What's the Verdict on Vegas 9 ?

[Yang Wen]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Yang, what is Sony AVC and what is it used for?

It's an H.264 codec that you can render to from Vegas.. You'd use it for Bluray authoring or for posting HD content to Vimeo or YouTube..

When I rendered my full 4 minute project, the progress bar was stuck at 8% but the remaining time kept decreasing - A well known bug in Vegas 8. I haven't experienced this in version 9 until tonight.. sigh..

EDIT: looks like I found a post which might help with the Sony AVC crashes.. http://www.avforums.com/forums/camco...vc-format.html

Eugene: Sorry to hear your workaround.. your story is making me sick.. I hope I don't have to go to that length when I edit my first long form project in version 9... :(

[Jeff Harper]

Yes, I would bet that lowering your number of threads to 1 or 2 would help immediately. There are lots of suggestions that would appear to work actually.

[Yang Wen]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Yes, I would bet that lowering your number of threads to 1 or 2 would help immediately. There are lots of suggestions that would appear to work actually.

Well first of all, I'm not convinced that lowering the threads will help..(due to past experiences with version 8) Second of all, why do we still have the attitude of accepting the fact that version 9 can not utilize 4 or more cores? I mean it's 2009... most users who are editing HD videos have multi core systems.. since Vegas is allowing us to set multiple cores, it should simply work! We're not expecting Vegas to support leading-edge technology, just mainstream technology that is current to its time.

Edit: I should add that I'm very happy with everything else about Vegas.. it's just the horrible Rendering component that is dragging the entire application down. Version 8 has been horrible for rendering and so far looks like version 9 is about the same..

[Jeff Harper]

You don't have to try it Wen. It's an idea for a workaround. If you are like me with lots of work to do you do what you can to get the job done.

That Vegas should work as it is, that is quite obvious.

Lowering the number of threads takes approximately 10 seconds to try. It costs nothing.

[Jeff Harper]

Wow.

I just discovered Windows 7 shows m2t files as thumbnails. Nice surprise.

I also just tried editing m2t files in Ultimate S Quad Cam and it seems to act the same as SD on the timeline...seems to be fine. This is a nice development...it would be nice to not have to make proxies. We'll see as this progresses.

[Yang Wen]

No what I was say is that I've tried it in version 8 for when I had strange rendering crashes and that never solved the problem for it... It was a constant battle.. multiple attempts until it gets rendered without any crashes...

You using 7 RC? I was thinking of installing that but didn't want to deal with the reformatting since RC doesn't have an upgrade or uninstall feature.. I placed a pre-order for $50.. nice and cheap!

[Jeff Harper]

Yes I'm using the RC and it is awesome. I quoted an Hewlett Packard Tech chief earlier who praised it and I am seeing more and more why he did. It is so much more responsive.

It is a no-no to run the Aero theme in Vista because of the resources it hogs, at least I found it to cause intermittent issues, but with Windows 7 I'm running Aero with a desktop background slideshow that changes images (cool images by the way) every so often, and I've burnt DVDs while rendering another project on the same PC at the same time (another no-no) and the DVDs came out perfect. In other words I'm pushing it beyond reasonable limits and it is performing like a champ. For it to burn good DVDs while rendering HD to SD is pretty darn cool. I will not do that routinely, as I was just testing it, but still I'm impressed.

The only issue I've had is that every time I boot up the internet connection is dead, and I switch ports and it is fine. Strange, but I'm loving it so much I don't care.

Just the fact that it plays m2t files in windows media player natively and shows them as thumbnails is big to me.

[Gene Gajewski]

Originally Posted by Yang Wen

No what I was say is that I've tried it in version 8 for when I had strange rendering crashes and that never solved the problem for it... It was a constant battle.. multiple attempts until it gets rendered without any crashes...

You using 7 RC? I was thinking of installing that but didn't want to deal with the reformatting since RC doesn't have an upgrade or uninstall feature.. I placed a pre-order for $50.. nice and cheap!

