Not because of the schemes; I'm mentioning it because I didn't know DVDA is going to be included in the Vegas Pro 8 package. I've been using v 7.0 ever since it came with my Sony HVR-V1; it didn't include DVDA. When I do the upgrade, will I get DVDA, as well?

Or am I missing something?

You, like me will probably have a slightly steeper upgrade price...

Vegas Pro 8 replaces the Vegas+DVD combo offered in the past.

i honestly didn't know you could get V7 w/o DVDA4. i don't remember that being an option from Sony when it was released... did you buy it from someone besides sony? I can't find Vegas 7 alone on B&H's site.

I don't know about other options (and whetert they existed), but Sony Europe has been attaching a free copy of Vegas 7.0 (alone) to every HDV products sold since December 2006; I personally got two licences (one with the V1E camera, one with the DR60 drive).

Hooray for Sony Europe! Now if only the Sony laptop people could get on board.

Yes, you could buy Vegas or Vegas+DVD. I started with Vegas4+DVD.

there's no option for Vegas 7 w/o DVD on the site here or B&H. I belive V7 stopped selling Vegas & DVDA seperatly.

I seem to recall, though my aged memory may be a bit faulty, that starting with version 7 sometimes Vegas was available both ways in some markets and sometimes only Vegas+DVD. I think i remember hearing that academic markets couldn't get Vegas only. I also seem to remember hearing that the availability of just Vegas alone got sparser and sparser as time went on.

Sony is just copying what other companies are doing. For instance, Adobe used to sell Premiere Pro and Encore seperately, now when you buy Premiere CS3, you get them both -- they don't sell Encore seperately anymore. Seems like most companies are moving towards the "all in one" type of package.

Speaking of copying what others are doing. Did everyone notice the new Adobe Audition finally got around to copying Vegas with the auto fade feature where pushing an event into another automatically creates a fade. Sometimes I forget that's not a widespread feature in the rest of the world.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

"You, like me will probably have a slightly steeper upgrade price..."

I haven't been around here all that long, but with version 7 at least the upgrade price to Vegas+DVD 7 was the same whether you were upgrading from Vegas alone or from Vegas+DVD. For that matter, the price was the same no matter how old your Vegas was -- even way back to the original "Vegas Pro".

NOTICE: This link is the "old" upgrade link for Vegas+DVD7 -- Not the upgrade for VPro8! (So don't get all excited...)
https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/shopping/item.asp?PID=416&cid=111&disp=1

I was one of the people who bought the $99 Vegas 6 only disc from B&H, and then upgraded a day or two later to Vegas+DVD 7 for another $150 (just after it came out). Bought into Vegas+DVD for only $250 -- which is a lot of money to me for simple home hobbiest use, but still an outstanding deal.

Tim L

I just hope they've fixed the bugs,
anyone tested the 16:9 PAL menus?

And yes some better themes are long overdue, even iDVD manages to output something simple that looks professional.

Bob.

Adding a few dozen generic but professional looking themes would be extremely useful. Sometimes I just want to quickly hand someone a DVD without spending an hour designing the menu.

I hope the new templates aren't more wedding, birthday, and business themes that I find pretty much useless.

~Jay

Personally, I feel the upgrade to V8 Pro just isn't worth it.

DVDA offers nothing new (44 templates?!) I wanted HD authoring, but that's left to the Vegas timeline, but all you can do is a single movie disk with no menus.

And what does Vegas offer - new titler, smart render, new audio mixer. Not much for the type of work I do. Smart render might be worth it, but until I see the quality of the re-rendered parts, I'll be holding off upgrading...

Every smart rendering application I've used has made a hash of the parts that need to be re-rendered. Half a second before any transition the quality of the video changes, making it quite clear that something is about to happen.

It feels that Sony is asking money for old rope, ties up with a new ribbon.

Worley

On worth of upgrade...

From relatively recent posts here and research elsewhere on what it means, I believe that the 32-bit float processing alone is worth the upgrade. Added to the tiler.

Audio editing for me isn't an issue for I use Steinberg Cubase SX which is far more sophisticated then what's in Vegas (as it should be since SX a pro audio app :)

I have Vegas 6, so for the above reasons and others (finally going to get an HD cam), upgrading will be worth it for me. I still haven't made a DVD or ever used Architect, in fact, never installed it. Yup, I'm way behind the curve on this aspect of Vegas compared to you all.

I'll be happy with whatever V-8 gives me.

Worley,

I can't help but wonder what you would have considered to be new rope with new ribbons?

