and YCbCr? What about automated color matching? I guess I am spoilt by Photoshop CS.

I also hate how Vegas' filters have no opacity setting. Instead, you have to filter a duplicate layer, and reduce its opacity. When you have a chain of filters, this is impractical.

<<<-- Originally posted by Kelvin Kelm : <<<-- Originally posted by Barry Lajnwand : DVD Architect

8. More maneuvarability between links. Feel free to give me suggestions, but if I want button 3 to link to button 14 when the user hits the "up" button, then that is my decision. Never tell the customer what they want. JUst provide the help to make it happen. -->>>

DVD Architect can already do this. It is in the Menu Properties box under Button Properties / Navigation. From each button you can specify where the menu goes with each of the Up/Down/Left/Right buttons. -->>>

For the most part that is correct, but I have run into several situations where DVDA will not allow me to do this. Essentially, the program forces what will be highlighted when the user moves left, right, up, down. I'm not sure if it is a program bug, but it needs to be corrected.

For the most part that is correct, but I have run into several situations where DVDA will not allow me to do this. Essentially, the program forces what will be highlighted when the user moves left, right, up, down. I'm not sure if it is a program bug, but it needs to be corrected.

I have never run into a situation where I could not specify which button pressing an arrow should go to. Can you give me a list of steps to reproduce?

Sorry, I didn't really keep tabs of the how and the when. Just dealt with it as it came. Only happened with three or four menus I could remember.

Essentially, DVDA wouldn't allow me to change the preset destination action for a particular button one direction (or perhaps two). I assumed that this was the case because of the location of the buttons.

Like perform corrections in HSL, CMY and YCbCr? What about automated color matching?
Do you ever find those things useful though?

Some of the things Color Finesse does would take a lot of button pushing in Vegas to duplicate. It looks like Vegas could do all of the things that Color Finesse can do. The only exception I guess would be cases where you want to do something extreme... look take saturation down -100 in color finesse. I don't ever see that being useful though.

<<<-- Originally posted by Van Lam :

- Star Wipe Transition (I'm serious! I actually needed one a few months ago, and had to make my own with a mask)

-->>>

Heh, isn't it Homer (Simpson) who loves the star wipe transition? If that isn't a reason to include one, I don't know what is!

I'd love to do a serious film and only use star wipes :D

<<<-- Originally posted by Glenn Chan : Do you ever find those things useful though?-->>>
I guess it boils down to whether or not you use color as a creative element. If you merely want to white balance, then Vegas can do it. If you want to get fancy, Color Finesse beckons.

- .BWF audio file support
- Native HDV (seriously) support
- CF24 for HDV support

Also, while it's not something I use, professional EDL support would be good. I understand Vegas lacks a bit in this department.

One thing that's also always annoyed the hell out of me is the crap plugin/effects usage. Especially when you try and keyframe effects within the effect edit window. It doesn't seem too intuitive and the general usability is pretty poor.

Aaron

I just thought of a few more things:

-The ability to select mult. key frames and change their values
-More advance "save with media" options. For example, the ability to route your files into folders (A Captured Video folder and a sound one for example). Right now, Vegas simply dumps all your files into the folder that you specify.

<<<-- Essentially, DVDA wouldn't allow me to change the preset destination action for a particular button one direction (or perhaps two). -->>>

Been having that problem all day. I finally started a new project hoping its me and not the program. I ran into this 3 months ago with another project. You choose the navigation direction, like "up" and make your selection but the button fails to respond after that. Its as if after you make the selection you need to hit an "apply" button for it to take. I was going to post this but figured I would find out the reason before somebody could get back to me.

Charley, can I get a copy of that DAR file?

.dar file sent via e-mail.

Thanks, Ed

Strange, I know I shouldn't post this because as soon as I do it will get messed up again but I fixed the problem. You may want to check it out if the .dar file will function at all for you.

I decided to move the one arrow to the other of the other. Then it was pointing where it should be. I moved the arrow back and all the "instructions" followed it!

So I am assuming that DVDA "knows" where each item is relative to the other and assigns this info to "Left, Right, Up and Down" as best it can. Sometimes it must get confused. At those times I make the changes by telling it where I want it to go and it doesnt respond. I moved things about and somehow the progam must have picked up on it. I don't know this is a good fix but it seems to be working.

The "auto" positioning is totally based on location. That's one reason why you can sometimes get strange results until you manually set them.

The dar file worked fine as-is on my machine.

i sooooooo want to blab but i cant..

id like to see gradients being imported into the cookie cutter filter.. essentailly giving u the freedom to create your own shapes using gradients as a bais.. this would be awesome for pips, custom lower thirds, gradiented overlays... hmm...

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Jefferson : id like to see gradients being imported into the cookie cutter filter.. -->>>

Now that would be cool!

i posted it in their suggestion box.. heres hoping someone takes notice.. :)

I'd like to see:

When SPLITTING and EVENT and you want to DELETE it prompts you to DELETE the Portion of the event to the RIGHT of the SPLIT; there are many times when I would rather DELETE to the LEFT of the EVENT. It would be nice to hit another KEY to AUTO SELECTS the other side of the event or move back to the RIGHT side. IN essence;

S for Split
KEY for Right Side and Hit Delete

or

S for Split
KEY for Left Side and Hit Delete

I still use V4 but will definatley be getting V6!

(Hope that made sense?)

what your refering to is ripple editing (3 point edit ) find your in point, your out point and a kb shortcut to drop that media on the clip. This works well within the Trimmer, but im not a trimmerist, i do all my work on the timeline.

Ohhh. Thank you for the tips and explanation; I too use the Timeline.

<<<-- Originally posted by John Hudson : S for Split
KEY for Left Side and Hit Delete -->>>


Try:

S [ [ Del

I had no idea this existed; Question:

I tired this technicque onthe timeline and it put a RED Border either on Left or Right (Depending on what key I selected of course) and when hitting delete it removed the same Event no matter which side.

I wanted to:

S split the Event
Select a Key for LEFT or RIGHT

and have the option of either deleting LEFT of the SPLIT or RIGHT of the SPLIT

Am I missing something here? I am trying to understand.

The "[" and "]" keys set the "editing mode" - that's the reason you saw the red outlines.

When you press "S", it splits and the right side is automatically selected. When you then press "[", it puts the clip on the right side into "edit mode". Pressing "[" again puts next event to the left (i.e. the event to the left of the split) into edit mode - therefore selecting it. That's why this procedure will work.

Alternately, the 7 key on the numpad will also do the same as "[". Do a search in the help file to find out more about editing with the numberpad. You can do all sorts of editing using only the numberpad.

Thanks again Edward

This is exactly what I have been wating to do since I started using Vegas; I'll be sure to take a xloser look at 'Key Commands'.

Thank you!

Here is another wish: adopt Photoshop's filter model. Let each filter have its own opacity, mask, and blend mode.

<<<-- Originally posted by Emre Safak : Here is another wish: adopt Photoshop's filter model. Let each filter have its own opacity, mask, and blend mode. -->>>

I'm kinda unclear on what you mean: You mean like the ability to fade filters (Edit/Fade)?

Close...I am talking about adjustment layers (speaking of which, there are rumors that the next version is going to have all filters as adjustment layers.)