Sony NAB Announcement 10d and more

HyperMedia wrote on 4/11/2011, 8:40 AM

http://blastmagazine.com/the-magazine/technology/tech-news/computers/sony-creative-to-announce-groundbreaking-film-and-sound-software-at-2011-nab-show/

Independent film production took another giant step forward this week at the National Association of Broadcasters Show, with a pair of software debuts from Sony Creative Software sure to make waves in both the professional and consumer markets.

In the area of film editing, Sony’s debuted Vegas Pro 10.0d, an innovative program that boasts extensive post-production capabilities. An update to the already successful Vegas Pro 10 series, the non-linear video editing software expands into the burgeoning fields of 3D film and Blu-ray disc storage.

“The new enhancements in Vegas Pro 10.0d … provide cutting edge tools that equip industry professionals with improved capabilities to produce quality work at a greater efficiency,” said Dave Chaimson, vice president of global marketing for Sony Creative Software, in a press release Monday. These improvements include streamlined closed captioning embedding, as well as support for Advanced Micro Device (AMD) graphic chipsets – an upgrade that allows for faster project rendering. Additionally, the software features a new burning capability that allows for complete high-quality 3D Blu-ray film creation.

Vegas 10.0d has adopted Open Computing Language (OpenCL) – a cross-platform programming framework that has become an industry standard in recent years – a decision that Manju Hegde, the corporate vice president of the AMD Fusion Experience Program, sees as “key to advancing innovation, helping creative professionals to rely on and fully leverage available computing power on a common industry platform to bring inspiration to reality.”

Registered Vegas Pro 10 users can enjoy the 10.0d upgrade, which also includes improved audio track workflow and support for 3D Multiview Video Coding (MVC) and Multi Picture Object (MPO) file formats, free of charge starting in late April. The full suite will retail with a suggested price of $699.95.

On the sound-editing front, Sony Creative announced a high-quality sound effect series developed in partnership with acclaimed production studio The Detroit Chop Shop. The series spans a range of genres – from Action to Nature, from Transportation to Explosions & Impacts – in 10 volumes. Delivered in broadcast standard 24-bit/48 kHz sound, the effects are encoded with metadata, allowing for full searchability in standard search engines like Google and Bing.

Already an industry standard, The Detroit Chop Shop’s partnership with Sony Creative will “ensure parity for producers working with high-impact sound in the broadcast and film industries,” said Chaimson. The series is now available, retailing for $99.95 for individual titles or $799.95 for all 10 volumes.

Both products will be available for download from www.sonycreativesoftware.com or for purchase at retailers worldwide.

Comments

Jumping Rascal wrote on 4/11/2011, 12:10 PM

The AMD clipset support (as an owner of an ATI Radeon card, hopefully AMD means ATI support too since it is the same company) is potentially a great addition. I plan to find out just how great when I compare the rendering time for one of my HD projects before and after installing the AMD element. Let's hope that the AMD support doesn't introduct any bugs into what essentially seems to be a stable platform.

PLS wrote on 4/11/2011, 12:18 PM

I hope this doesn't mean that they are dumping Nvidia Cuda acceleration support... not that it currently works anyway. But I was hoping they would fix it.

amendegw wrote on 4/11/2011, 1:16 PM

"Vegas 10.0d has adopted Open Computing Language (OpenCL)..."

That's the interesting statement to me. As I understand it, OpenCL is a language that is very good at utilizing massively parallel processing. It is also supported by the ATI & nVidia GPUs.

So... I wonder whether that statement means that the developers are using OpenCL only for the GPU render acceleration code? Or maybe it can be used for Preview acceleration?

Oh, by the way, did I mention OpenCL was developed by Apple? Hmmmm.

...Jerry

Former user wrote on 4/11/2011, 1:46 PM

From the horse's mouth:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/news/ShowRelease.asp?ReleaseID=748&CatID=0

reberclark wrote on 4/11/2011, 1:51 PM

I've installed OpenCL from AMD for my Radeon HD5800 series card. We'll see how this works when 10d is able to be downloaded.

Jøran Toresen wrote on 4/11/2011, 1:55 PM

You can read more about OpenCL (Open Computing Language) her:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL

Jøran

John_Cline wrote on 4/11/2011, 1:59 PM

I was fully expecting 10.0d support for MVC and MPO 3D file formats. Whenever Sony releases a new format, Vegas always is the first to support it.

What I wasn't expecting was burning 3D Blu-ray from the timeline and the enhanced closed captioning support, both of which are very welcome additions (at least for me.)

AMD (ATI) GPU AVC rendering support has got to be welcome news for ATI users.

I'm really interested to see how they've improved the Track Grouping workflow.

As usual, I'm sure they are some bug fixes in this release, too.

All in all, seems to be a decent free update. Can't wait.

rmack350 wrote on 4/11/2011, 3:26 PM

The first mentions of OpenCL that I can remember on this forum appeared here:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=662400

Rob

winrockpost wrote on 4/11/2011, 3:32 PM

..........As usual, I'm sure they are some bug fixes in this release, too.

well i certainly hope so

ushere wrote on 4/11/2011, 4:04 PM

As usual, I'm sure they are some bug fixes in this release, too.

and hopefully no NEWLY introduced ones....

jwcarney wrote on 4/11/2011, 4:44 PM

OpenCL frees you from a particular Video card, but still, NVidia GPUs outperform AMD on that also, unless AMD has greatly improved their drivers. This fits right in with OpenFX, the 2 together should make plug-in development very interesting.

