As of May 20, 2016, Sony Creative Software sold the Sony Vegas product line, as well as the majority of its other products, to MAGIX Software. Every version after Sony Vegas Pro 13 will be created and sold by MAGIX. MAGIX have rebranded Sony Vegas by dropping ‘Sony’ to rebrand as ‘Vegas’.
Vegas Pro 14 was released on September 20, 2016 as the first release of the video editing software under MAGIX. Following this, Vegas Pro 15 was released on August 28, 2017. So, what’s the difference between Vegas Pro 14 and Vegas Pro 15?
Before I outline the difference between the two versions, it’s important to note that there are four different tiers of the Vegas Pro editing software: Vegas Pro Edit, Vegas Pro, Vegas Pro 365 and Vegas Pro Suite. You can see the full comparison table between these tiers at the Vegas Creative Software here.
Vegas Pro 14 vs. Vegas Pro 15
What’s new in Vegas Pro 15 Edit
- Workflow & UI: Vegas Pro 15 features workflow and UI enhancements for a “more organized timeline workflow”. You will still be very familiar with the UI but notice some slight tweaks, including four different default background shades.
- Hardware Acceleration: Updates have also been made for hardware acceleration from modern graphics cards and adds support for Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV).
- Selectively paste event attributes: This feature is a great addition! You can copy all of the attributes from one event and paste them onto another event (or several). This definitely helps to speed up my workflow.
- Instant Freeze Frame: Yes that’s right! You can now apply a freeze frame to a video clip INSTANTLY! A cool feature sure, but not a huge selling point for me personally.
- Picture-in-Picture OFX plug-in: Version 15 ships with the Picture-in-Picture plug-in to allow you to place an additional video within your video with an easy, interactive control on the Video Preview window.
- Support for ACES 1.0: ACES 1.0 is the Academy Color Encoding System. Support for ACES 1.0 has been added to Vegas in this version.
- Crop OFX plug-in: This is a plug-in to make cropping easier with an interactive tool on the Video Preview. Cropping was already easy, now it’s easier!
- LUT OFX plug-in: The LUT OFX plug-in simply allows you to apply camera and creative LUTs to your media and events.
What’s new in Vegas Pro 15
Everything listed above for Vegas Pro Edit and:
- NewBlueFX Filters 5 Ultimate: With a $299 price tag, NewBlueFX Filters 5 Ultimate is a collection of filters and effects for your media. The plug-ins included are ColorFast 2, Recreate, Recolor, and Refocus.
- HitFilm Movie Essentials: This is a collection of plug-ins for further video enhancement and repair. Create a cinematic appearance, fix grainy video, generate special effects, and more.
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What’s new in Vegas Pro 15 Suite
Everything listed above for Vegas Pro 15 and:
- Boris FX Sapphire Render Unit: This collection consists of textures, gradients, cloud, sky and lighting effects.
- NewBlueFX Titler Pro 5: Another collection, this one consists of over 200 built-in templates for creating elegant titles or dynamic 3D motion graphics.
Should I Upgrade to Vegas Pro 15?
A question I see a lot is, “should I update to Vegas Pro 15”?
If you’re currently on Vegas Pro 14, you can see what new additions you will have with Pro 15 above. Is there any features here that make the upgrade worth it? Definitely a possibility. Also, don’t discount the performance increases between even these two versions.
If you are on an older version of Vegas Pro 14, such as any Sony Vegas Pro product, you need to consider all of the additional new features you will get from upgrading. Again, the performance increase as you move to the newest version is not something to be forgotten.
Will Vegas Pro 16 be out soon?
It’s hard to say. If you look at the previous Vegas releases, you will see that there is typically a new version of the software very one or two years. This could change under MAGIX, however, they release Vegas Pro 14 in September 2016 and then Vegas Pro 15 in August 2017.
We could be looking at Vegas Pro 16 in a few months, but that’s just speculation for now! You can see the latest Vegas Pro products on the Vegas Creative Studio website here.