Vegas on a MacBook Pro?

mdopp wrote on 2/21/2014, 2:36 PM

Vegas will run perfectly on an Apple laptop.
You can either use bootcamp to boot native windows, which will give you top performance. Or you can use virtual machines like VM ware fusion or Parallels. This is slightly slower but fully integrated in Mac OS X.
I have tried both and on recent machines and it works very well.

Jay M wrote on 2/21/2014, 2:40 PM

Thanks for the reply. I went ahead and ordered from B&H and they include a copy of Paraells for free. I'll have it next Wednesday.

I think I'll use Vegas to edit, and FCX to color grade and add titles.

~Jay

Terje wrote on 2/21/2014, 4:27 PM

fantastic laptop, in my experience, running video editing software on Parallells or VMWare or other virtualization technology simply isn't fun. Speed hit is an issue. I use Bootcamp.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/21/2014, 5:14 PM

I run Vegas Pro on my MacBook Pro under VMware Fusion and have it integrated into the desktop (note the Vegas Pro icon in the dock). Here is a screen shot:

Fusion also has the ability to run your Bootcamp partition so you can choose to reboot for native speed or boot in Fusion for a quick edit session.

~jr

Pete Siamidis wrote on 2/21/2014, 5:57 PM

I use Vegas Pro 12 with Windows 8.1 on a Mac Air dual core i7 with HD 5000 gpu and 512gb ssd, bootcamp works great on it. The HD5000 gpu on the little Mac Air lets my preview window run very smooth even with "best" setting, color corrector, and sharpen effect on 1920x1080 28mbps footage.

Chienworks wrote on 2/21/2014, 9:38 PM

jr, just curious, but what happens when you click the "full screen" button in the upper right corner? Does Vegas in fact get the full screen, except for the title bar on top?

My experience with Apple GUI's ages ago was that they always try to leave unused space around every window and seem to try to go out of their way to make it difficult for users to productively mak use of all the pixels they've paid for.

I'm pretty sure if i were ever to have to use a Mac, one of the first things i'd do is get rid of that icon bar on the bottom of the screen, permanently.

Jay M wrote on 2/23/2014, 1:22 AM

Many of the new mac apps have a full screen option. It takes,over the screen in the way an app does on an ipad. If you have multiple full screen apps opened, you switch between them by swiping 3 or 4 fingers to the left or right. It's really pretty awesome and quite intuitive.

The icon bar at the bottom really sucks compared to windows. I move mine to the side and make it really small.

Some things on osx are really great and innovative, and others are just plain silly. Overall, I'd say its equal, but different than windows.

~Jay

JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/23/2014, 12:15 PM

> "jr, just curious, but what happens when you click the "full screen" button in the upper right corner? Does Vegas in fact get the full screen, except for the title bar on top?"

Yes, it fills the desktop just like any other Mac application. If you want the entire screen to be filled with just Vegas Pro with to Mac title bar you can switch to "Full Screen" mode. The mode in which a single application is integrated with the Mac desktop is called "Unity" mode. There is also a "Windowed" mode where the Windows Desktop is in a window on the Mac desktop. It's quite flexible.

Last year at NAB 2013 I was teaching a class with Spot on closed captioning in Vegas Pro and I was in full screen mode so all the audience saw was a Windows desktop and Vegas Pro. Someone asked me a question that caused me to swipe left to reveal my Mac desktop and there was a gasp from the audience. They couldn't figure out how I was in Windows one moment and turned my laptop to a Mac in the next. lol

> "My experience with Apple GUI's ages ago was that they always try to leave unused space around every window and seem to try to go out of their way to make it difficult for users to productively mak use of all the pixels they've paid for.

You would love the new OS X then. There is new a feature that makes an application fill the entire screen. No title bar, no dock, nothing but the app. I use Sound Forge for Mac in this mode and it's great. There is nothing on my screen but Sound Forge. See below:

> "I'm pretty sure if i were ever to have to use a Mac, one of the first things i'd do is get rid of that icon bar on the bottom of the screen, permanently."

