"Catalyst Production Suite presentations will be held on the main Sony stage on Monday, April 13, at 11:30 am; Tuesday, April 14, at 2:00 pm, and Wednesday, April 15, at 10:00 am and 2:00 pm."

Let us know if there are any live-streaming of the presentations available....

Refer to this:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=922722


http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=922399

Is this the end of Vegas or where is Catalyst positioned. It doesn't look like it has anywhere near the same functionality.

Would have rather seen an A7 camera with internal 4k Recording.

As I have stated before Catalyst edit has nothing to do with VegasPro as the product of VegasPro has captured a very small market over the years.

Here is the difference:
Catalyst Edit is all about 2015 workflow with 4k, XAVC, and raw
1) It is not a full fledged NLE in it's initial release
2) It integrates with Catalyst Prepare for both OS of Win and Mac
3) It is aimed for the pro market whereas we know what VegasPro currently hits.

In the end it boils down to this - VegasPro has been around for a long time with some ancient underlying methodology. In the end it is too much trouble to re-engineer and the marketing staff will never get to the competition hurdle with Premiere.

However, VegasPro is accessible, it does well what it can do, and it is very satisfying to the market that it does have. VegasPro will live in its current form for now.

In the end I imagine this is going to mirror what happened with FCPX. Catalyst Edit may be "incomplete" for a while. Most would argue that FCPX is still incomplete.

My guess is that this will eventually replace Vegas just because it needs to exist at around the same price point, although I suppose that if Prepare is a good tool for use *during* production then it adds a lot of value to the whole suite.

There are some basic things it does right out of the starting blocks. Things that people here have asked for:

1. It rebrands the product away from the name Vegas
2. It's cross platform for both Win and Mac. No Linux.
3. It evidently is usable in a touch environment
4. It's good with shots of lemurs. (no one asked for that?)
5. It accepts many formats that people are currently working with. It's not *only* for Sony products.

So how long will it be incomplete? depends on what you're looking for. I'm going to assume at the very least that this new edit tool uses the same filter plugins as Vegas.

Assuming it's born with all its fingers and toes, the big questions will be about its performance and stability.

define "lemurs" ?

The rebrand is a very important component of the Sony company reformation.

That is pretty much why FCPX as well - but if history tells us from that experience - it will be a steep hill all the way up.

If Sony can pull this off over the long haul / ? well it must be given many years before we know...

My direct contact at SCS just confirmed my inquiry in the following email response:

"catalyst edit is a pre-post-production cutting tool. What comes out of edit goes into vegas"

It also appears the home page has been updated to reflect the new software family

My sentiments exactly - this is the offer of another workflow tool - about like suggesting you could use Premiere to prepare XAVC source files for editing in VegasPro.

Do you see where this is going?

I'm assuming that's a shot of a [link = https://www.google.com/search?q=lemur&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=939&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=rRMsVf_UB46rogTim4GICw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ]Lemur[/link] their using in their marketing.

Oh yes, the rebrand is very important because it leaves behind a certain amount of baggage and says "this is new".

Assuming that this is really an evolution from Vegas (and price points might force it to be) then I suspect Sony will have a bit better start on this than Apple did, at least they'll have a suite of OFX effects that work in 32-bit color modes. Apple's disadvantage was that their professional user base didn't want FCPX, they wanted an updated Final Cut. I kind of think Sony could make a better case for the migration if current Vegas users view Edit with a "Thank God" rather than "Good Grief"

One telling point will be whether it can open a VEG file. Recent versions of Vegas showed some progress in project file interchange so I'll be curious to read whether Edit can do the same. SCS was certainly putting effort into the idea.

The current product page is still thin gruel. They're focus on cutting makes me think of Edius, which is not a bad thing. Maybe a little more info has leaked out while I've been writing...

To me now is the final part of the equation: Will they release a color grading app as part of the Catalyst suite or is it an industry standard interchange project file (AAF or XML) to finish in Resolve for example?

"catalyst edit is a pre-post-production cutting tool. What comes out of edit goes into vegas"

That's interesting

to me that says more than just goes into Vegas.

If the interchange files are AAF/XML (and I'm betting it is proper export of those as well), this says to me that Vegas is on it's way out. I've already been playing with Resolve Lite as en editor and the reality is, it cuts footage very well. Beginning to think the underlying paradigm of Vegas Pro and trying to trouble shoot the never ending bugs to its legacy code is not financially feasible for SCS any longer and Catalyst edit will replace Vegas Pro as a cutting tool given the audio capabilities - albeit reduced - that it provides. comparing how FCPX was first released with limited features, I"m guessing Catalyst Edit will be similar and will provide additional features later on.

