Sony Vegas 8.0c update wishlist
 

I'll start of with what I think is the most important item!

- an update that will enable users to downsize HD or HDV footage to SD MPEG 2 with much more accurate and eye-pleasing results. At present, high end SD cameras such as the DSR-450 are producing much nicer images on SD DVD than downconverted HD from the EX1. This is purely a workflow problem rather than a camera problem because the native HD footage looks stunning.

Sony need to look at their resizing algorithms. Also, a solution would need to render out within in a reasonable time.

Any more suggestions for an update wishlist?

The ability to lower blacks,midtones,hightones with a slider in Color Corrector just like in FCP Studio 2.
Auto white balance.
Better Preview quality in real time.

I think thats it for now?

Cheers
Simon

In no particular order:
1-A customer support policy from Sony that exists.
2-Preview window that represents colors something like the final output
3-Scopes that aren't wrong
3a-scopes that display whether they are showing REC601 or REC709
4-Documentation as to what 32 bit FP is about....when to use it
4a-A warning indicator of processing mode, 8bit or 32bitFP
4b-a warning indicator of scope mode, studio or computer RGB
5-Automation of color space so it matches the input color space a codec expects to see.
6-An option to process in YUV instead of RGB(never happen with Vegas)
7-Correction of an endless number of bugs and glitches, like dropped frames from m2t files.

I echo what Bill has mentioned.

My biggest want in a fix...

Get Canon 24f capture working!! I want to sell off my Vegas 7 version and not have the hassle of having to flip between the two simply to capture 24F footage from the XHA1.

Plugin support
 

Support for third party plugins that is not so limited. This has been an issue for a long time now and it would be nice to see it resolved.

Offset, gain, and gamma will do the same thing. Though in Vegas you may have to "juggle" the interface/GUI controls (more so if working studio RGB). e.g. altering gain will mean that you might need to change Offset in the Color Corrector FX.

Personally I would prefer to use Levels (or curves)... because the offset/gamma/gain in the Color Corrector can sometimes cause color shifts. e.g. if you cut gain by half, you need to change saturation by the same amount to maintain the same colors (as in the same purity/saturation of the colors... otherwise they are too pure/saturated in the other sense of saturation).
That's the same idea in FCP, though in FCP it might be easier not to use Levels.

It's there in Vegas if you use the eyedroppers. You can drag-select areas with the eyedroppers in the Color Corrector FX.

Play interlaced smoother,especially when i preview on 2nd monitor.Every other player i've got manages it.

-Undo inside of Filters to see changes
-Better Source Control in the Trimmer Window
-Insert after/before Cursor with Ripple Edit insertion does not ripple the clip in the timeline you're inserting into, but ripples the rest of the timeline unless you split first.

Thanks Glenn,
Yeah i know i can do it that way i'm just being lazy.
One thing with levels is, if i want to lower my blacks and just my blacks what is the best option? the input slider or gamma.
And with reducing black levels whats the best option for then adjusting my high tones back.
With so many tools in Vegas it's hard to know which tool is the correct one to use.

Cheers
Simon

Might also be nice to see building of peak files make multi-threaded in order to take advantage of all available CPU cores.

marks

I'm no wizz editor and
 

I love the way Vegas works but a lot of frustrations still.
a) More Stability
b) better preview frame rates which means better gpu utilization for mpeg decoding
c) Proper BlueRay support for DVDA as well so we can actually deliver our HD products as HD
d) a vastly improved titler which doesn't crash every other time you use it, and better/more powerful titling including 3d capability
e)Now I might be wrong, but I think I read that you can't edit 4:2:2 here? Especially with the new HD XDCam coming out 4:2:2. Also Convergent design type products will necessitate such support. I know you can export it in YUV uncompressed, but basically something to really bring Vegas to the table when your talking movie realease etc. Maybe it's own native 10bit codec like Edius to get rid of banding etc.

I'm pretty sure that's not true, (in fact I'll say I'm 99% sure its' not) as you would see the poor color sampling on gen media no matter what output you sent it to. And if you push it out to Uncompressed AVI that should be 4:4:4.

Anyway, you guys are WAYYY to late to be requesting 8c - try 9 because this *might* be in time to get into the planning for Vegas 9 changes.

Dave

It should be input start and output end.

