My apologies if this has been covered before but I searched around this section (one I don't frequent as much as I used to as I'm mostly FCS/Mac Pro based now) but my trusty 6 year old Windows XP box finally died today. It's had a hard life rendering/everything was backed up.... so no worries, R.I.P!

I'm reluctant to loose the capabilities of Vegas editing and a Windows PC (especially as the future of FCP is uncertain with Apple's pandering to consumerism and flash phones - pun intended) and so I will buy a new Win 7 PC in the next few days. I'm using Sony EX3 and Canon 7D, by the way, a little still with my Sony HC1 too (which is what the Vegas 7 was used for). I'm not interested in running Win 7 on my Mac Pro in a dual boot scenario as I think I'd like to keep some hardware and software duplicity (for piece of mind/disaster limitation/client compatibility reasons etc.), although I do have a very good MBP too.

Now my question - I've searched around and can't find an upgrade price or path for Vegas 7E to Vegas 9E. Only the Full Vegas 9E Pro seems available. Does this mean I have to buy the full package (£515-550 area here in the UK) or am I missing something? I'd hate to spend the money only to find I could have done it for a much lower price!!!!

Also, I'm assuming Vegas 7E which was for Windows XP will not run on a Windows 7 PC - is this correct/anyone tried this?

Thanks for any information.

EDIT: OK I've just found this link....it's been a busy morning....Not too bad a price either!

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/upgrade/vegaspro?disp=1

Yes, it definitely has an upgrade price and upgrade prices are usually really good. Glad you found the proper link. There's also a "Competitive Upgrade" price available right now so people with other NLE's can get a good price as well. I don't remember when it ends - I think it's the end of June.

Thanks Edward!

Been researching PC specs all morning.... and I've just ordered a new Dell Studio XPS8100 box with an i7 (2.8Ghz), 8GB of RAM and 2TB RAID 0 (and will use the eSATA on the box to connect a 2TB G-RAID3 that I have spare). Just about to order the Vegas upgrade now.

That should hopefully get me back up and running pretty soon with Vegas!

No doubt I'll start reading this section of the forum a lot more again too (especially as I get to grips with the changes that have occurred between Vegas 7E and 9E).

Andy,

I have almost the same machine as you purchased. it will work grat with Vegas provided you keep the computer pretty clean of unnecessary programs!!!


I had a some real frustrations to begin with and found out that the culprit of all things was having Frontpage on my computer.. I now only have my editing software and a browser on my workstation, and I keep the line to the router unplugged at all times unless I need to download an update or such.

You probably know all that already.

Thanks Dale. Good to know it'll be a good rig for Vegas! I'd read i7 is the thing to have for video encoding and I've been very happy with Dell for reliability and customer service in the past - the old Dell Dimension 4600 Pentium 4 (3.0Ghz, 2.5GB of RAM) that expired this morning has had a terrific run/very heavy use (I've made some great films on it) - and the £299 off UK deal they had going (ends tomorrow night) just sealed a deal on the PC spec that I would have bought anyway...it's not turning out to be such a bad day after all!

Maybe one day I'll do a side by side comparison of my 2009 Mac Pro (2.66GHz 8 core 2009 Nehalem Mac with 12GB of RAM and 4 internal 1TB drives, 2 in a RAID 0, all running with FCS2) and this new Dell running Vegas 9E. It'll sure be interesting to see them rendering the exact same Full HD video file from one format to the exact same another format and see which is going to be fastest (especially as one cost almost 5 times the other - I'm NOT trying to start a platform war here, it's just my scientific curiosity).

Wow! I've just done my first 720p QuickTime HD converion to WMV (export out of FCP on my Mac Pro as a H.264 All Best, then transferred to the new PC). Rendered it to a 5Mbps WMV HD 720p. It's a 6 Minute corporate video that last week took 2 HOURS on my old Dell Dimension 4600 Pentium 4 (just before it died) and this baby did it in 14 MINUTES flat - and that's before I've really had time to optimise my workflow and layouts of all my drives etc.

Loving this!