Vegas Pro 12 worth the Upgrade Price?

[Harry Simpson]

I've got Vegas Pro 11 just last year. I've got a 64bit machine and was wondering if the 150-200 upgrade cost would be worth it.

Anyone going from 11 to 12 have any reflections on the jump?

[Steve Game]

Can't say much about 11 to 12. I recently went from 10 to 12 and there were no issues. (I wanted the better GPU acceleration performance). The volume handles on each clip are handy and it does seem more robust.
I note that most who have updated have not had issues. That's except the few who seem to complain about every version since 8. I suspect that their problem lies in their hardware drivers or the Windows setup.

[Nicholas de Kock]

I upgraded to 12 as soon as it was released & we're still using 11. Have 12 on my PC but haven't had the time to switch yet, there was a few minor issues with 12 & my workflow so I'm sticking with 11 till all my projects are done which will still be a few months. Really only a few improvements in 12 compared to 11, might as well wait for 13.

[Peter Riding]

My first venture into Vegas Pro was with version 9 just over 3 years ago. I've used 9 10 and 11 extensively throughout with none of the issues that seem to bug (excuse the pun) some other users.

I upgraded to 12 mainly because of the new Color Match FX which promises to make matching colours between different cams or different clips very quick and easy. It does work but I have had rendering problems with it. Just posted this on the official Sony Vegas Pro board:

"I have a project comprising 6 sub-projects which are then nested into the master project. Each of the sub-projects has many events from up to four cams on different tracks. Separate audio as well. The initial edits were done using Multi-Cam. Total project length around 85 minutes.

One of the sub-projects had Color Match FX applied to the clips for one camera on one track. I was able to render this sub-project as an MP4 on its own.

But rendering the master project was hopeless. Would freeze after many hours of rendering. I was not doing anything I have not done many times, the only variable was that it is the first project in which I've used Color Match FX.

I went back in and removed the Color Match FX from all clips.

Now the master project renders fine. So I reckon Sony has some work to do on that new feature."

Thats just my personal experience and judging by others experiences over the years it may not apply to you.

But it does seem to me that although Color Match is a biggie reason to upgrade it may not be quite ready for a production environment yet.

Pete

[Jeff Harper]

Harry, I have found the upgrade a waste of money, slightly less stable. The color match feature left me unimpressed, and Vegas 11 was working just fine for me. I only upgraded so I could be "current", but I now feel I threw money away. And DVDA 6, on the surface, means absolutely nothing to me.

I only want better performance on the timeline, and Vegas 12 has not offered that except through the Proxy feature. I still wonder why Edius destroys Vegas in this dept, I just can't understand how a smaller company can make Vegas look so lame in the playback dept. Vegas should consider buying Grass Valley so they would own the technology. I don't care how they do it, I just wish they would get it done.

12 is fine, but for day to day use, for my use, it was unnecessary to upgrade.

[Ian Stark]

My experience of 12 has so far been positive. Much more stable for me than 11 (although 11 did seem to settle down with that last build).

For me there are enough useful 'little' changes to justify the upgrade cost. FX masking, set velocity to zero, dragging fx positions on the preview window, render complete sound (at last!), import media from other Vegas projects, simultaneous fade length adjustment, media tagging - those are some of the little enhancements that I am using daily and (for me) are well worth the upgrade price because they save me time (and therefore I am more profitable).

Things that have turned out to be a disappointment (again, for me - these might be wondrous improvements for others) are DVDA 6, project interchange and expanded edit mode. All very 'meh'.

[Marco Ba]

To me VP12 is the best release since version 7. You may have to turn off any kind of GPU accelaration but then it's very stable, hadn't any crash yet. And there are more than 40 new features which most of them sorted to be rather useful to me.

[Mervyn Keys]

Jeff - have to agree with you.

I use V11Pro and has been going along more or less just nicely. Was drawn to 12 because of Colour Match and a few workflow improvements.
12 is slow to load projects and rendering is quite oa bit slower in every department except MP4 using OpenCL rendering (which is super fast).
I cant render a project or event with a NewBlue effect applied when rendering to MPEG2 with GPU acceleration on but can do it with V11Pro no problem.

So I am now back to V11 and V12 has been ditched until such times as they sort the problems out. BTW NewBlue says it is a Vegas problem and Vegas says its a NewBlue problem. Lol.

Having just wasted over £100 on the update on the worst release product Vegas have brought out yet IMO, I am far from happy with V12. I never have had a problem with V8,V9,V10 or V11 at this stage of release and I am very happy that it is working for some people. Perhaps it is the case that you havent delved deep enough to discover its failings.

Thats my twopence worth.

