Spot, do you need a "very discreet" proofreader or editor to make sure it is ready for publishing when needed? I'm available. :)

Someone over at DVXuser found this...

https://cc.its.maine.edu/~maine/cart...tem_id=4053463

Vegas Pro 8 is the ultimate all-in-one software product for any creative professional. It combines Vegas Pro 8, DVD Architect Pro 4.5, and Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding software into one package that provides speed, power, and maximum productivity. Whether you need powerful digital video editing, unrivaled audio control, or tools for DVD authoring, Vegas Pro 8 is the complete product for professional HD video editing, audio editing and DVD creation.

Now includes: Interactive Tutorials: Show Me How tutorials that provide walk-through demos of common features and functions- all while you re working in your project. ProType Titler: Huge enhancement to our titling capabilities. You can create custom titles, animated texts, unique credit rolls and much, much more. New Mixing Console: You asked - we delivered. The new mixing console utilizes a traditional mixing board set up to allow users to visually see all audio signals in a particular project. Multi-Cam Workflow: Film your productions with multiple cameras and edit them quickly and easily as you watch each shot during the editing process up to 32 different video sources.

Well, those enhancements do look great. I'm also hoping there will be another 10-15% timeline performance increase while working with HD (specifically HDV raw .m2t). Multicam being built in is great, but kinda hurts Vasst who's offered a really good solution to that.

The price looks about right assuming they are selling the "full" version of the software. I'm hoping Sony makes version 8 available for the mid $200 on a promotional upgrade type of release like they did last year.

Jon

Even if just the ProType Titler and the Multi-Camera part are true, we'll be ordering seven upgrades the week it comes out.

Professionally, I work at what is probably considered the lower end of scale. (I produce/shoot/edit local Cable TV shows with at most a three person crew.) But from where I'm sitting, it seems to me that Apple and Sony Creative Software are the most aware of what tools us working-class video makers really need and want.

Same here, although Ultimate S has solved my multicamera problems nicely. In the same vein, I've been considering getting AE just for the titling capabilities alone (okay, and maybe some 3d photo montage work, too)... but maybe now I won't need to.

"Special" Upgrade Price
 

The last two rev cycles and maybe more there has been a regular upgrade price and then the "secret" url upgrade price. The secret URL which is a much better upgrade price is emailed to registered users and posted on every Vegas forum known to man. Sony takes good care of registered users and I'm confident they will do so again.

Konrad

On another post I asked about Excalibar - and then looked at its multicam features. With Vegas coming out with multicam editing, where does that leave Excalibar? Get V8 rather than have V7 + Excalibar?

Renton,
If they do multi-cam like Adobe Premiere does multi-cam, it will be cuts only. Excalibur allows a transition (such as a dissolve) between shots.
Buddy

Good!

I sure hope you are right! :)

Jon

Correct
 

Correct, you can manually do this, but the OS doesn't know about it unless you tell it. So it thrashes like crazy when it shouldn't. This means that vista (again, only available in Ultimate Premium Super Duper Version) will lock a single thread to a core by default, making it much smarter from the start.

No doubt
 

Vegas titles have always been barely adequate to put text up on the screen and that is about it. The options for a scrolling title are maddeningly stupid and few so if you want to do anything remotely fancy, you have to kludge it together with loads of keyframed layers and masks.

I agree. So any improvement is welcome.

So of the new features....

Looks like the most signficicant are..

ProType Titler
Multicamera editing tools
Blu-Ray Disc burning direct from the timeline
No-recompress rendering for long GOP HDV (wonder what that really means)

This looks more like an incremental upgrade rather than a huge change which frankly is a good thing..

I'd like to know how performance is going to be affected. If they can get 10-15% better performance, particularly with .m2t HDV playback after color correction, transitions etc then I'm sold...

Jon

64 bit beta
 

The word at NAB is that 64 bit Vegas will be a widespread beta BUT ONLY to people who upgrade to Vegas 8 - for whatever that is worth. They already had a working version of it then.

I second that.

