I don’t understand why Sony would need to develop technology to import video that can already be imported by all the other programs that I have on my machine. I have tried the FourCC trick with some AVI files and it was working with a fair degree of success, but now I am seeing AVI files that it will not work on and many of them now have audio that can’t be imported into Vegas (once again, no problem at all with any other video application that I have).

I talked with someone in customer service a while back (not too long after I purchased Vegas) about this issue and I was told in no uncertain terms: “Vegas is not a hobbyist program – end of question.” The person I spoke with seemed to be very annoyed, as if he has heard the same question over and over and has to repeat the same unsatisfactory answer each time.

Sony has probably made a business decision to ignore “hobbyists” like me because overall they are a minority. Even I realize that most people who do the type and quantity of editng I do probably don’t purchase Vegas but rather use MovieMaker or whatever shareware, or demo or ‘lite’ versions of pro software they can find.

The thing that really annoys me though, is that they do make a half-hearted effort to support these different formats. For example, it says right on the web site that Vegas does not offically support DivX. But everyone knows that DivX does work (occasionally) with Vegas. And if you ask customer support about it they repeat the stock answer.

What would really be nice is if their were a definitive answer to the problem of not being able to import video and audio. Right now, I get the “stream attributes could not be determined” message, annoyed customer support reps and “that’s just the way it is” on the forum.

(Don’t interpret that last sentence as a complaint about the many helpful people here. It may be more accurate to say that I recognize many Vegas users are frustrated too and are resigned to these problems).

I don’t understand why Sony would need to develop technology to import video that can already be imported by all the other programs that I have on my machine.

Google around for the terms "DirectShow" and "Video for Windows." I don't entirely understand the implications, but maybe you will. Bottom line is that Vegas is designed around the VfW interface, while most of the codecs you're having trouble with are encoded for DirectShow.

Try ffdshow. You don't have to do anything with it; just install it. Once I did, I was able to open up several more codecs in Vegas.

Rob

Rob is correct; Vegas is designed for VFW. No one at Sony "decided" to make it difficult to open media of certain codecs; certain codecs decided to develop along one road while Vegas is on another. Is this an issue? Sometimes.
If Vegas were DirectShow vs VFW, it would open some doors while yet creating other potential issues. Each offers benefits, each has challenges.
It's not about "hobbyist vs professional;" I'm surprised someone in tech support would say that it is. It's about the development path Vegas has been on since it's beginnings.

Now it makes a bit more sense, but it sounds like very bad news to me. Video For Windows was Microsoft’s first attempt at integrating video support into its operating systems. It had its origins in 16 bit Windows (3.0) and has been obsolete for ten years or so having been replaced by DirectShow (and ActiveMove in between).

Although I am a professional software developer, the complexities of some of the technologies that I am not directly involved with are sometimes mind-boggling. The documentation for DirectShow may as well be written in Chinese as far as I am concerned. If my company were to decide that DirectShow needed to be part of our applications, I would need to invest some serious time and effort to get up to speed.

I can assure you that a customer service rep did report to me essentially what I told you. It’s possible that he did not use the exact term “hobbyist” but maybe said something like “Look, Vegas is a professional video editing application. it is intended to work with DV and not all of these various codecs that are available.” My interpretation of his words (and attitude) was that it’s not intended for hobbyists and they are tired of hearing the complaints.

The reason I say that this is bad news (at least for me) is that it has been my experience as a long time professional software developer that when an established product ignores changes to the platform that it runs on continues to use an obsolete technology that it is in for a rough road ahead. What Vegas does have going for it is that there is no question that it is a first-rate video production and editing tool, and the fact that uses the obsolete Video For Windows is not an issue for most users.

But in the three years that I have been using Vegas, the problem is getting worse. As I have already mentioned, I am finding more and more videos where the video stream can’t be fixed and the audio is not readable. I don’t think that I implied that Sony made an intentional dedication to make Vegas difficult to use for me. What I had in mind is that they made a decision to stay with Video For Windows and live with the implication that a minority of users like me would experience problems for which there are no work-arounds. And that decision is more understandable in the light of the VFW/DirectShow information that I have just learned.

It must be difficult to make a decision like that. I can easily imagine the meetings and discussions that must have taken place between management and developers over the question of migrating Vegas from Video For Windows to DirectShow. That would be a huge undertaking to say the least. I just hope they made the right decision. For me, an admitted hobbyist, I find myself using other editors out of necessity more often now and wonder how long it will be before I won’t be able to use Vegas at all.