Vegas 8.1 + MBLooks + Vista 64 Ultimate: wishful thinking?

[Steven Reid]

I have a copy of MB Looks (just the tints/colors) that came for free with my old Vegas 6 installation CD. I really like MBL and so I installed it on my new rig hoping that I'd have the Looks available in 8.1. Alas, 8.1 doesn't recognize it. I can see in Windows Explorer that MBL installed just fine; in fact, I see all the .dll extension files in the Sony plugin folder within the x86 folder in Vista 64 (the "area" for 32 bit apps and such).

Has anyone managed to get this combination to work? (Yes, I understand that I could run 8.0c and MBL (I think)). Or is it asking too much for 32 bit plugins to work with 8.1?

Steve

[Jeff Harper]

Steven, I'm no expert, but I don't believe, for the most part, that 32 bit plug-ins will work within a 64 bit program. It has been reported that Excalibur will work with 8.1, but my experience is that Ultimate S and MB will not.

I did send message to Vasst support asking about future creation of 64 bit version, but got no reply. I'm sure they are thinking about it, if they are not already working on it. Then again, 8.1 is so new, Vasst might be waiting for the next release of it before investing their time in it. Who knows?

Regarding MB, I cannot imagine Red Giant will bother at all with this issue for a long while, as Vegas is at the bottom of their lists, almost an afterthought. The professional user base is just too small. Nothing would please me more, however, than to be proven wrong!

[Jeff Harper]

Somewhat off topic, I have to say, that while I wish 8.1 didn't have the black frame issue (which is why I uninstalled it) and I would love to be using 8.1 for it's increased speed, my 32 bit version is fast.

And I know it shouldn't be so, but I swear Vista 64 bit renders faster, a lot faster for me than 32 bit XP. I'm rendering a 1:40 minute movie with minor color correction in 30 minutes, which is significantly faster than XP.

So while I'm dissappointed in 8.1's readiness, and cannot use it, I have to admit that 32 bit is fast enough for now.

[Rick Steele]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Regarding MB, I cannot imagine Red Giant will bother at all with this issue for a long while, as Vegas is at the bottom of their lists, almost an afterthought. The user base is just too small.

Eh? The user base for Vegas is too small? Compared to what?

[Steven Reid]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Somewhat off topic, I have to say, that while I wish 8.1 didn't have the black frame issue (which is why I uninstalled it) and I would love to be using 8.1 for it's increased speed, my 32 bit version is fast.

And I know it shouldn't be so, but I swear Vista 64 bit renders faster, a lot faster for me than 32 bit XP. I'm rendering a 1:40 minute movie with minor color correction in 30 minutes, which is significantly faster than XP.

So while I'm dissappointed in 8.1's readiness, and cannot use it, I have to admit that 32 bit is fast enough for now.

Off topic reply: I captured and edited on 8.1 the first footage from my XHA1 last night. On the timeline I expanded the ~40 second clip to frame-by-frame level and didn't see any black frames. I felt good about that, knowing that for some it's an issue. Wonder why your specific 8.1 setup has a problem?

I haven't compared the different flavors like you have, but my editing and rendering with 8.1 on Vista 64 was so fast and buttery smooth that I think I could live without MB. :)

[Jeff Harper]

Rick, I am the only editor I know that uses Vegas in my area. Everyone else uses FCP, Premier Pro, or some flavor of Avid. In addition, the people I have met in the TV and film industries give me a blank stare when I mention I edit on Vegas...they usually have not even heard of it. I'm not knockinig Vegas, I'm just saying if it had a bigger base it the plug-in developers would likely devote more resources to it.

I understand that Vegas is well known to consumers and hobbyists, but as far as a professional base, I think it is close to non-existent, save for the smaller wedding and event videographers.

The vast majority of plug-ins available for Avid, Premier, and Final Cut Pro are not available for Vegas. Correct me if I'm mistaken. As a result of all the above, I assume, correctly or incorrectly that Vegas has an extremely small professional base.

In addition, while I have heard of Vegas being taught at a community college or two, I have never heard of any film school that teaches Vegas, it's all FCP, Avid. Many 2 year colleges, I have heard of a couple that teach Premier, but much fewer than teach FCP.

So to answer your question, smaller than Avid, FCP, and Premier.

I have sought out information for market share of each NLE but haven't seen any. I would be extremely curious to know the actual numbers.