This is a common misconception on Win 7. It does have an upgrade, and it can do a clean install too without a reformat.

As for an unistall - no. I don't think there's ever been such a capability. I made a backup first.

[Yang Wen]

Originally Posted by Gene Gajewski

This is a common misconception on Win 7. It does have an upgrade, and it can do a clean install too without a reformat.

Incorrect - You can ONLY do a clean install of the release version of Win 7. In other words, there is no ability to upgrade from RC. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/faq.aspx

Can I upgrade from the RC to the final version of Windows 7?

When you install the final version of Windows 7, you'll need to do a clean installation. So plan on backing up your data then reinstalling your applications and restoring your data.

[Yang Wen]

Originally Posted by Gene Gajewski

Timeline performance? What's that?

Certainly, it can't be the UI of the timeline.

Adobe apps are famous for being obtuse. But oh, when you finally get used to them you get to enter the priesthood - and you must cling to your obtuse app like a unix programmer to emacs, lest someone pull aside the curtain and find out it's just another NLE, abeit with a crotchedy UI.

Adobe bombs out all the time. Vista's got it's problems, but it don't take no Data Execution Protection lip from anybody, and Adobe's no exception.

I'm getting ready to try Win 7 myself.

Photoshop, After Effects, Flash are industry standard applications and every version I've used over the years have been flawless in the sense that they have always been stable enough for me as a user to concentrate on the creative aspect of the work as oppose to always be mindful about the technical working of the application. "Oh if I do this, will it crash? Maybe I should save now before I do this because it usually crashes right about here...". The best rendering bug in Vegas is when the progress indicator bar freezes at different and random points everytime you attempt to re-render. If you get lucky, you might be able to render the entire segment without it freezing up :) You can hardly put Sony Creative Studio in the same category as Adobe..

Try this in Vegas 9.. undo 2 or 3 times consecutively which involves shifting around video events... that always results in a forever frozen app, which requires a kill from the Task Manager.. Pretty ridiculous IMO.

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Yang Wen

Try this in Vegas 9.. undo 2 or 3 times consecutively which involves shifting around video events... that always results in a forever frozen app, which requires a kill from the Task Manager.. Pretty ridiculous IMO.

Not for me. Undo simply undoes! Just like I expect it to. There was only one exception to that and that was when I was running a script that was automatically doing something. I would click undo and the script would automatically redo - sort of caught in a catch 22!

[Gene Gajewski]

Originally Posted by Yang Wen

Incorrect - You can ONLY do a clean install of the release version of Win 7. In other words, there is no ability to upgrade from RC. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/faq.aspx

Seems like a little language tense issues. I was under the impression that we were talking about the RC in particular.

You specifially mentioned that "RC doesn't" but you must have meant the "release version doesn't" - have an upgrade path from the RC. That may be a genuine issue for you - I'm simply going to do the clean install as expected.

[Jeff Harper]

The retail version will not have an upgrade path because of anti-trust issues involving ie8, but Microsoft will make one available in months following the initial release of 7.

Upgrade installations are often rife with problems and are absolutely asking for trouble. I have read in Windows 7 forums of people complaining they don't want to lose their settings, but how lazy is that?

The RC of Windows 7 does have an upgrade option, but why in the world would anyone want traces of Vista left behind?

If you have issues that you cannot solve with Vegas, etc, you often must reinstall the OS anyway, so why not start clean.

Upgrade installations are well known to be the worst possible way to install an OS, it doesn't even make sense to bother.

Sometimes even a clean install will not install properly and has to be redone.

I have reformatted my HDs and reinstalled Windows 98, XP pro and Vista dozens if not a hundred times, and on occasion the clean install doesn't take properly. I cannot even imagine thinking an upgrade would be worth the effort.

[Yang Wen]

Jeff: I meant to say that I'm anxious to try RC... However, if I install it today, I won't be able to easily migrate to the full version of Windows 7. I'd have to wipe out Windows and reinstall all of my applications... <- That's what's holding me back.

[Jeff Harper]

Yang, I see what you mean.