New Rope with New Ribbons...

Ability to import layered psd files, and place those layers on separate tracks for editing.

Rudimentary integration with compositing programs such as After Effects, and other editors such as FCP and Premiere Pro.


HD authoring for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray from within DVDA

A better Pro package that would incorporate Vegas, DVDA, and Soundforge

I love Vegas, but don't feel that 8 offers quite enough to entice me. If I had version 6, then probably I would upgrade, but I have 7, and there isn't - for me - a feature compelling enough to entice me.

What will entice me, is the 64-bit version, especially if the upgrade price is not much different from the 32 bit upgrade deal.

64-bit would hit the spot! And we know it's on its way...

Can someone explain to an idiot like me what is so great about this 64bit thing?
Even M$ have never seen much point to it outside application servers and I still can't see how it helps an NLE. Yeah, I know about being able to address more RAM but here's my problem with that. The video ain't in RAM (unless I can afford a friggin lot of it, like 100GBs) and it don't stay in RAM either. On top of that unless using ECC RAM it isn't the most reliable place to have data sitting around.

Bob.

There seems to be a common misconception that 64 bit processing is twice as fast as 32 bit processing. In some cases that is true. However, when accessing data that is smaller than 33 bits it doesn't really help much at all. Most video is 24 or 32 bits. So, a 64 bit processor can grab twice as much video data as a 32 bit processor. Then it has to split it in two and operate on each half separately resulting in two operations. A 32 bit processor grabs half what a 64 bit processor does and operates on that data resulting in one operation.

Hmmmmm. 2 operations to process 2 pieces of data vs. 1 operation to process 1 piece of data. Can't say as i see any particular difference there.

I recently tried the Vegas+DVDA combo on a Vista machine. Vegas ran smooth, but DVDA was a "no go". DVDA had the same "hang-up" problems reported by many other users.

With all the talk of being Vista compatible, can we be reasonably assured that DVDA will work properly on a Vista OS.

Also, is there a difference in using Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. I'm anxious to get V8...but I don't want to be dissapointed because of my setup.

Thanks!

The 32bit/64bit processing budget isn't particularly about the size of the pipe or the lane, IMHO.

The databus has been 64bits wide on the x86 architecture since the first Pentium anyway. The improvers come with the arithmetic and SIMD streaming sections, with the architects behind the software having an appreciation for how to use these function. 32bit CPUs have to do more work on rough paper before they can get an answer. It is really just icing on the cake and an improved CPU and OS support. The OS having support to go beyond 2,3 and 4GB is the only attraction for me. I'm not dealing with a timeline full of TGA or PNG, so I don't feel that I need to fix this right now. Now memory bandwidth, I'd like to fix that and have a CPU that has a FSB or onboard memory controller that can hit 15 or 20GBytes/sec.

Like it was when the 386 replaced the 286 and when the 133MHz PIII processors replaced the 66 and 100MHz CPUs. Also with Directx10, the benefits won't be immediate with the next gen of computing. So it doesn't pay to chase them for a while. Although, if you like your ego to be fed by owning the latest or next thing, go for it.

I think RAM is a safe place personally. When I have a fault cause by RAM hardware, I swap the chip. Crashes are usually caused by bad programming and that affects network, non-volatile storage and main memory (RAM). Then again, I'm on a UPS in an area of the country that rarely suffers a power problem.

As for Vegas, I've generally upgraded every other version. That has worked for me. Or put another way, every 18months minimum. I do usually evaluate the new software immediately. I did buy Vegas7 but for me, Float32 is probably enough to encourage the next purchase and the titler might help me justify if the price is high and remains high even a week after launch.

Creating HD-DVD or BD doesn't worry me unduly as when I can be interested enough to buy a burner (for folks that can't take the footage on a hard drive or DVDX3) the options at $80-$100 seem to be quite capable enough. Certainly beyond the lip service to BD that Sony have planned. Again, HD brings so many production costs that I don't think that the customer will be prepared to pay. I'm not sure if I want to do all that AND spend good amounts of time extra that is really demanded for creating an HD presentable piece. I'm not likely to recuperate my costs unless I charge or indicate charges in the order of triple the normal project costs. To then deliver an HD + SD version, IMHO. There are so many uncertainties about these new formats from a homebrew creation perspective. It seems odd when HD is about convergence between the world of video and computing.

It is a pity the guys at Madison can't pop out the downloadable/trial release just a smidgen early. Then we can worry about just the formality of paying for it when the morning comes!