Vegas Pro 12 Suite? Worth the price?

[Les Nagy]

After receiving an email from Sony for upgrade pricing from Vegas 12 Pro to the Suite version I had a look at the package and I like what I see from their publicity but I am not going to buy until someone has something to say good about this package. With the inclusion of special effects and particle packages and other nice additions, is it any good? Is it just crap software bundled with Vegas that really isn't worth it, especially if I have Adobe CS6 Production Premium now along side my Vegas 12 Pro?

[Mark Watson]

I think they're asking a bit much for the upgrade. I was expecting something more like $200-$300. Having said that, they'll probably get my money because editing takes me way too long and anything that will help cut my time down will be nice. I'm thinking that if they integrated the audio editing as well as it looks, that will help enough right there to make it worthwhile. I don't have any plans to shoot anything in 3D, so that's all worthless for me. I was just about to print out a hard-copy of my Vegas Pro 12 manual, but think I'll hold off another week while I mull this upgrade decision over. I also have Production Premium CS6, but mostly use it for photoshop. (that was an $1,800 impulse buy mistake.) I have to say I have been really impressed with the fact that Sony keeps putting lots of effort into Vegas with no signs of them abandoning it and hopefully none of this cloud nonsense!!!

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Mark Watson

...editing takes me way too long and anything that will help cut my time down will be nice. I'm thinking that if they integrated the audio editing as well as it looks, that will help enough right there to make it worthwhile...

Mark, if you haven't looked at Ultimate-S, Vegas Pro Production Assistant, Excalibur, and the other workflow tools that use the built-in Vegas scripting tools to enhance productivity, you *are* indeed missing out!

I use Excalibur *all* the time. If it wasn't on my systems, I'd buy it again. To all reports, Ultimate-S and Vegas Pro Production Assistant are worthy contenders as well. I think there are 30-day trials on all these products, try them out, they all have slightly different focuses.

But the big money in this suite upgrade is Hitfilm and Sound Forge.

If Vegas is doing all you want for audio, you might not need Sound Forge. Vegas does sound very, very well, and very efficiently, too. Forge is a great audio editor, what used to be called a waveform editor, but I don't reach for it very often. Usually, for audio-only projects. I think CD-Architect is now part of Forge, and that's a great standards-compliant CD-Audio authoring tool. Forge does lots of other good things too... but isn't usually needed in an audio-for-video workflow if you have Vegas.

Hitfilm is a several generations later update of the old shareware AlamDV. Where After Effects does *anything* with moving graphics (limited 3d), Hitfilm started out as a lightsabers, muzzle flashes & explosions product. In other words, popular graphics. But that was a long time ago, and now it's awesome at popular effects, to include really good chroma key, great compositing, more expansive 3d, particle emitter efx, and yes, light sabers and explosions.

I just wanted to make clear that there are two kinds of additions to the native Vegas in this Suite; only the scripted support package actually increases editing efficiency (and there are competitors). Sound Forge and Hitfilm expand on Vegas' capabilities, they don't make it a more efficient editing environment.

[Kevin Duffey]

Seth,

I may post separately on this, but I've been a long time adobe user and especially love the ability to have some fun with AE and using Video Copilot's tutorials. However, it's quite involved and I haven't come close to really using all the more advanced capabilities of AE. I just saw the Vegas 12 bundle with Hitfilm Ultimate and SoundForge (my fav audio editor).

I am wondering, how good is Hitfilm compared to AE CS6? Are there any tv/movie shops using it for actual production work? Or is it more of a hobbyist/fun app with some potential? Looking at the videos of what it does, it looks fantastic, and appears to be easier to use.

With the Adobe cloud stuff happening, I only use about 1/4 the apps it offers, so I don't want to pay $50 a month for all of them. But Vegas Pro 12 (or is it Studio) with that full bundle looks interesting.

I don't know for sure, but I believe Soundforge is better than Adobe Audition?