Good move on Sonys' part.

farss wrote on 4/11/2011, 5:50 PM

So the release cycle is paid public beta released at IBC and RTM released at NAB :)

Seems to me given the dramas with 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0a the initial public release should be restricted to upgrades only. Keep the full price version for new users off the open market until the warts are ironed out. That way new users get a known stable version and should be pretty happy. Existing users have the option to use the previous release that's known to be stable.

Not having a go at SCS here, Adobe I believe are having the same issues and doing much the same with CS5.5 recently announced.

Bob.

Rob Franks wrote on 4/11/2011, 6:37 PM

Yes sir bob! Right on! Let's see if we can dump this thread right into the toilet with lots of whining and carrying on!

CClub wrote on 4/11/2011, 7:16 PM

"Adobe I believe are having the same issues and doing much the same with CS5.5 recently announced."

As far as I can tell, Adobe is doing something quite different. My impression from the CS5 news is that the 5.5 is a PAID update, not free as 10d is.

i c e wrote on 4/11/2011, 7:16 PM

Sorry, Did I miss it? When is 10.0d coming out?

ice

John_Cline wrote on 4/11/2011, 7:20 PM

End of April.

MSmart wrote on 4/11/2011, 11:28 PM

Us VMS users are still waiting for 10a. ;)

Maybe SCS will finally take a breath and give it us.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 4/12/2011, 2:52 AM

So now I'm stunped again as to what video card to stick in my immenent Sandy Bridge PC, after just having decided on a CUDA one...

geoff

megabit wrote on 4/12/2011, 3:06 AM

Yep - this is really frustrating :(

I have to use powerful nVidia cards anyway for my number-crunching CUDA enabled, CAE software - and was hoping SCS would stick to, and develop, CUDA support for Vegas Pro so that I can benefit from it, as well...

Piotr

JohnnyRoy wrote on 4/12/2011, 6:11 AM

> "As far as I can tell, Adobe is doing something quite different. My impression from the CS5 news is that the 5.5 is a PAID update, not free as 10d is."

Yea, it looks like Adobe expects you to pay full price for small additions when Sony is adding them for free. Kudos to Sony! There was nothing in the Adobe CS5.5 announcement that I could see worth paying any more money for over CS5. No thanks Adobe... I'll pass and wait for CS6.

~jr

JohnnyRoy wrote on 4/12/2011, 6:17 AM

> "I have to use powerful nVidia cards anyway for my number-crunching CUDA enabled, CAE software - and was hoping SCS would stick to, and develop, CUDA support for Vegas Pro so that I can benefit from it, as well..."

You are benefiting from your NVIDIA card as well. OpenCL supports GPU acceleration for both NVIDA and ATI. Including more graphic cards is a good thing. I don't see any need to worry or be disappointed.

~jr

farss wrote on 4/12/2011, 6:34 AM

"There was nothing in the Adobe CS5.5 announcement that I could see worth paying any more money for over CS5. No thanks Adobe... I'll pass and wait for CS6."

You're right. I'd assumed it was a free upgrade / bug fix release.
The odd thing is to upgrade from CS5 ro CS5.5 is around $600. To upgrade from CS4 to CS5.5 is around $1,000.
Which is what I would have paid to upgrade from CS4 to CS5! So the early adopters get penalised, in total to go from CS 4 to CS5.5 they'd have paid around $1,600, yikes. Feeling better now that I didn't upgrade to CS5 :)

Not that I begrudge any software company money. So long as I keep using their product I'll pay for the upgrades even if I don't use them right away. I'm still turning out content with 9.0e just fine so no complaints about how long it's taking to get V10 up to speed. I still use V6 for some audio only work.

Bob.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 4/12/2011, 8:29 AM

> "So the early adopters get penalised, in total to go from CS 4 to CS5.5 they'd have paid around $1,600, yikes. Feeling better now that I didn't upgrade to CS5 :)"

I hear ya, Bob, and it seems to be a disturbing trend because Imagineer Systems did the same thing with Mocha for AE. I purchased the upgrade to Mocha 2 last year for $127. They just came out with 2.5 which is bug fixes and a more user friendly UI and they are charging everyone with a previous version $99. So if you buy Adobe CS5 and you got Mocha 2 for free, you pay $99. If you were stupid enough (like me) to buy Mocha 2 for $127, you still pay $99! Yup... Penalize the early adopters and paying customers!!!

I sent an email to Imagineer Systems explaining that expecting me (a paying customer) to pay $99 for a dot release of bug fixes and a better UI, while people who got Mocha for free with CS5 also pay $99 was not "rewarding" my brand loyalty. They basically said, too bad. Everyone pays the same price whether they have a paid version or the free version.

Needless to say I will not be upgrading to the Mocha 2.5 "bug fix" either. I will wait for Adobe CS6 and probably get it for FREE!

~jr

rmack350 wrote on 4/12/2011, 9:17 AM

The odd thing is to upgrade from CS5 ro CS5.5 is around $600. To upgrade from CS4 to CS5.5 is around $1,000.

It depends on what you're upgrading. I have CS5 Production Premium and the upgrade would be ~400. If from CS4 it would be ~650. Not *that* much of a difference. The problem for Adobe is bad messaging here. They want to charge for a half-point release but they should be saying that the full point upgrade is $XXX and then you get a discount if you're just upgrading from CS5 to CS5.5. In a way, they probably can't win with a half point upgrade.

Sony is doing the right thing by not charging for the point upgrades but I think that by adding new features for free they set odd expectations. There's usually at least one new feature to like but we all really want to see bug fixes and refinement of existing features.

One of the problems of constantly adding new features is that it creates more for SCS to try to maintain.

As for adopting OpenCL...that's a good thing because multiple hardware vendors support it. From a product development perspective, CUDA is a bad deal because it's tied to one hardware vendor.

Rob Mack