[Jeff Harper]

Mervyn, you are correct, I haven't delved into 12 much at all and I cannot appreciate the many new features. I was primarily interested in the color matching, but it has worked pretty poorly for me, it might be I'm not using it correctly. Overall, V12 seems to perform the same for me, and my main issue is that I am in the process of editing dozens of 4 camera weddings shot in 1080 24p so my focus, as I mentioned earlier, is on timeline performance, which has not improved, as far as I can see. It was never advertised as improved in that dept, but I never give up hope.

[Edward Troxel]

Mervyn, I don't believe either party has stated where the cause of any remaining issues resides. I know I'm working with a few people right now trying to resolve any remaining issues between Vegas and Titler. However, I also know there are tons of people using Titler without issue in Vegas so it's a matter of finding whatever the conflict is on those specific systems which is a very daunting task.

[Ian Stark]

Hehehe. We're back to the 'it works for me'/'it doesn't work for me' discussion that seems to go hand in hand with every release of Vegas!

I use Vegas professionally pretty much every day and like many here I have done this since before it was a Sony product (I think I tried a demo of v2 and then dived in properly at v3). I regularly work on projects that have ten, twenty or more tracks of video and audio, often with multiple different formats on the timeline, loads of masks and compositing, 3d alpha tracks, keyframing, cc, the works.

An extreme example is a 2 hour documentary I have just released***: a total of 466 individual items in the project media list (35 of which were used between 10 and 88 times, 101 used 2 to 9 times and rest used just once on the timeline, to give you an idea of the complexity of the project) comprising an eclectic mixture of AVCHD (from Panasonic and Sony cams), HDV (from a Canon), MPG, MP4, JPG, PNG, TIFF, SD AVI (from an XL2), WAV, MOV and PSD and a heap of Vegas generated media. These were all stitched together across 41 tracks with track, media and event level fx including Sony cc, assorted NewBlue fx, Looks and various audio fx. There was extensive use of pan/crop and track motion and some use of 3d alpha and other compositing modes as well as a little use of masking, composite level and velocity envelopes. The only transitions were dissolves and fades. Titling was very simple and was done using the basic Vegas titling tool, and the final credit roll was also plain and created using the Vegas plugin.

I started the project in July 2010 in v10 then eventually moved it into v11 where I quickly got into the habit of saving every minute or so - and always after a complex change - because of the frequent, soul destroying crashes. (It's not a bad habit to get into if you work at the pace I sometimes I need to in order to get things out the door. Ten minutes work lost is ten times worse than one minute, eh? I still do it in v12).

I rendered the master project in v11 (without hitch, thankfully) but I was recently asked to produce a shorter (one hour) version for a showing at an RAF event. I thought I'd give it a whirl in v12. I am delighted to report that Vegas did not crash once during an estimated 6 to 8 hours of editing. That compares with, I guess, at least three or four major crashes per hour in v11. My hardware is exactly the same as it was when I used v11. Rendering was naturally quicker as the project was shorter, so no evidence of either improvement or degradation there.

In addition, I have done (admittedly very simplistic) tests in v12 on many of the NewBlue plugins and some of their transitions (I'm not a fan of fancy transitions so was less inclined to test them); the same with BCC8, Neat Video and Magic Bullet Looks. Performance (for me) appears to be at least on a par with v11 and stability worries (again, for me) are simply not an issue any more - including with the latest build of Titler Pro v2. I do still get the 'Vegas Pro has stopped working message' occasionally, but this is only when I exit Vegas, never during the editing session. The minor annoyance with this is that recent file lists are lost, as are any system preference changes made during that session.

I haven't explored every single new feature, but I believe I have put v12 through its paces. I'm confident enough to start all new commissioned productions with v12 now. I could not say that about v11 (until the very last build, which did improve things noticeably).

Please understand, I'm not gloating about my success with v12 or trying to suggest that because it worked well for me it should work well for everyone. I'm just trying to say that for me at least, Vegas 12 is a breath of fresh air and has done a lot to restore my shaky faith in the product. YM(clearly)MV.

*** Classic Machine Films - go on, you know you want to ;-)

[Mervyn Keys]

Jeff - Colour Match actually does work for me and is rather good I dont mind saying. Except if you Colour Match an event and then split it, the first sub-event will be colour matched but the second sub-event will be blacked i.e. completely black. Even if you remove the sub-events colour match, copy the first sub-event and paste attributes to the second sub-event the second will still be black. The work around is to split the event before applying the colour match to the first sub-event and then copy and paste to the second sub-event. Hope you understand this!

Edward - it was suggested by someone on the Sony Creative Forum that I roll back to an older AMD/ATI graphic driver that would enable renders of NB effects in both V11 and V12. Haven't had the heart or time to try this as it would be a matter of trial and error.
BTW - does anybody know of a link to old versions of AMD/ATI drivers?

[Edward Troxel]

You can get the older drivers off of ATI/AMDs website.

I honestly don't know what version is "most stable".