You can have the task bar auto hide so that it only displays if you move your cursor to the bottom of the screen. This keeps it out of the way until you need it to launch an application.

~jr

Jay M wrote on 2/24/2014, 2:47 PM

Jr,
Let me get this straight... You were doing an actual demo at NAB in VMware?

That's pretty comforting to know. I'd love to work that way. My ideal workflow would be to edit video and audio, as well as sweeten the audio in Vegas, then as a last step use FCPX to color grade, and add titles. Most of the time FCPX will allow the render format I need. When it doesn't, I guess I can use Vegas or buy Compressor.

~Jay

JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/24/2014, 3:13 PM

> "Let me get this straight... You were doing an actual demo at NAB in VMware?"

Yes, using VMware Fusion 6.0, Windows 7 64-bit, Vegas Pro 12.0 with HD footage from the PBS series that I was finishing editor on, demonstrating how we create all our close captioning in Vegas with our VASST Captions Assistant product.

My MacBook Pro is 15-inch, Mid 2012, Intel Core i7 2.3Ghz with 8GB of memory, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics. Which, BTW, also runs FCP X quite smoothly.

No one knew that I wasn't using a Windows laptop until I swiped (oops). ;-)

~jr

Barry W. Hull wrote on 2/24/2014, 6:52 PM

Another one lost to the dark side...

Seems once you go Mac, you never come back.

Laurence wrote on 2/24/2014, 7:05 PM

What is frustrating is that the Mac users who are using either Bootcamp or Parallels are having so much more of a stable Vegas experience than I am. It seems that one of the most compatible Windows machines is ... well, a Mac!

By the way, the new Apple laptops all have multitouch touchpads, which means that even though there is only one button, you can just do a two finger tap for a right mouse click. On the older Macbooks you had to use an akward keyboard and mouse click combination to right click, but now it is quite easy.

Pete Siamidis wrote on 2/24/2014, 7:51 PM

"What is frustrating is that the Mac users who are using either Bootcamp or Parallels are having so much more of a stable Vegas experience than I am. It seems that one of the most compatible Windows machines is ... well, a Mac!"

I haven't had any problems with Vegas Pro in a long time on both my Mac Air which runs Windows 8.1, and I had two desktops before that, one a Sandy Bridge build running Windows 7 and the other a Haswell build running Windows 8.1, the latter still serving as my overnight render box. The last time I had an issue with Vegas Pro was many years ago when I had a generic brand power supply and eventually deduced that sometimes it didn't supply consistent power which would cause Vegas Pro to freak out. Once I replaced that with a quality power supply all my issues went away and I haven't had any since.

Jay M wrote on 2/24/2014, 8:26 PM

[i]"Another one lost to the dark side...

Seems once you go Mac, you never come back."[i]

All you need to do is go to Best Buy and fondle all the PCs, and then a Mac. Even if you were blindfolded you would choose the mac.

Then when you spec them out, the Mac is about the same price for equal specs.

Quad Core i7 laptops are rare, and the Mac is priced about the same as top of the line Asus, Samsung, and Dell machines. Subjectively, the Mac feels well built, where the others don't.

The reason Vegas is stable on a Mac is because Apple uses quality parts. I build my PCs with quality parts and Vegas is about as stable as any other program. PCs that you buy for cheap are made of cheap parts. I'm sure a $3500 HP workstation will be just as stable as home made PC, or a $3500 Mac Pro.

But you are right, once you've lived with a MacBook, other laptops feel like crap.

~Jay

drmathprog wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:05 AM

I think you really need the latest and greatest MacBookPro for good Vegas Pro results.

I have my daughter's hand-me-down mid-2009 MacBookPro (she got a current version i7, but that's another story for another day)

The mid-2009 is duo core with 8 GB, and while Vegas runs within OS X Mavericks via Parallels 9, it is very slow and struggles mightily.

craftech wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:27 AM

Macbook owners are like some sort of cult. They swear that Macs are superior in terms of reliability.