Which is better comes down to what implementation you're talking about (many different ways of implementing 10-bit 4:2:2), your subjective taste, what test material you are using, and context (what are you monitoring on).

As far as 10-bit 4:2:2 deficiencies go...
A- Non-constant luminance. When you have fully saturated green on magenta (and most other combinations), there is a dark band in the transition area.
B- Chroma subsampling causing colors to go out of R'G'B' gamut. If you take valid R'G'B' values, the chroma subsampling can push them outside the displayable R'G'B' gamut. If you have alternating red and black lines, the black pixels will end up with chroma on them, resulting in positive red and negative green and blue light. And of course negative light isn't displayable, so you effectively have clipping.
You can see it in the test patterns at
http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
C- The subsampling itself is prone to aliasing, imperfect frequency response, and/or ringing artifacts. If you run a color zone plate pattern through a codec you will see this. The worst offenders are the codecs that implement point sampling (e.g. DNxHD in its VFW implementation; haven't tried its other implementations).
D- You also get inappropriate mixing of resampling schemes. Most codec/NLE combinations result in this inappropriate mixing.

The attached images show a zone plate example. Box resampling was the chroma filtering + reconstruction method. Box resampling doesn't follow 601/709 standards (e.g. they call for co-sited chroma, whereas box resampling means interstitial chroma). But nonetheless it's what Vegas works well with.

As far as 8-bit R'G'B' deficiencies go...
You can see banding/contouring artifacts as long as:
A- The image has no noise in it and no dithering or dynamic rounding. (Smart implementations would implement dithering or dynamic rounding so that banding isn't an issue. Or your image source has noise in it, which happens in the majority of real world situations.)
B- The two different tones are very large / have a large visual angle.

In a very clever/interesting scheme, you can actually almost get away with 3-bit bit depth. So the picture of the baby at
http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/ade...i_ACM_24-3.pdf
15.4MB PDF file; it's page 7
HDR companding and bit depth is related; you can ignore the HDR stuff the article is about.

I guess I am coming from a different context. If you send 10-bit Y'CbCr to a broadcast monitor, values 0-64 dont contain visually discernible information. They all result in black.

You're coming from an equally valid perspective in that you can map these values around in post.

Wow...you guys go in deep!

I'm just happy to hear the words Blu-Ray Authoring.

Vegas 8
 

After breezing through the post, I did not see anyone link to the SonyStyle site. I may be wrong, but it looks like they're selling Vegas 8 + DVD Production Suite for $599 but it's on backorder.

Here's the link:
Vegas 8

DSE is even selling training for it.

Forum sponsor videoguys.com is selling Vegas 7+DVDA for $400 after rebate, and announced free upgrade to V8.

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

it's funny to see Blu-Ray supported... but not HD DVD... but then i remembered that sonic foundry is no more and that this is sony =P.

are there/have there been HD DVD authoring options or do those people have to go elsewhere?

I noticed that the VASST site says, "Shipping Wednesday, September 19" for the version 8 training. Is that also the date that Vegas 8 will be released?

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

Nope:
heres Sony press release:

Vegas Pro 8 NLE Software Delivers Customizable Creation Tools Including ProType Titling Technology, Multicamera Editing, AVCHD Workflow and Blu-ray Disc Burning

(MADISON, WI - August 30, 2007) Sony Creative Software, a leading provider of professional video and audio editing applications, today announced Vegas Pro 8 software, the newest version of its award-winning nonlinear editing (NLE) software.

Vegas Pro 8 provides professional editors with precise control over complex DV, HDV and XDCAM projects through powerful tools for editing material shot in multi-camera environments. Vegas Pro 8 will be available September 10, 2007.

First, the lack of HD DVD authoring has little to do with Sony or not.
Very little HD DVD support for authoring at this time on any front.
There is no Blu-ray authoring in Vegas 8 either.

The VASST Vegas 8 DVD volume couldn't go to the replicator until Sony cleared the Vegas 8 product announcements, and there is no way we could have them replicated en masse and have them shipping next week. We'd like to turn a fewK DVDs in less than a week....but it's not possible. NDA prevents the DVDs from being sent to the replicator until the product is announced.

