I agree. I hesitated to upgrade, but did it anyway. And I have not been disappointed. It is much more stable than 10 and 11 ever were. NB works most of the time and the updates that have been released since have fixed most remaining issues. I would say Vegas 12 is a top notch professional editing software again.

Martin L, your generalization is interesting - BUT you can really help everyone else, by doing two things:

1) Post your system specs, which should include the videocard model number, and video card driver version.

AND most importantly:
2)Your typical workflow - including your sources, your intermediate compositing and renders if any, and final output formats...and whether you leave GPU on/off or tweak ram preview...

PLEASE!

Vegas Pro 12: the Longfellow's little girl of software.

"And when she was good, she was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid."

;-)

Vegas 12 has been great for me as well!

System specs are posted
GPU acceleration OFF at work, ON at home (simpler timelines, just 2 video tracks)
Dynamic RAM Preview 2048 (set to zero if GPU ON)
Memory Needed By Vegas (Options>[Shift+Click]Preferences>Internal) 2048 (64bit)

Source: AVCHD 1080 60i, 24p, or 720p from Panasonic GH1 and/or GH2), 16MP stills

Plugins: Magic Bullet Looks 2

Typical Timeline Length: 10min or less (work), 3min - 45min (home)

Workflow:
At work I generally break my product videos into smaller logical segments because projects load fast, timelines remain very responsive, and Vegas seldom crashes. I've also found that a complex 12 minute timeline with AVCHD media takes 3 - 4 times longer to render than a simple one-track video timeline with MXF media, which renders faster than realtime.

So... I render the individual projects to MXF files and combine the files on a new timeline. The time savings happens when I need to change a segment: I can render just that segment to an MXF file, re-place it on the timeline with the other MXFs, and re-render the complete timeline in ~realtime.

Guy,, not to be a negative nellie but sounds more like a compromise than vegas is working great...I love to hear v12 works ! but sounds like workarounds to make it work

Vegas 12 was a bit unstable and shaky at first but that was with my old system that was badly cluttered as well as Vegas 12 starting off a bit on the rough side.

On my new system in which I finally posted the new specs for I have had only a few crashes but that was because my system was already unstable at the time.

For instance I had opened a number of animated gif files with internet explorer which causes it to no longer work. So Vegas was also not able to work correctly. Problem not Vegas 12. A restart and everything is fine again.

Even so, I can edit for hours with Vegas 12 and be 99.9% rock solid! No work-around's of any kind. Thumbnails are head-center-tails. All video is from my Sony cameras. Audio is from my 4 track recording device. I cannot remember what the tech name for it is. The ram in my head is shot! LOL!

With GPU on, renders from HD to standard def is less than half the time of the project.

I typically divide large projects into small ones. It is not good for Vegas or any NLE to gobble the entire meal at once.

Oh yes, I forgot about the power supply. It is a good quality one by Corsair. Watts are important but also the amps. A higher watts power supply may or may not put the amps where you need them the most. On the old system I replaced a 500 watt supply with a 400 watt supply because the 400 watt supply had the amps where I needed it and the 500 watt supply did not. The 400 watt supply was much better quality in the way of regulation and power stability which is important for system stability especially when pushed hard by Vegas.

On the system I had prior to my last system, I cheaped-out on the components. What was the lowest price I can pay to build my system? Well cheap means buy it twice because the results were subpar. I am not implying that others here who have problems with Vegas went the cheap route, I am just saying what I used to do.

One must have a balanced quality system to get the best results!

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com/ccm

I, too, have used V12 with no real problems except for just one time when a render job produced nothing but black frames. In that instance I must have stuffed something up in the render template because it did not do it again, nor has it ever done it since. My system specs are posted. System 1 is a Toshiba laptop that rarely gets used these days. It was used to do editing while travelling. Now I use system 2 for the same job. It is based around a mini itx motherboard and is portable enough to lug around in our caravan (trailer, for our friends in the US).

My workflow is varied but I have edited projects that are a mix of mxf files from my EX1R, m2t files from my HDR-HC3 cameras, mp4 from my GoPro and mov from my DSLR camera. I output 720p for the Internet in most cases. I don't use intemediatries or proxies when editing, but do use colour correction to match the cameras to each other. I also use stabiliser occasionally and Bluff Titler.