According to Computerworld, the myth is strictly related to market share of which Apple's is small relative to the PC.

For that purported "stability", Mac owners appear happy to put up with higher cost and practices that should completely turn them off like making the laptop batteries practically impossible to replace when they die.

John

Jay M wrote on 2/25/2014, 12:02 PM

John,

If you look around, the Macbooks aren't that much more expensive.

How many PC laptops have quad core i7, 8 gigs of ram, 256gb solid state storage, high resolution screen, and great battery life for under $2000?
How many of those feel as good as a Mac?

When you need REALLY fast storage, or some other specialty video hardware, then Thunderbolt is nice to have,

I would argue that a Macbook Pro is a good value.

~Jay

Pete Siamidis wrote on 2/25/2014, 2:07 PM

"I think you really need the latest and greatest MacBookPro for good Vegas Pro results."

This is true because for video editing it's all about the gpu. The latest Mac Air that I currently use has the HD5000 gpu which is key to it's performance. For comparison, even though my desktop Haswell pc is a quad core i7 running at a much faster clock speed than my dual core i7 Mac Air, it actually runs the Vegas Pro timelime slower! That's because the desktop quad core Haswell i7 is using the inferior HD4600 gpu. My little Mac Air is able to outperform it on the timeline even though it's just a dual core i7, because it's HD5000 gpu is superior. I can literally get realtime playback on the timeline on my Mac Air on a 1920x1080 28mbps source with Vegas Pro set at "full/best/32bit". My desktop Haswell quad core i7 cannot achieve that even overclocked, unless I plug in a separate gpu.

"If you look around, the Macbooks aren't that much more expensive."

This is true as well when you compare like for like. I'm certainly not an Apple fanboy, in fact I don't like OSX at all and far prefer Windows 8.1 to it. Likewise for many years I used to always see Apple hardware as gimped and horribly overpriced. That changed around the time the Sandy Bridge Mac Air's came out. With those they actually had comparable hardware in a nicer package than their competitors. They took that further when they refreshed the Air line with Haswell with the better choice of gpu and great battery life. It's other little things as well like the trackpad works really nice, the keyboard is great and the design of the unit is really nice, it feels solid. Many other laptops out there will cheap out and go with the HD4600 gpu. What I like about the current Mac Air is that Apple went with the HD5000 model, that alone made it the easy pick over most all other laptops out there especially for video editing, and it's all day battery life and easy portability was the icing on the cake. It runs Windows 8.1 perfectly as well so it's so easy to recommend one.

My hope is that at the end of the year Apple will refresh their laptop line with a 4k display and Maxwell gpu, then I'll upgrade to that.

deusx wrote on 2/27/2014, 9:20 AM

>>>If you look around, the Macbooks aren't that much more expensive.<<<

Why do people keep regurgitating this nonsense.

Clevo ( Sager ) laptops. 2.7 ghz i7 quadcore laptop with 770m nVidia card SSD drive + 1TB 7200 rpm secondary drive. Add a 95% NTSC gamut display ( the best you can get, nicer than that retina nonsense ) comes out to just over $2000

Mac specced out about the same comes to almost $3000. That is $1000 more for weaker machine and worse display on a Mac. It is a weaker machine as they list their i7 at 2.6 ghz and their nVidia card is 750.

It's not even close. Please stop the nonsense.

here: https://www.mythlogic.com/configure.php?id=143

These are real laptops at real prices. None of that overpriced Apple, HP or Alienware $hit where you can't even configure anything while paying a $1000 more.

OldSmoke wrote on 2/27/2014, 9:56 AM

I would prefer an Iris Pro GPU rather then a 7xx which we all know doesn't do much for Vegas.

Pete Siamidis wrote on 2/27/2014, 11:57 AM

"Why do people keep regurgitating this nonsense."

