Heath McKnight highlights some of the great new updates and features available with the latest version of Vegas Pro.

• A completely redesigned user interface, streamlining the overall editing experience, from cutting to color grading and audio mixing.
• A centralized, cloud-based place to store content (VEGAS Hub).
• Searchable features (Hub Explorer)
• Access to video and audio content in the cloud (VEGAS Content).
• BRAW (Blackmagic RAW) support.
• A pretty cool, multilingual text-to-speech feature that uses AI to deliver quality voiceovers.
• Color Grading Panel with tools that are intuitive and don’t require a degree, including RGB color curves.
• An improved timeline.

“We’re able to react quickly to what they need and provide features as soon as we have them ready,” said Gary Rebholz, Chief Product Officer, of Vegas Creative Software. “That’s helped customers greatly, and captured the attention of the market in general.”

• Brightness and contrast controls added to the Color Grading Panel, plus Bézier Curve support for OFX keyframe animation; buttons and options have been added to access the Color Grading Panel from the Track, Media and Video Output levels; and overall improvements.
• Improved timeline efficiency, including automatically cropping video clips to match the project’s aspect ratio; project templates for vertical video; render templates in vertical; indicator to ID locked timelines; and the title and text generator can be instantly cropped in the text box.
• ProRes support (4444 XQ, 422 HQ, 4444, 422 Proxy).
• New Effects: Latest OpenFX spec support; GPU acceleration for Scene and Shot selection; a new motion blur effect; and hardware detection can handle multiple GPUs from the same vendor.
• Customized subtitles via Speech to Text; more language support; and Speech to Text can automatically detect the OS language.

McKnight concludes that, “With all of these new features, Vegas Pro 19 positions itself as the perfect companion to streamers and content creators.”

Read the full article here!

Learn more about Magix here!

The VEGAS Pro NLE has been around since 1999, when Sonic Foundry, then Sony Creative Software, developed the software. It gained a passionate following of editors and content creators, and the team aft VEGAS Creative Software (MAGIX) has continued to push the envelope with the editing software. For this review, I worked in version 17 and 18, which was recently announced.

Opening VEGAS Pro was like seeing an old friend. Although I edit with Final Cut Pro X, about 15 years ago, I was introduced to NLE by a colleague of mine, Douglas Spotted Eagle, as we were writing the second edition of his famous HDV book. I enjoyed the UI and versatility of VEGAS, and was able to successfully convince two friends to make it their NLE of choice.

Fast-forward several years, and VEGAS Creative Software has a new home in MAGIX, and fortunately, the great team behind it is still on the cutting-edge of what an NLE can do.

I used a customized Genesis Workstation from Puget Systems for my review of VEGAS Pro. No matter the content creation software you’re using, a powerful system configured for the long haul is important as these apps continue to be refined – and certainly as higher resolutions of video are released. The right system, such as one from Puget, will keep on working without breaking a (virtual) sweat.

VEGAS Pro is optimized for Windows 10, GPU-accelerated, and built for speed. When it comes to any kind of software, be it an NLE, screenwriting app, etc., I want the app to help make my work easier, quicker, and essentially to ‘get out of the way.’ What I mean is, if the NLE struggles with HDR, or it can’t handle Multicam in 6K RAW – even with a powerful system behind it – then the software ‘gets in the way.’

The good news is, VEGAS Pro is fast, doesn’t have issues with multiple tracks of video and audio, scrubbing hi-res clips, and helps me get my work done quicker, so I don’t potentially miss an important deadline.

The software has plenty of features every editor needs, including support for multiple frame rates and video resolutions; color grading; sound editing; effects; nesting timelines; support for LUT exports; and much more.

It’s interesting that you can import projects from other file formats and NLEs, which includes Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut Pro X (and 7), AAF, and more. AAF and and EDL are very successful file formats, but FCPXML tends to be tougher to translate. An editor friend of mine mentioned that DaVinci Resolve is the only NLE that best supports FCPXML.

The key here is not having to rely on other software outside of what VEGAS Post has to offer. It’s much easier to stay within the suite of content creation apps, as opposed to worrying about round-tripping, or exporting and importing files. Plus, VEGAS Pro and VEGAS Post are affordable, while still being a powerful suite of apps.

Among those apps are VEGAS Image and VEGAS Effects, allowing you to handle non-destructive image editing and hundreds of customizable effects.

Vegas Pro 17 Speed Test

VEGAS Pro 17 and the Puget Genesis Workstation are both lightning fast, and can handle pretty much everything I threw at it. But I wanted to test both with some RED . MONSTRO 8K VV footage running at 48 fps.

I dropped the clip onto the timeline, and VEGAS Pro dropped the playback resolution to 2K. But there wasn’t much of a slow down, and rendering was fast, thanks in large part to the Genesis’ amazing GPU, the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti XC GPU with 11GB of VRAM.