[Jeff Harper]

Steven, I reinstalled 8.1 a couple of hours ago just for kicks, and I had all the issues I had before, black frames and all.

I'm glad it's working out good for you, though.

Next time I reinstall my OS, I will install 8.1 first and see what happens.

[Steven Reid]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Steven, I reinstalled 8.1 a couple of hours ago just for kicks, and I had all the issues I had before, black frames and all.

I'm glad it's working out good for you, though.

Next time I reinstall my OS, I will install 8.1 first and see what happens.

Thanks. In troubleshooting my initial problems with 8.1 that I chronicle in another thread, I found here and on the Sony forums that the only 'solution' not inconsistent with success was to install 8.1 over a squeaky clean install of Vista 64 (before updates, before drivers, etc.). A real pain if you've spent time setting up other software and such. For me, however, I was starting from scratch and so I didn't mind.

Best wishes on getting 8.1 to work right...some day.

-Steve

[Mike Gunter]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

I understand that Vegas is well known to consumers and hobbyists, but as far as a professional base, I think it is close to non-existent, save for the smaller wedding and event videographers.

Hi Jeff,

If you're going by numbers who make their living as a basis, for professionals, I'd suspect that there are far more event and wedding video shooters than any other category combined. But then, you're likely using some other criteria for "professional."

Vegas, a easy to learn, easy to use NLE certainly caters to that market.

My best,

Mike

[Jeff Harper]

Well Mike, as I said, out of the many videographers I know, I do not know ONE other company that uses Vegas. That should say something. I used to know one, and he switched to FCP a year ago.

How many Vegas users do you know in your area?

As I said, I'm not knocking Vegas. And it may be wrong to assume that lack of third party support translates automatically into a smaller professional user base. But until I hear some numbers, it seems the logical conclusion.

Let's pretend I didn't even bring this up. My remark was not intended to start a debate.

[Mike Gunter]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Well Mike, as I said, out of the many videographers I know, I do not know ONE other company that uses Vegas. That should say something. I used to know one, and he switched to FCP a year ago.

How many do you know in your area?

As I said, I'm not knocking Vegas. And it may be wrong to assume that lack of third party support translates automatically into a smaller professional user base. But until I hear some numbers, it seems the logical conclusion.

Let's pretend I didn't even bring this up. My remark was not intended to start a debate.

Hi,

I certainly don't claim to know all of them, even in my area.

Of course, my area is either is either too small by too few by too few people, or too large - third largest in the lower 48, depending on how you look at it. However, in the last 5 to 8 years or so I've taught or lectured to some where around 10 thousand folks or so across the US in more than 30 states on things video and electronic imaging in my capacity as a teacher or have had students here in my classroom from the Armed Forces here or at their facilities at Army and Air Force bases across the US and corporations (should you count them as professionals), and that seems to be a high enough number to be a fair enough sample.

Quite a few of them might even fall into other categories of professional, too, using Avid, FCP, and Adobe products (some of those products I also, teach).

Whether Red Giant will support Vegas is up to them. If it's profitable, they will.

My best.

Mike

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

It has been reported that Excalibur will work with 8.1

Here's a nice screenshot.

[Jeff Harper]

Mike, I'm talking about Vegas users, not how many people I've met or what segment of the industry is larger than the others.

How many of the thousands of people you've met use it? That is my point. I'm saying it is not supported by third parties because the number of Vegas users, especially professional editors, is too small. It obviously is not profitable to develop plug-ins for it because there are not enough customers at this point.

To me this is so obvious I can't believe we're arguing over it. I wish I could have the last ten minutes of my life back.

[Jeff Harper]

I would hope that if Excalibur works with 8.1 that Ultimate S wouldn't need too much work to get it to work as well. I know nothing about the dreary work of coding, or whatever the process of creating scripts and integrating it into a program is called, but I guess Excalibur does shine a bit of hope on the situation.

[Harold Brown]

To me professional is really how well someone (a person) does their work. Too often professional seems to be related to a building or company or a product. Vegas quality is good enough to be used by a professional and it is capable of creating professional looking results. I create DVDs that are available world wide and look no better or worse than if I used Premier or FCP. I have more money in my pocket (profit) because I use Vegas and that is a fact. There are many reasons why someone might need something different than Vegas or something in addition to Vegas and if that makes you more money then those are tools you need to have.