I got the email and will happily be purchasing from Vasst within the next few days...

Jon

Argh!!!!!!!.......tell me your kidding?

I'm hoping you are just correcting my usual "got it wrong" statement i.e. when I said Blu Ray AUTHORING. Sorry...jumped without thinking what I was actually saying.

In my simple way of looking at things, I always class the authoring/burning stage as the same part of the process for me, which clearly they are not.

Sorry if i clouded the waters with that.

So....if, as it looks, I can BURN from the timeline, I'm a little confused. What options does that give me for chapter points/menu creation?

If you can BURN to Blu-Ray from Vegas then is there any need for DVD Architect other than for SD projects?

Authoring means one thing.
Burning means another.
Burning BD from/in Vegas is no big deal.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/...?ReleaseID=668

Official Press Release.

In depth breakdown of new features, including screen shots....

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/...ct.asp?pid=457

So we still can't author and burn a blu-ray disk with DVDA. Wow, I really thought this would be in DVDA version 4.5. Why would someone want to burn a BD from the timeline? Archival maybe?

But I can't wait to try the new titler!

You weren't kidding:(


Blu-ray Disc Burning
With Vegas Pro 8 software you can burn a Blu-ray Disc directly from the timeline. Blu-ray Disc burning allows you to create a disc similar to a "single movie" DVD—the movie has no titles, menus, or buttons. Blu-ray Disc burning in Vegas Pro 8 software provides an alternate distribution option for high-definition content, rather than traditional file-based hard disk or streaming media formats. You can also use the Blu-ray Disc burning feature to create high-definition discs that can playback on a set-top Blu-ray Disc player or on a Sony PS3 gaming system.

I suppose we should be grateful for something. Ok....so now I say...this disc, is the main movie, this one is the goodwill messages, this one is the reprise and the fast forward/rewind buttons on your DVD remote are here!

By "no big deal" I meant it's very easy.
Tools/Burn Disc/Blu-ray disc/50i or 60i template, or whatever template suits your fancy.
Blu-ray authoring is a much bigger deal than you'd think. Some folks seem to think it's "easy" to do. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
The tools that are out there (like DVD Studio Pro, etc) that claim BD burning are doing the same thing. The spec only recently settled out, so expect to see more BD authoring tools shortly/soon from various vendors.
Having burned BD and played it back on my BD player, it's easy, fast, and sweet to look at.

Hehe, I'm sure there's room for a joke there Spot, but I'm quite sure it's beyond our posting guidelines. ;-)

-gb-

To be honest, basic burning, but no authoring will meet my goals most of the time. (I'm extrapolating from DVDs here - I'm thinking about the day that BD is more widely deployed.)

Often I just want to send a disc to friends or relatives with the latest cool thing. If they just hit play, rather than select menus - and I don't need to bother authoring - that's fine with me. It's also fine for an archive (though compressed.)

If I want to make a commercial product, yes, I need to author. But my ratio of informal to formal burns is probably ten to one.

Your mileage might vary.

Now I'm just waiting for that "special" email from Sony Creative Software that will give special "upgrade" pricing for existing customers. Hope it comes soon. :(

Jon

So what is the best flavor of Vista to run Vegas8. Any major draw backs to Home Premium? Will it run on 64 bit as the 32 bit Vista will only "see" 3 to 3.5 gigs of RAM?

Thanks,

Konrad

Took a look at the screen shots. Am I missing something? - looks almost exactly like 7. Not a bad thing, I just thought I'd see more of a change to reflect some of the features.

Where does it say BluRay burning? I looked on the Sony site and I didn't see any mention of it. Ofcourse its late, I need to go to bed, and so I may have missed it. Thanks - PK

Is the new DVDA going to have auto save???*#!!

I'm basically in the same boat as you. I can do without the authoring just so I can have a BD. And it will still be sometime before I have a BD burner and player anyway. Maybe by that time Sony will have an interim relaase to DVDA to author BDs.