Having an IT background hasn't helped me understand the perplexing issues that others experience with Vegas Pro and I am grateful that, for whatever reason, it just works on my rig.

Cheers

Being a long time user of VP8, I had used that extensively with little to no issues and was happy. A few years later, a work project required some video presentations, so I checked to see how VP had progressed. I saw that VP11 touted GPU acceleration as well as many new features and faster rendering, so I made the upgrade.

From that point is when the all-too-well-known horrors with the GPU acceleration module started. VP12 was released not too much later and was thankfully able to upgrade at a reduced rate. Like a schmuck I thought the GPU acceleration bug would have been fixed. Unfortunately, like most of you probably experienced, it definitely was not fixed. I even had two complete separate systems at work and home. They both have AMD Radeon HD video cards now, but VP was still crashing constantly when I originally had a newer NVidia video card (which recently died).

Fast forward many, many months of bitterness from not using GPU Acceleration (plus brooding about making a seemingly worthless upgrade purchase), I came across a forum post which stated that the newest version of Catalyst (which I think was 13.1 or something) was yielding good results with GPU Acceleration enabled.

I was extremely skeptical given Sony's track record for almost a year, but I gave it a shot. Since then, I have not had ONE crash with GPU acceleration turned on. Not ONE. I am very impressed. VP12 is now running how it SHOULD have been running from the get go. I was almost ready to write the entire package off and move on to another NLE.

Since VP12 hasn't had an update since January, and the Catalyst update was installed in late February, it's leading me to think it was the video card drivers all along. Had AMD/nVidia not built stable capability in their driver package, or is VP's programming so strict in its hardware specs that it will crash at the drop of a hat when an unexpected video render event arrives?

I don't know which one it is, and I don't care. It's working great.

You have earned +1 Life Sony, please keep it up.

GPU acceleration is still in its infancy. ESPECIALLY openGL and openCML. It's nice to see NVIDIA's hold on CUDA cores crashing, but I always kind of figured that this was probably the biggest problem with Vegas 11. I've used since 3 and was really happy with everything until 8. 9 was awful. 10 is where I am now.

Maybe I'll give 12 a try...

Version 9 was not good for me... But when I updated to version 11 all my problem were gone. I'm trying to render a quicktime file and noticed nothing changed for QT options from versions 11 to 12.

For comparison note here:

Vegas 12 #486 is fully stable in my system too, mostly working with AVCHD codec media, and HDV codec.
All FXs are Vegas' internal. problem with 3rd party, e.g. Beautybox. Haven't try other FXs yet.
NewBlue TitlerPro 2 causing a lot of crashes.

Windows 7 update : last update is November, ATI Catalyst version 12.8

VideoTguy, I hope my specs are visible now. Let me post this to see...

Now, if one clicks my forum name, my machine specs will be visible.

Workflow: Import: Capturing HDV through Firewire or other material through USB2 or by the memory card reader.
Editing in Vegas 12, sometimes using NB Titler Pro2 for title graphics. Export: Rendering in Vegas 12, usually these days to h.264 Main Concept AVC mp4, which seems to be the format of choice for many web applications. For television I usually export in Quicktime according to specs given to me.
That's it.
I also have Premiere Pro and After Effects but seldom use them.
All video seen here: http://tidningenmonitor.se/media_till_vara_artiklar.php
are done this way, except some of them were edited by others on other platforms but I put them all together, and reedited in my Vegas 12 and exported from there.

Thank you , MartinL, most helpful to post your specs and workflow for all of us. Thanks.

I upgrade every time no matter what, because I want Sony to keep developing the software, and I assume that my purchasing does just that. Vegas 4, 5, and 6 used to be a bit unstable, and by the time they got to 8 it was rock steady. 9 was perfect. It was only when we needed to move to 64 bits that the new problems started (remember the unusable 64 bit version 8, circa 2005?).

As it is it is getting more and more stable.

Keep sending in your crash reports, include the extra info, and make sure to be hitting CTRL S a whole bunch.

Chap