If you throw the gradient media generator on the timeline and play around with levels, you should have a good idea of what's happening because you can look at the scopes.

still waiting
 

I have asked since ver 3.0 to have the ability to storyboard clips in bins, the ability to right click hold to activate ripple mode in the time line, and to put a colored border around clips in a bin that have been used in the movie.
Its hard to let go of these ideas since i have been using them in other NLE's for over 10 years.

For 9 (I agree that is seems late in the game for 8c since they are working on 9) I'd like to see a titler that had a more logical and intuitive interface that flows with the rest of Vegas.

For me the BIGGIE is I want to render to .flv. If 9 doesn't address that it will unforgivable in my opinion. I hate having to render twice to make a .flv clip.

What I'm sure you're dealing with here, is politics. Adobe doesn't want to help out their competitor and let them render to .flv directly because they want to have the exclusive ability to render to their massively used video format. However you can do what's called frame serving ( install the debugmode frameserver and save to the debugmode avi, it only takes a few seconds to do that), then leave Vegas open and then open that .avi file and tell it to render that as your .flv, it'll just serve all the frames to your .flv encoder and you'll be good to go.

Politics happens when our software is purchased by a big name company, so that's just the way it is ( however the software wouldn't even be there if it weren't for them buying it, so I'm happy they did :) ).

Dave

Thanks David...sounds like a cool little process...I'll try it!

Let me export an XDcam-HD file through "Render As" and not just in the "print to disc" option.

Let me mark clips (colored outline would be cool) in the bins.

Better multicore processing.

Turn down your Sony-Exclusive stance and play nice with some other codecs (Like, I don't know... DVCproHD?!).

Hey Bennis, I'd make sure you know what you're saying when you accuse Sony Creative Software of beIng the problem. Last I knew, they were trying to get the codec support, and panasonic refused to play ball. (I won't say which forum i saw this conversation on) I read a conversation from SCS big wigs and a Panasonic person and right there infront of everyone, SCS offered to play ball, and the panny person wouldn't go for it. So I'd suggest you place the blame squarely where it's due, and not just assume that it's Sony ( we all know what ass-u-m(e)ing does:) ).

Dave

My only request for 8.0c is full-support of AVCHD (wether it comes from a Sony, Panasonic, or Canon camcorder, interlaced/progressive).

How about the ability to apply effects to all events associated with a given piece of media. This will then let you remove effect for individual events. This would be different to applying effects to the media itself.

Ian

Ian, I was just going to write that. The ability to add selective events to be copied and pasted rather then everything (paste events). Premiere has had it since 5 or 6 (when I used to use it) and I have questioned about it in the past - I hope it finally gets put into action. I am no programmer, so it probably isn't something easy, but it would be a great help.

Ian and David, what a great addition that feature would be!

An actual Source Monitor in addition to the trimmer, or replace that POS altogether. If Sony wants to win over Premiere users, they should do this. This was the biggest setback in my trial of Vegas. I've actually programmed macros on my ShuttlePro2 to help emulate a Source Monitor in the trimmer, still very lacking though. This is where Vegas kills my flow, esp when dealing with long clips and need to perform 3-point edits.

The ability to lock tracks.

The ability to disable FX preview on imported projects.

I can't speak for anyone else but it's extremely rare for me to use the trimmer.
I had this feature on my dps Velocity and, once again, rarely used it.
I prefer to do all my trimming directly on the timeline.

Is this what you want?

Hold down CTRL+Alt with the cursor positioned over the jumpcut, and drag.
You'll see the out point of the left event move to the right, and the in
point of
the right event move right/later too. Or, go the other way, and drag to the
left,
you'll see the in/out point change.
Rolling Edits in Vegas are easy, just not well known.
You can also slip edit an event, by holding ALT and dragging inside the
event. You'll see the cursor change to a box w/ two arrows inside it.

Select clips to be locked.
Right-click on any one of them.
Switches - Lock.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the comments. Doing 3-point edits from a source monitor is much more efficient for me especially with long clips instead of cutting on the timeline, to each their own. With Premiere, I started out doing all of my edits on the timeline but in time I became more efficient by using the source monitor and 3-point edits (Mark the In-point, Out-point, Insert to timeline). There would be no harm in having an adequate Source Monitor in Vegas, in fact it may help draw more Premiere users that are sick of instability and poor performance. If using a Source Monitor or Trimmer isn't your thing, then don't use it, but for those who do, it would be nice.

I'm familiar with rolling and sliding edits but did not know about the clip lock feature, thanks for that but being able to lock the Track itself would still be useful. Thanks.

