Sony Vegas Pro 9 is now available for trial downloads

Sony Vegas Pro 9 is now available for a 30-day trial download.
One disappointment evident from a quick look is that the maximum
exportable data rate for AVCHD files is still 16 Mbps - and most
AVCHD cameras shoot "lowly" 17 Mbps files, and the better ones
can shoot at a 24 Mbps data rate. Unless I'm missing something,
Vegas doesn't look like a good program to use for editing AVCHD
(Corel's latest, VideoStudio Pro X2, may be able to handle the higher
data rate files - but I don't know if it can use "Smart Rendering" with
them, a VERY useful feature present in both Vegas and VideoStudio
when editing HDV...).
I guess I will stick with Vegas Pro 8C for now. It works well for
me with HDV, Premiere is not very good with HDV, and I dislike
working with VideoStudio due to its interface - and AVCHD is yet
another can of worms I don't wish to deal with now...
--DR

 

Not true !

 

'Tis too! Nyahhhh! 8^)
See my posts below for more on this limitation of Vegas Pro 9 when
handling 24 Mbps AVCHD files...
--DR

 

David,

Like each and every program ever released for editing which offers "smart
rendering", Vegas 9 only can do so when frames do not change.

It doesn't take Albert Einstein to understand that when frames change, the
frames need to be re-rendered.

And yes, it is indeed true, that Vegas 9, when forced to re-render, does not
(yet) have the ability to render to a 24 Mbit/sec format.

This is NOT what you said however, and your statement that "the maximum
exportable data rate for AVCHD files is still 16 Mbps..." is very misleading
and shows a very incomplete understanding.

Just as your statement suggesting that Vegas does not handle AVCHD properly
or smoothly.

I have older machines here in my lab which cannot handle HDV properly. I
have never made the statement that "Vegas can't handle HDV properly or
smoothly" since they fail to run well on my older Pentiums.

You bring an unusual mix of misleading and erroneous comments to the
discussion of AVCHD, and I for one find it revolting to read them and assume
others will take them seriously.

I did indeed plonk you on my personal machine, but saw your reply to my post
and then your earlier, factual trainwreck post concerning Vegas 9 when
viewing this newsgroup from one of my student machines. I am not seeing your
posts otherwise, and always regret it when I do.

With what I can assume is only the very best of intentions, you somehow
manage to mangle AVCHD facts and opinions into quite a mish-mash.

Had I only read your original post, I and others would be led to believe
that Vegas 9 does not handle 24 Mbits/sec, does not allow export of 24
Mbits/sec, and does not handle AVCHD well. These three "facts"/opinions were
wrong, are wrong, and no amount of back-pedaling on your part will make them
less wrong.

Smarty

 

ONLY when ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has been changed in ANY of
the footage on the timeline that is exported into a file, and IN THAT CASE
ONLY, Vegas 9 will not only export a 24 Mbps file (High profile), but it
will do it using "Smart Remdering" - but that functionality doesn't appear to
me, at least, to be very useful for editing video. Otherwise, if ANY footage
is changed on the timeline, export of it as 16 Mbps (Main profile) is forced
by the program, not what we want. To confirm this again yesterday, I
took the same 40 second edited stretch of timeline with the material in it
described above, and rather than using a "Ctrl + M" export (limited to
16 Mbps max in the available selections), I used "Render as", and while
there is a 24 Mbps selection choice available, the render time, lack of
use of "Smart Rendering", resulting file size, and appearance of the
resulting file were identical to the 16 Mbps exported file (if it walks like
a duck, and talks like a duck...;-). I also tried exporting the same 40
seconds as a Blu-ray file (30 Bps max, 25 Mbps ave, 25 Mbps min,
2 pass), and that took 2/3 the time it took to export the other two files,
but I could then not import the file into the project for checking it
against the others. As someone pointed out in response to my original
post on the Sony Vegas Forum, "I'm not sure Vegas WILL ever work
at that bit rate. That's HIGH profile avchd (to a max of 24Mb/s) that
Panasonic uses, while Sony has made it pretty clear that they have no
interest in this profile. Sony Cameras operate on MAIN profile avchd
(which has a max bitrate of 17Mb/s) and as can be seen in Vegas the
max setting for avchd is 16Mb/s. I think Sony's philosophy is pretty
clear on this subject (so far anyway) and that is that avchd is strictly a
consumer level format and should be operated at main profile levels."
And another, "You can either throw that (24 Mbps AVCHD) on the
timeline as it is or convert it over to cineform for easier editing if you
need... but you should render that out as mpeg2 at 1920x1080 at a vbr
bitrate of 20/25/30 (there is a blu ray template already made and outputs
a M2V for dvda). You'll only get about 1:45:00 on a blu ray disk but then
the quality will be a hell of a lot better than rendering out as avc at 16Mb/s."
Too bad that Vegas 9 still cannot properly handle 24 Mbps AVCHD...
--DR