HitFilm is an easier/not as full featured AE?

Vegas.. how does it compare to Adobe Premiere? Does it support adjustment layers, audio syncing, and DNxHD, AVCHD, ProRes and h264, RED RAW, CineDNG formats? Does it use a separate encoder (e.g. Media Encoder) and/or can you set up a farm to render with?

Thanks

[Seth Bloombaum]

Wish I had more direct experience to share, but here goes:

Originally Posted by Kevin Duffey

...I am wondering, how good is Hitfilm compared to AE CS6? Are there any tv/movie shops using it for actual production work? Or is it more of a hobbyist/fun app with some potential? Looking at the videos of what it does, it looks fantastic, and appears to be easier to use...

Hitfilm is really, really good for commonly used efx, especially among the various indie communities. AE is the industry standard. I'd have to ask myself, can I be an island? Like so many decisions regarding production tools and post environments, the people you'll be collaborating with, or working for, or hiring many times make the decisions, and usually in favor of industry standards.

For example, when I was looking at dSLR technology I really liked the Panasonic GH2, it was my first choice. However, I went with a Canon 60D because the shooters I work with most often use Canon for dSLR, and, I could easily rent additional cams or any lens I wanted for $30/day. I decided not to be an island, needed to be part of the community of Canon users.

...With the Adobe cloud stuff happening, I only use about 1/4 the apps it offers, so I don't want to pay $50 a month for all of them. But Vegas Pro 12 (or is it Studio) with that full bundle looks interesting.

I don't know for sure, but I believe Soundforge is better than Adobe Audition?

HitFilm is an easier/not as full featured AE?...

There's some recent Adobe announcements, apparently they are going even more towards lease software from the cloud, but may there will be a less-than-the-full-suite offering? I haven't kept up.

It's Vegas Pro 12 Suite. Vegas Studio is a lower-priced NLE with a fixed number of tracks and no scripting, but very good for about $100, plus or minus, depending on the exact edition.

If you've looked at Audition, Forge is equivalent to the waveform editing tab in Audition, and Vegas is natively equivalent to the multitrack editing tab in Audition. I teach a post-sound class on Audition, it's quite good, but Vegas Pro is quite good, too, and with the addition of Sound Forge is equivalent or arguably better than Audition.

What I like most about sound in Vegas is... that it's in the NLE! It's so capable, I rarely go out of Vegas for sound.

IMHO yes, "HitFilm is an easier/not as full featured AE". Do you just need to do some common efx? Hitfilm. Do you need to work on skills for employment, or exchange motion graphics project elements with others? AE.

...Vegas.. how does it compare to Adobe Premiere? Does it support adjustment layers, audio syncing, and DNxHD, AVCHD, ProRes and h264, RED RAW, CineDNG formats? Does it use a separate encoder (e.g. Media Encoder) and/or can you set up a farm to render with?

In Vegas:
Adjustment Layers - not as such, but, it has a very flexible multi-level approach to audio and video filters. They may be applied at the event (a clip on the timeline), track, bus, program/master, or media bin levels. Since there are no "sequences" in Vegas as in Premiere, an effect applied at the program level is equivalent to applying an effect on a Premiere Adjustment layer.

DNxHD and ProRes playback - yes, but through QT for Windows decoding, it's a little slower than one would like. (free codec pack from AVID required for DNxHD.) You can render to DNxHD, but not to ProRes. Maybe someday, that depends on Apple. There are several Mac/PC intermediate codecs people are using, including Sony MXF, Lagarith, Cineform...

AVCHD and h264 - yes, with recent improvements in decoding speed.

Red RAW and CineDNG - don't know, that's not my world, but the answers are out there!

Adobe Media Encoder is a very capable encoder, and Sony does not provide an equivalent free-standing encoder. Of course there are third-party solutions, and for the current favorite online distributions, the excellent freeware Handbrake is quite popular. Natively, Sony provides their own and MainConcept mp4/AVC/h264 encoding, which is not bad.