Kevin

Kevin, Sony just came out with an article titled "Discovering the Sony Vegas Pro Trimmer window that might be of some interest to you.
AFAIK, the trimmer functions haven't changed for a long time so this article will be useful even to previous version owners.

my 5 cents
 

For me personally, the most wanted and long-awaited features are (1) support of YUV color space, and (2) a 'Match Frame' function. First is a must, while second is only helpful for those trying to cope with huge number of source footages without having to remember which parts of them have already been used in the project and which haven't yet.

Other than that, Vegas is unique in the combination of vast capabilites and simple intuitive truly user-friendly interface it offers.

Gleb, use the "View - Edit Details" function in Vegas.
With 1 or 2 clicks. it'll give you a count as to how many times a particular clip has been used and where on the timeline it was used.

Thanks, Mike, I know that. This option, though, doesn't show which portion of the source has been used. Sometimes it gets messy on the timeline and I'm having hard time remembering whether I have used these particular frames already or not, even if I know from the Vegas' details that the source itself has been used N times.

Color space wrangling (As Glenn puts it. ;) )

The program should know what to do by the source and destination format.

Thanks for the comment, Steven. Couldn't completely agree with you (and Glenn) on that point, regretfully. But this is not the right place to discuss that anyway, I assume :)

OK, let me put it this way: support for YUV in Vegas is a must for me :)

P.S. Mike, thanks A LOT for the link to the article covering Trimmer options. One workaround to deal with the absence of Match Frame function could be to use not just In/Out points but regions for inserts. They can be saved so next time the source is opened I can see which portions of it are already in the project. Although it's not a 100% substitute for Match Frame (since it doesn't refer to actual presence of frames in the project), it can still be used provided one will not forget to delete marked but not used regions when switching to another source in the Trimmer.

I didn't know that, thanks again :)

Gleb, if you look further to the right in the column list (8th & 9th on the default view), you'll see Timecode In and Timecode Out columns. They show the source tape in/out times.
And, if you change from Events to Selected Events, you can double-click a specific event for this information.
Isn't this what you want?

You're welcome Gleb. Anything for a fellow Ukrainian (my dad came to Canada after WW 2) / Vegas lover :-)
For those of you not sure what we're talking about, I started a new thread with the link to the article.

Not exactly. As far as I understand, to make use of this, I'd have to see details of all the events (cut out from a specified source) I have on timeline one by one and see if the source portion I'm currently looking at has a matching timecode. This will work fine for short source footages as there won't be many events originating from it on the timeline and they can easily be checked. With longer sources, however, with quite a number of events belonging to them -- this can be too time-consuming and impracticable. Regions in the trimmer will deal with this better, in a more convenient way, I think (I only have to make sure I do save used ones and delete those not yet used; or name them so as to easily distinguish ones from the others -- an extra stop or two in the workflow, but should work for me). Have to give it a try and see.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions.

P.S. Nice thing to know our origins start at the same place :) You speak Ukrainian?
I apologise for the off-top, but can't find an option to write a PM on this forum.

If you click on the "Active Take Name" column, it does a sort so that all clips show up in (time coded) order, according to tape name/number.
I'm not sure if this is helpful in a long-form project but it sure is on short ones.

p.s. If you click on a person's name, you'll see an option to send them an email (if they chose that as an option, that is).

p.p.s. sorry but no, I don't speak the language. Dad & Mom tried to teach me when I was growing up but, as a young kid, I had other things on my mind.

How about the ability to keep 2 events linked (video and audio) but being able to trim one and not the other. Premiere has this, you hold CTRL and click and drag the "event" in the timeline and it adjusts without affecting the other "event" it is linked to.

This would make J and L cuts much quicker than having to unlink them.

There's no need to ungroup them. Turn on "Ignore Event Grouping", trim for the J/L cut, turn off "Ignore Event Grouping".

Ignore Event Grouping can be toggled via CTRL-SHIFT-U and there's a button for it on the toolbar.

Good point, but I do enjoy just holding ctrl and doing it instead of toggling stuff on and off. I guess that's just my problem with it. I could always adjust the keyboard shortcuts as well.

Couple of things I thought of today...

1. When rendering, please institute an "are you sure" dialog for the cancel render. Nothing worse than being moments away from finishing an all night render only to fat finger the keyboard or mouse and lose it all!

2. On render, please put the PATH to where it's rendering along with the name of the file. I know this seems like a small thing, but when I've got a couple renders going, some to local drives and some over the network, it would be GREAT to know where they are headed.