Question about Vegas 7

[Joe Carney]

Now that Vegas 7 has been announced at IBC, have they improved the interface for Cineform?

They mention support for Cineform, and improved support for BlackMagic and Aja. Hoping the went beyond the old Video for Windows interface into Directshow, but thats not mentioned in the press release.

[David Newman]

There is a new Connect HD coming with some nice enhancements to HDLink and the codec, however it will not require Vegas 7.0 (but will work fine with 7.0.)

[Joe Carney]

Thanks David, but will it finally be via DirectShow? In the past I've been told that DirectShow is the preferred interface for using Cineform even though you work with Vegas in the older format.

[David Newman]

Still VFW.

[Joe Carney]

They just lost my upgrade money. Time to start looking at Premier. drat.

[Richard Leadbetter]

Any hints on the enhancements to the codec David? Short of multithreading it, it's as close to perfect as I can imagine. Although maybe I've just not got much of an imagination ;)

[Joe Carney]

Any possibility of cross grade price to Aspect?

[David Newman]

Richard,

Codec is getting even higher quality, can you believe it? :)


Joe,

upgrade form Connect HD to Aspect HD is around $300 (basically we credit you today's Connect HD price as a down-payment on Aspect HD -- we do the same for Aspect HD to Prospect HD upgrades.)

[Jay Hancock]

Originally Posted by Joe Carney

They just lost my upgrade money. Time to start looking at Premier. drat.

Why is VFW vs. DirectShow such a big deal that you would dump your NLE (and all the experience and projects you've done) and start from scratch as a newbie with some other NLE? What is it about DirectShow that could possibly justify this?

The cost of going to PPro (plus all the addons you'd need) vs. a simple upgrade of Vegas is huge. I don't know, maybe you've got experience in PPro, but isn't it possible that you'd find something lacking in the other NLE that's a bigger deal than VFW?

[Joe Carney]

Originally Posted by Jay Hancock

Why is VFW vs. DirectShow such a big deal that you would dump your NLE (and all the experience and projects you've done) and start from scratch as a newbie with some other NLE? What is it about DirectShow that could possibly justify this?

The cost of going to PPro (plus all the addons you'd need) vs. a simple upgrade of Vegas is huge. I don't know, maybe you've got experience in PPro, but isn't it possible that you'd find something lacking in the other NLE that's a bigger deal than VFW?

It's a big deal as far as 3rd party support, which is increasingly based on DirectShow, OpenGL2 and/or DirectX 9 or newer.
I was just mad for a few minutes because of this.

I'm waiting for a complete review before making up my mind.

I already qualify for PP2 upgrade pricing, I already have AE 7 and Photoshop CS2, and even if I went to PP2, I would still use Vegas for audio mixing and recording and a few other things. This all has more to do with what I'm getting into this winter more than anything else. It's not that I want to give up Vegas.

[Jay Hancock]

Originally Posted by Joe Carney

It's a big deal as far as 3rd party support, which is increasingly based on DirectShow, OpenGL2 and/or DirectX 9 or newer.
I was just mad for a few minutes because of this.

I'm waiting for a complete review before making up my mind.

I think most of the Vegas plugins (effects, FXs, etc.) ARE DirectX based. Lots of third party plugins, too.

[Richard Leadbetter]

Originally Posted by Jay Hancock

Why is VFW vs. DirectShow such a big deal that you would dump your NLE (and all the experience and projects you've done) and start from scratch as a newbie with some other NLE? What is it about DirectShow that could possibly justify this?

I may be wrong, but if Vegas is exclusively using the VFW pipeline then on dual core and dual CPU systems, CineForm performance will be massively slower compared to its DirectShow equivalent. This would be because the VFW codec is single-threaded whereas the DirectShow components are multi-threaded.

I run 720p/60 footage from the timeline in Premiere Pro 2.0 and it's this huge lick of speed that makes CineForm files feel as though they're no more burdensome than normal DV.

[Jay Hancock]

Originally Posted by Richard Leadbetter

I may be wrong, but if Vegas is exclusively using the VFW pipeline then on dual core and dual CPU systems, CineForm performance will be massively slower compared to its DirectShow equivalent. This would be because the VFW codec is single-threaded whereas the DirectShow components are multi-threaded.

I run 720p/60 footage from the timeline in Premiere Pro 2.0 and it's this huge lick of speed that makes CineForm files feel as though they're no more burdensome than normal DV.

Are you talking about playback (only) or rendering?

Vegas does use VFW for rendering to CFDI. I run it on a dual core CPU and it takes full advantage of both cores. Those cores are doing a lot more than just writing file I/O via the codec. They are rendering effects, compositing, pan/crop/zoom, etc. Both CPU cores are pegged at 100% utilization throughout the process.

[Joe Carney]

Originally Posted by Jay Hancock

I think most of the Vegas plugins (effects, FXs, etc.) ARE DirectX based. Lots of third party plugins, too.

It currently uses an outdated version (DX7). Madison has mentioned in the past they need to update the SDK. Since only a press release has come out, I'm just waiting for more info. No hurry.

[Richard Leadbetter]

Jay: the VFW CineForm codec is single-threaded. Therefore the reading of the source files (ie where Vegas will get all its data to process) won't use your multiple cores. This is surely a fundamental speed disadvantage compared to Premiere Pro and Aspect HD, which does.

So it will affect both playback and rendering, surely?