It used to be that you could set up a Vegas render farm, but I didn't do it, it was troublesome for many, and I've not heard much about it for a couple years. Don't know if Sony quietly dropped it.

A couple questions you didn't ask...
Sony is new to the hardware acceleration game. It works for some. Premiere's Mercury Playback engine is excellent and broadly compatible. Good Vegas preview performance with highly compressed camera codecs and good render speed depend mostly on processor speed and cores. With modern camera codecs a mid-range or better i7 processor and 12GB of RAM are really needed for a pro-level of editing.

OTOH, Vegas will work on a laptop with reduced preview resolution quite nicely. Premiere also has reduced preview resolutions available...

Need to do negative matching, or other high-end integration in film workflows? Skip Vegas.

Which brings me back to: I can be an island for post, and I find Vegas to be very, very fast. I've spent time in FCP7 and work in Premiere at the college, but always choose Vegas when I have a choice. I steer students who are working on their employable skills to Premiere.

[Mark Watson]

Seth,

Thanks for all that info. I have steered clear of the scripting tools, sounded like programming to me. I haven't heard of Excalibur nor Ultimate-S, so I'll be looking into all those programs. I've been a Vegas Pro user since version 8 and hear all the time about the great audio editing, but I swear I don't see what they're all talking about. I see some very basic levels setting tools and that's it. I have been using Audiology or more recently Audition to do my audio editing in. If SoundForge is what people are referring to, then that would be a separate program to Vegas and not included in any of the versions (8, 11, 12) that I've used. If it's included in this latest upgrade, then count me in. Thanks again for all that info. Sounds like a good time to take the plunge into scripting and see what it's all about...

Mark

[Les Nagy]

Hmmm, still can't make up my mind. I also go for Vegas when I want to get things done fast and having the extra tools sounds really good. The cloud subscription thing with Adobe is really putting me off too.

Thanks for the discussion.

[Les Nagy]

Well I didn't need to think anymore. I was just revisiting the threads on the recent move by Adobe to their "Creative Cloud" business model. Not hard to vote with my wallet this time. Sony Vegas Pro Suite is trickling onto my NAS right now. Adobe: Do you miss my money yet?

[Nicholas de Kock]

I upgraded to Vegas Pro 12 when it was released but I still use 11 as 12 keeps crashing on my PC. I'm also a subscriber to Adobe Cloud & that subscriptions is the best thing I've ever done. I believe if you are an editor getting paid for your work there is just no way that the Adobe Suite can be ignored. I still edit in Vegas because of the available scripting tools at my disposal but I do everything else in Adobe. Save your money & steer clear of the Vegas Pro 12 Suite. Vegas Pro is about the only good thing from Sony & even then it's not stable.

[Kevin Duffey]

Interesting replies.

If you had to pay $50 for SoundForge or use Audacity, for most film/music work, would Audacity cut it? I use Audacity right now as it's easy to use for the most part, although I do miss some FX.

I am well versed in Adobe's Premiere timeline, although not a pro. I am a little worried about using Sony as it seems to be a step backwards. However, I am really put off by the $50 a month for ALL or nothing. $20 a month for one app doesn't make sense at all to me, because unless you are only doing photoshop or lightroom, pretty much any workflow you do be it sound, photos or video is going to require at least two if not three apps out of the suite. Also, I think the $50 is for previous owners and for brand new owners it would be $75 a month? I just can't justify that cost as a hobbyist. At least not until I make a lot more money.