Remember you have to compare like for like. Of note from the laptop you linked:

Battery life: Up To 5 Hours
Weight: 6.83 Pounds

Compared to a Macbook Air/Pro the one you linked weighs significantly more and has terrible battery life. I guess it depends on your personal needs, but I would never consider that laptop you linked because it's far too heavy and it's battery life is too limited to be of any real world use to me. I don't consider it a like for like comparison at all.

deusx wrote on 2/27/2014, 1:15 PM

Your mac's battery would die in less than an hour with some serious rendering.

I thought this was supposed to be a professional machine discussion and nobody in their right mind would do any serious work or rendering while on batteries.

Under 7 pounds too heavy? If you have arms like a 5 year old girl, I guess. Pay a $1000 more then for an inferior but lighter laptop.

You do know it's lighter because it's missing 1/2 the parts? Vegas is not the only thing I use mine for and one like yours would not run 1/2 of the programs with that crappy intel GPU. You can get a lighter Clevo with that same HD5200, doesn't even cost a $1000 because that is scraping the bottom of the barrel really. I need a GPU that can work with any 3D app, nle, fusion, anything I throw at it. It's not just Vegas.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/27/2014, 1:29 PM

You could go really lightweight and get a MacBook Air like my daughter. Then, like hers, it might sick up and they'll tell you "can't fix, no parts, buy a new one". A like the true iDiot she is, she did ;-( A bad case of iDiction. Believes the iDvertising iMplicitly.

geoff

Pete Siamidis wrote on 2/27/2014, 2:51 PM

"Your mac's battery would die in less than an hour with some serious rendering. "

I don't do any rendering on it, I do all rendering on a desktop haswell pc that also happens to double as my gaming pc. That's because rendering one of my video shoots tends to take about 8 to 14 hours, so there's no point in tying up a laptop doing that. You don't want to render on a laptop anyways, it will eventually burn out because they aren't designed for that sort of continuous heat load.. I've own countless laptops over the years and yes I've burnt a few out just on rendering, the last one to die being an 18" i7 Hp. I don't do that anymore.

"I thought this was supposed to be a professional machine discussion and nobody in their right mind would do any serious work or rendering while on batteries."

Of course, I use my Mac Air for professional use running all my websites for my business. I need long battery life to be able to work both at home and in a mobile fashion. I do all video editing on my Mac Air on battery wherever I may be at the time, and they are rendered back home overnight on the desktop pc while I continue to use my Mac Air on battery for other things. For me it's the perfect machine to run my business because it's lightweight, has good gpu compute and has great battery life. Your mileage may vary.

"Under 7 pounds too heavy? If you have arms like a 5 year old girl, I guess. Pay a $1000 more then for an inferior but lighter laptop."

Please, skips the insults. Carrying around a 7 pound brick in 2014 is of zero interest to me, sorry. If that works for you then great, but I'll never buy a laptop anymore with that weight, period.

"You do know it's lighter because it's missing 1/2 the parts? Vegas is not the only thing I use mine for and one like yours would not run 1/2 of the programs with that crappy intel GPU. You can get a lighter Clevo with that same HD5200, doesn't even cost a $1000 because that is scraping the bottom of the barrel really. I need a GPU that can work with any 3D app, nle, fusion, anything I throw at it. It's not just Vegas.

Look, I've been buying and using computers since the 70s even owning the original IBM 5150 for many years, I don't need to be lectured on what a computer can do or what it's used for. For purposes of compute the Intel Iris gpu series has more gflops than most NVidia 7 series mobile gpu's do. The NVidia 7 series gpus are faster at gaming related tasks like triangle setup, rops, texture filtering, etc, but those are of no use for compute with programs like Vegas Pro, etc. And as mentioned a laptop with a dead battery is ultimately of no use to me irregardless of what programs it runs. Weight and battery life are critical to my use, I would never even take a second look at a 7 pound brick with 5 hours battery life. Your mileage may vary.