I tried the same experiment in Final Cut Pro X and Premiere Pro on an iMac, without even a filter, and the apps really struggled to scrub and playback the footage. The iMac’s Radeon Pro 575X 4 GB GPU struggled with the footage. No doubt a higher end system could handle the RED 8K footage.

VEGAS Pro 18 and VEGAS Post

The company has announced version 18 and an updated VEGAS POST suite of apps, which was developed in conjunction with FXHome.

Here is a quick rundown of some new features and enhancements in VEGAS Pro 18:

• GPU-accelerated video editing, so your system doesn’t slow to a crawl while scrubbing.
• VEGAS Image (updated): Non-destructive image editing.
• VEGAS Effects (updated): Over 800 customizable effects and filters.
• Improved motion tracking.
• SOUND FORGE 14 is included, with its multichannel audio editing.
• VEGAS Hub: Centralized, cloud-based storage for your media.
• VEGAS Prepare: Efficiently organize and tag your media.
• VEGAS Transfer: Moves your mobile device images and video to the cloud.

Conclusion

VEGAS Pro is still a fast NLE that really handled video editing perfectly, even when I added a clip of RED MONSTRO 8K VV R3D footage. And with the new VEGAS Pro 18 and VEGAS POST both available as a purchase, upgrade, or affordable subscription, it’s worth considering the software to edit your next projects.

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Learn more about Magix here!

Redsharknews.com recently posted a great review on Vegas Pro. We’re going to take a look at that article below!

Vegas, an extremely capable NLE that’s been around since 1999, is now owned by Magix. It seems to have found a comfortable and welcoming home with the German company, where it’s being actively developed and supported, after a period of stagnation and uncertainty.

I first came across Vegas very soon after it was released. You may be surprised to know that at first it didn’t support video. That’s an unusual strategy for a video editor, but – back then – it wasn’t a video editor. It was, quite specifically, an a multitrack audio application, and a very good one, I remember, if a little confusingly positioned in the market place because what it definitely wasn’t, was a multitrack version of Sound Forge, Sonic, Foundry’s seminal stereo audio editor.

I’d spent most of the previous years working for companies that sold DAWs, and I’d seen the demise of the hardware-based systems in favour of downloadable audio editors like Cool Edit Pro, which went on to become the basis for Adobe’s Audition.

So here was a very classy-looking multitrack audio editor that didn’t need specialist hardware. It was interesting for that alone. But then, along came Firewire (Sony called it iLink and engineers called it IEEE 1394), which was the first time you could link a digital camera directly to generic computer without a special interface card – although most PCs didn’t come with DV on the motherboards – so you still needed a DV interface.

redsharknews.com

Check out the full article HERE

Learn more about MAGIX Vegas Pro HERE

Workflow improvements in Vegas Pro 17 start with a nested timeline feature that allows products to be organized into smaller sections, allowing users to move from the master timeline into complex nested timelines that can be shared with assistants as separate project files.

Vegas Pro’s newly unified color-grading workflow integrates the software’s grading tools in one panel and supports LUT exports so that color settings can be reused elsewhere, in other clips or in other projects. Vegas Pro 17 also has GPU-based open color I/O processing in the ACES 1.1 color space, with support for HDR grading, scopes, preview and delivery using either HDR10 or HLG.

AVC/HEVC decoding can now run on the GPU for smoother playback from the timeline, and Vegas now supports 8K files, either panned and cropped on the timeline or delivered in full 8K.

A new optical-flow slow-motion effect has been added for interpolating frames in slow-motion footage, and the Warp Flow transition interpolates frames to “morph” from the tail of one clip to the head of the next. Smart Split Edit can be used to hide jump cuts in interviews, and a new planar motion tracking feature now supports tracking and pinning objects that aren’t square with the camera view.

“More than any other release, our users have directed what our team has developed in this version,” said Vegas Product Manager Gary Rebholz in a prepared statement. “They’ve been completely clear about what they wanted to see from the software over the past three years, and their suggestions have made this an incredibly robust and feature-rich release.”

Vegas Pro 17 is available in four different versions. The basic Vegas Pro 17 Edit ($399) has the software’s full feature set; Vegas Pro 17 ($599) adds Boris FX Continuum Lens Flare 3D and Vegas DVD Architect for DVD and Blu-ray authoring; Vegas Pro 17 Suite ($799) brings Steinberg SpectraLayers Pro 6 and more Boris FX tools into the mix, and the Vegas Pro 365 subscription offering (from $16.67/month) includes future product updates as well as the Sound Forge Audio Studio 13 audio editing software.

Check out the full article HERE

Learn more about Magix HERE