So, AE is fun, does a lot, but until it supports OpenCL, my Ati W5000 workstation card is useless. I hear the soon to be coming next version of Adobe's products will incorporate OpenCL and from ATI's own site, pre-testing has shown OpenCL cards to be about 20% faster than CUDA based cards.. so I am hoping that is the case, but without the option to buy the packages, and not wanting to put out $50 a month.. not sure what I'll do. I really hope Adobe adds a bit more customized package pricing than all or nothing. Still, the $600 a year is not that bad if they actually do make frequent updates and new features year round. If they are truly moving away from the once a year refresh and keep it coming every couple months with bug fixes, useful features, etc.. it would be worth it.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Nicholas de Kock

I upgraded to Vegas Pro 12 when it was released but I still use 11 as 12 keeps crashing on my PC...

For me, Vegas Pro 12 is very stable, more so than 11. Forum moderator Edward Troxel, who also does some tech support work for Vegas extensions, has written about his suspicion that some mobo/gpu/driver configurations are just not stable with Vegas, or maybe dotnet, a microsoft technology that Vegas uses.

This has been endlessly frustrating to some, and Vegas' spotty GPU acceleration support hasn't made any friends. For a new user I think the answer is simple; download the trial and put it through its paces. Works fine for most, but as Nicholas will tell you, what matters most is how it works for you!

...I believe if you are an editor getting paid for your work there is just no way that the Adobe Suite can be ignored...

Agreed. There's an expectation that an editor will also do motion graphics and in most cases final sound, too. The expectations for motion graphics are AE all the way, and Premiere and Audition are certainly good software. We are training students for employable skills at the college I teach at, today that means Adobe in our region of the U.S. Other regions and markets are sometimes different, especially for AVID.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Kevin I'm currently on the NAB special of $29/month which is a really good deal but I do agree that $50 is a little expensive especially in a 3rd world country such as South Africa where I live. I do feel Adobe needs to adjust their prices according to market dynamics, for example we earn about half what our US peers would earn doing the same work simply because our economy is weaker making it harder for us to pay the same prices.

All that said I do enjoy the free spirited feel that Vegas offers & haven't been able to force myself to use Premiere hence I do all my NLE editing in Vegas & export to a lossless codec for processing with Adobe Media Encoder, After Effects & Encore. As a NLE I think Vegas has nailed it if only it offered a more stable platform (in my case at least). All the other little add-ons like DVD Architect, etc doesn't hold a candle to what Adobe offers & I'd advice any editor to look at Adobe for authoring dvds/blu-rays, menu's, motion graphics & encoding. Maybe one day I'll stomach the Premiere workflow but for now Vegas Pro is still my preferred NLE editor.

[Mark Watson]

A bit of trivia. Something that's been mentioned with the Adobe CC is its need to phone home to verify your subscription status, necessitating an internet connection to remain functional. Though not nearly as extreme, I found that when I've been operating without a net for over a month, when I try to open Vegas, it will ask me to verify my serial number before opening. The first time it did that I was in the middle of nowhere and no idea what the serial number was. Very maddening. Now of course I keep all serial numbers close at hand when travelling.
It happened a couple more times since, and as long as I enter the s/n, all is well again, don't need a connection.

Mark

[Edward Troxel]

Mark, I have Vegas Pro 12 installed on two machines that are never connected to the internet. These have never asked me to confirm a serial number.

[Joe Mizera]

A couple of the earlier posts seem to confirm my suspicion that 12 is not the way to go for me. While 11 does have some welcome improvements over earlier versions, it just seems to be falling too far behind. There was a time when Premiere looked pretty sad next to Vegas. I've not even been in front of the Adobe editor in years, but the impression I have is that it may indeed be the way to go.

Rendering times on mp4 with 11 are just unacceptable. GPU implementation is poor to none, and I get the impression that it's not all that much better on 12? Even smaller things, like the ability to dim the interface, rather than being stuck in the default neutral gray. Beats the old light gray I suppose.

I do dread facing re-installation to a 64 bit version of Windows. I'm currently on a 32 bit install, and I fear what might break. I get the impression that 64 bit is the way things are going either way though.

So, is Adobe now king of the PC editors? No need to look at Avid, or the other players in this range?