Speculation on my part - take it for what its worth.

It's all just shaking the box to guess what's inside, but if edit is placed before Vegas in a work flow then that makes me think more in terms of news gathering. It also makes me think Vegas is in for some repositioning.

rmack350, you might be right - still the challenge Vegas faces is that unless it gets a total rewrite, the ongoing issues of never ending bugs will never be done with IMO. It's true you can' t ever make an app bug free but the issues that are STILL present in Vegas Pro in the current version says alot about the amount of duct tape and bailing wire being used to keep it together.

Looking at Catalyst Edit is positioned now, to me it says a replacement to be used in a post workflow that will hand off the final edit to a color grading solution. Given what Blackmagic is doing with Resolve now with their announcement of version 12 earlier today, that isn't far fetched.

Maybe that's why Sony hasn't updated VP GPU support? If they do leave VP behind I hope they'll arrange a crossgrade for a reasonable price. I was hoping they'd move more towards compositing features rather than just slicker editing tools.

For what I do, I really can't see any use for 4K atm because I don't need that level of quality and everyone I collaborate with uses HD and has no intention of moving to 4K any time soon. If Sony is trying to expand their pro market then is that still possible considering the competition have now possibly cornered that market?

I'd love more integration with other software. That seems to be the direction in the 3D modelling/animation world. I was hoping for better integration with Hitfilm, Mocha and even 3D software if possible. Maybe Catalyst Edit will eventually deliver that but how long will that take if ambiguity remains between the future of VP and the purpose of CE?

One other thing, the recommended spec for 4K editing is 16GB RAM. Now that's pretty standard for the average desktop system but that's not so common on a laptop. And it's still pushing the RAM on most systems so I wonder how, in practice, CE will perform with 4K editing on an average consumer system? If it's not so smooth then, atm, CE will appeal more to those with semi-pro / pro needs rather than the average consumer. Perhaps this will change in the future when 32GB RAM becomes standard and we all have huge amounts of storage to work with 4K files but in other areas of software development the trend is to design software that is more economical with resources.

Writing the code needed for something like CE is considerably simpler than what's required for Vegas. If you're prepared to work the way the pointy end of business does where edit, compositing, sound and grading are separate departments with different tools then again the code is simpler and can be made more robust.

Bob.

Well, I'm excited to try it. Given the instability of Vegas (not to mention the horrible name) maybe a rewrite from the ground up is the way to go. If they can keep the best of Vegas (its speed and intuitive UI) while ridding it of legacy problems, Catalyst Edit may be the real Vegas update we've all been waiting for.

The separate tools for different jobs philosophy probably works really well in professional environments where teams work on one thing but Vegas has been aimed more at those of us who need all in one tools. Better integration between different platforms seems to be the direction in the animation/3D world and I hope Sony offers more of that in future even if it does develop separate tools.

Its for cutting and trimming....may evolve but that's what it appears to be at this point....not and editor for even basics...from what I see, but who knows where it will go,, maybe another ESPRIT ...

[I]"Better integration between different platforms "[/I]

Better integration is the Holy Grail of all software tools. It's much easier to do when the vendor is in a monopolistic position and from what I see any other effort no matter how well intentioned seems doomed by human nature. That's a debate well outside the orbit of this forum though.

That said I've never had a problem with "integration" between say Vegas and AE. I've never felt any useful purpose was served by being able to open a Vegas project in AE, all one needs is a common file type i.e. a codec that both can read and write and all is good. Beyond that is chaos.

Bob.

Agree with farss. Interoperability is not the issue, that is why there is such a religious war as to application usage. People that really need interoperability standardize on one tool. Like the military standardizing on bullet size.

When a company worries more about interoperability with other apps, than bug fixing and stability, they are not leading anymore. It feel like Edit is positioned to allow footage to migrate into FCX, AVID, or the other, and still keep a dollar in the loop for Sony.

If Sony plans to go away from the all-in-one tool that Vegas was, and make users buy 3 products to mimic Adobe. I am not sure that is going to work, or they do not really understand their end users. The UI in Edit does not look that great, or revolutionary in design. Please do not pull a FCPX or Windows8 on us.

I see catalyst prepare and edit mainly for DIT and directors/DPs.
It's primarily for Sony Cameras and provides seamless options for on set looks and shot selection.
Running on a Mac is important for those people.

Thanks to the typical Vegas user, many of the advanced features in Vegas Pro go unused.
Those of us wanting to use it for feature length movie production who want and need those advanced features are a very small minority. It seems even adding OFX support hasn't helped much. Unlike what someone else has said, Vegas is very much used around the world, it is very popular for it's price/feature set.