 

Well, to confuse the issue further (while trying to clarify it with some simple
tests I was going to suggest...), this morning I took only original 24 Mbps 60i
footage and placed it in a new project. I then tried to duplicate what I had
done yesterday, but I was unable to export using "Smart Rendering" or to
export using "Render as" with the indicated "High profile" set at 24 Mbps (it
maxed out today at 20 Mbps using the custom settings - not 24 Mbps), but
as before, using Ctrl + M, the file could be exported at a maximum data rate
of 16 Mbps even though the profile type was listed as "High". And as before,
a 25 Mbps (ave) Blu-ray file could be made - but then it could not be used
within the project. I think I will give up on this soon... 8^) Or, possibly
"Smarty" will deign to spell out a procedure for us whereby it is possible and
practical to export edited 24 Mbps *AVCHD* files from the Vegas Pro 9
timeline - and it would be nice if this process were to include "Smart
Rendering". I won't hold my breath, though, until it appears...8^)
--DR

 

There's only one place to download the official version and that's the
Sony site.
Downloads from anywhere else may be corrupted in a variety of ways.

Mike

 

Are you logged on as an Administrator?

Smarty

 

Smarty, if he installed a copy that he found "lying by the side of the
road", there's a very good chance that his computer is corrupted/infected.
This is a well-known issue with bootleg copies of Vegas.

Mike

 

"mikekujbida" wrote ...

I have no sympathy for people who download unauthorized/illegal
content (whether software or program material). I think it is street
justice that they get infected. Couldn't happen to a more worthy
pirate.

 

Mike,

I do NOT in any way support piracy or use of software without payment, but I
think this request may be legit and reacted accordingly. To be more
specific, there are several download sites I immediately found for the trial
version of Vegas 9, among them very reputable sources such as Softpedia,
Tucows, PC World, etc. They all offer the trial version or links to the Sony
website for the trial.

This is a trial version of the product. I don't understand the "logic" of
calling it a "bootleg". The trial is freely distributed and requires no
serial number or other keygen, crack, etc.

I might have missed something here, and if so, please clarify. My apologies
if I have somehow enabled a thief to install the trial version, but it was
not my motive here to facilitate anything wrong or illegal whatsoever.

Smarty

 

Samrty, I don't think oyu missed anything.
It never occurred to me to get the demo from anyone other than Sony,
hence my suspicions.
The OP hasn't replied back yet so, until he does, we can't do anything
other than make suggestions that may or may not work.

Mike

 

Thanks for the reply Mike. It's hard to tell what the motives are here, and
the post was especially unpolished both in content as well as format. Guess
we will stand by here and see if any further comments or reply from the OP
occurs.

Smarty

 

I only had to spend a few minutes using it with some HDV footage
before I ran into a very reproducible defect in which Vegas would
become unresponsive (indefinitely). After killing it and restarting
it several times, running into this same symptom via different means,
I decided it is simply not worth its price. Or worth any price, for
that matter. This is on a quad-core 3Ghz xtreme intel cpu with 8GB
ram running 64-bit vista and using a striped RAID-0 array of two
drives, if anyone cares. And all I was doing was putting some clips
in the Trimmer and trying to scan across the junction between 2. I
hadn't even started to think about applying any FX or transitions.

I've tried Premier for SD (DV) but not for HDV yet. I could figure
out how to work it ok. Vegas had some interesting features and some
quirks, but I couldn't get it to work long enough to get a feel for
it. I think I'll try Edius next.

 

"Keith W. Blackwell" wrote ...

Have you tried it on an established and stable OS (like XP?)

And my employer doesn't run Vista on any of its 50,000+ client
systems because of these kinds of problems. We have real business
to conduct. Microsoft can do their own compatibility testing.

 

I didn't realize that. Perhaps I should try the 32-bit Vegas on my
64-bit OS.

Other than this, I have been surprised at how it seems to work reasonably
well. I mean, aside from annoyances like the fact that Explorer will not allow
allow me to rename "saved.eclipseproduct.txt" to ".eclipseproduct" and
it won't let an Administrator perform certain operations like removing
another user's home directory that no process should have open, and various
other "permissions" related stupidity, it seems mostly solid so far. I just
tend to use cygwin for doing tasks that I can't figure out how to do
otherwise. Then again, to be honest, I haven't really done any real work
with this Vista system, come to think of it. :-/ I had planned to run XP
(downgrade from 64-bit Vista), but ... its a long story.

I could do that, but I was hoping to avoid the kind of time it takes
to install a different OS just to "try" Vegas. But that's one
more reason to find the time to try Windows 7, I guess.

 

I seem to recall trying the trial of version 8.something on my
XP laptop a while back, and I gave up on it because it kept
aborting. But not Vegas Pro 9. That laptop isn't fast enough
to deal with editing video, though.