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Another key feature is better support for multiprocessors. With the new Intel and AMD dual core processors, as well as the multithreaded processors that have been available for the past couple of years, Sony says that software enhancements will significantly speed up rendering times for Vegas 6. Said Sony?s Dave Chaimson, ?Our users have provided lots of feedback on the speed of our renders ?they need to decrease the amount of time spent in this portion of their workflow so we?ve done a lot of work under the hood to optimize for dual core and hyper-threaded technologies.?
Project Nesting is another innovation of Vegas 6. With this new feature, you can now take an entire Vegas project, unrendered, and simply drop it onto the timeline as a media event. Then, you can crop that, trim it, or add effects to it just as you would any other clip on the timeline. Chaimson said, ?It?s a really nice timesaver. You?re now able to bring any number of Vegas projects into the timeline and simply mix them, crossfade them?you treat them no differently from any other media.? Hill added, ?Sequence shuffling, time-stretching, letter boxing, velocity envelopes on an unrendered project?it?s a slick new feature.? In the demo, the benefit of this new feature was immediately obvious.
Users of other applications who have always wanted to try Vegas will be happy to know that Vegas 6 now supports AAF (Advanced Authoring Format) import and export. Previously, Vegas had support for EDLs (Edit Decision Lists) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) project interchange, and there was also a third-party OMF (Object Metafile) tool, all of which are still supported. But now, Vegas joins the AAF club, where most project metadata can be used across different types of editing systems. ?It?s a nice goal to have a perfectly seamless and rich project interchange, however, as a fictional example, Avid?s 2D page curl isn?t going to map across,? Hill said. But this new AAF support will be good enough to allow project to be edited in part on one product and finished on another. ?It will offer a rich multitrack cut and dissolve list, so just copy off the media, along with the AAF file, and you can collaborate with people using other tools,? Hill added.
Not surprisingly, there?s now comprehensive support for Sony?s red-hot HDV camcorders, the HDR-FX1 (commonly called the FX-1) and its newer and more-professional sibling, the HVR-Z1U, commonly called the Z-1. Although Sony has planted its flag firmly in the 1080i camp, Vegas 6 is format agnostic, and can handle either 1080i or 720p. Already no stranger to 24p production in its previous iterations, Vegas is able to take the 1080/60i HDV footage from Sony?s FX-1 and Z-1 camcorders and convert them to 24p. That?s a nifty way to solve a controversial feature choice of Sony?s HDV camcorders. This easy conversion from 60i to 24p turns out to be a nimble way to address what many users, and perhaps even more in the press, described as a crucial issue?the lack of 24p support in the new Sony 1080i camcorders. The two camcorders are able to shoot in what the company calls 24-frame CineFrame mode, but to many users there?s a noticeable difference between that and true 24p acquisition. Of course, this conversion from 1080/60i to 24p is not an instant process but it is certainly a function that will take advantage of Vegas 6?s previously-mentioned enhanced dual processor support. Hill predicted that while some users will edit their footage in 60i and then downconvert after they?re done editing to get that certain 24p film look, others will choose to edit in 24p. He said, ?You could downconvert it. However, it is nice to cut at a 23.976 frame rate. Vegas will handle it either way ? and, we have a batch converter, we have network rendering?there are lots of ways you can offload this.? Added Dave Chaimson, ?The built-in batch conversion inside of Vegas is very powerful, because you can select all these different types of down-converts at one time and then literally walk away from the machine. You?ll be able to render out the streaming version, an MPEG-2, 24p, a Windows Media video?and have that all preset. You just run the script and go.?
Taking a look at the Sony Vegas 6 user interface, it?s almost the same as its predecessor, Vegas 5. One standout new feature in the updated user interface is the ability to hover your cursor over a thumbnail of one of the clips in the media manager window, and then a larger, easier-to-see version of that clip enlarges in front of it, complete with a scrub bar. It?s a useful idea, particularly if you?re rummaging around in a library full of thousands of clips and wondering what it is you actually have.
Sony Vegas 6?s performance was also impressive. Its snappy performance felt faster and more responsive than its version 5 predecessor, even on a slower machine. In fact, in the pre-NAB demo, the machine used was a dual 2.4GHz Xeon box, a modest test bed for a demo of HDV footage, since 2.4GHz Xeon chips were the state-of-the-art about three years ago. But then, perhaps those old chips represent an average computer in edit suites today. Even so, HDV footage played back well enough to edit on this rudimentary machine. HD-SDI footage from HDCam would not play back smoothly on this particular machine because the drive array on this box was far below what?s needed for HD-SDI, but if you have an uber-machine and a drive subsystem up to the task, Sony says this is possible, and they?ll be demoing it at NAB.
Another great addition to Vegas is a new monitoring option called Windows Secondary Display. This allows you to feed the program video straight from your timeline via DVI or VGA into another monitor. Besides perhaps eliminating the need to buy a specific (and oftentimes expensive) HDTV monitor for your edit suite, it could also be practical for feeding an HD signal to a client monitor.
Summing up, this is a powerful release of Sony Vegas 6, where most of the innovation has taken place underneath the user interface. It?s increasingly clear that Sony has its fingers on the pulse of the market, making way for the new lower-bandwidth HDV revolution, while allowing those who use higher bandwidth HDCam and other HD formats to also use this extraordinary software for digital video editing.
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