VEGAS Pro 19 NLE Launched – New Pricing and New Features

Editing Software

by Jakub HanAugust 18^th, 2021

The new VEGAS Pro 19 editing software offers an improved user interface, color grading, effects, live streaming, and new cloud-integrated content management and acquisition. The pricing has also been adjusted: there are three different packages in total, starting at $12.99 per month or $249 for a perpetual license.

The first version of VEGAS editing software dates back to 1999. I remember I started editing in VEGAS back in 2007 when Sony owned it. In 2016, VEGAS was acquired by MAGIX and there have been new versions coming out regularly. Today, the US-based developing team VEGAS Creative Software announced a new VEGAS Pro 19 along with new pricing and cloud-based features. Let’s take a short look at it.

VEGAS Pro 19 – new features

When it comes to cloud-based media management and collaboration features, the new VEGAS Pro 19 offers:

• VEGAS Hub Window – a central location for accessing cloud storage, royalty-free stock footage, tutorials, and more.
• VEGAS Content – a database of royalty-free stock footage users can download and import directly into VEGAS projects (available with subscription plans).
• VEGAS Hub mobile app – enables uploading media files directly from mobile devices into the VEGAS Hub cloud storage (storage available with subscription plans).
• Hub Explorer Window – explore media uploaded from the VEGAS Hub mobile app and downloaded from VEGAS Content. Users can synchronize VEGAS Hub cloud storage with local drives, and add footage directly to the VEGAS Pro timeline for editing (storage available with subscription plans).

The new VEGAS Pro 19 further offers a new color grading interface with a redesigned grading panel and an intuitive and accessible workflow. There are range-limited color wheels for more precise controls of color grading adjustments, 40 LUT presets, instant black-point and white-point detection and correction, and expanded individual R, G, and B color curves.

The app also includes intelligent, multilingual text-to-speech features. According to VEGAS Creative Software, the speech generator transforms text from any source into realistic, synthesized narration in a variety of languages with natural-sounding voices, including automatic translation (available in VEGAS Pro and VEGAS POST with subscription plans).

As the VEGAS Creative Software team further claims, the new VEGAS Pro 19 also utilizes some AI-driven workflows, such as AI-based Upscale and Zoom Plugin, that can convert SD and HD footage to 4K. Automatic Scene Detection can detect scene breaks and transitions in a rendered file and automatically create splits, sub-clips, or keyframes at those breaks to work with individual scenes for re-editing.

The good news is that VEGAS Pro 19 will also newly support Blackmagic RAW (BRAW) codec, although this support is only in Beta at the time of launch.

Further improvements to the VEGAS user interface include:

• Timecode Tagging for Project Notes – Project notes now have a timecode field that aligns the notes with an exact location on the project timeline. Users may also click on notes to navigate through the timeline.
• Project Notes Color and Label Tagging – Each note can now have color and a unique label associated with them, allowing for multiple users to collaborate and comment on a project.

Pricing and availability

When it comes to the pricing of the new VEGAS Pro 19, its creators try to position it below the price of Adobe CC subscription and they also offer a perpetual license option. There are three different packages available:

• VEGAS Edit for $12.99 per month or $249 for a perpetual license. It includes VEGAS Pro 19, 20GB of cloud storage (available with subscription plan), and VEGAS Content – 20 royalty-free HD video and/or audio clip downloads per month (available with subscription plan).
• VEGAS Pro for $19.99 per month or $399 for a perpetual license. It includes VEGAS Pro 19, VEGAS Stream for live streaming, SOUND FORGE Audio Studio 15, VEGAS Content – Unlimited access to royalty-free HD video and/or audio clip downloads (available with subscription plan), and Primatte chroma keying software.
• VEGAS POST for $29.99 per month or $599 for a perpetual license. It includes the whole VEGAS Pro license (plus 4K video downloads from VEGAS Content), VEGAS Effects for high-end compositing, and VEGAS Image for RAW image compositing.

Even though the pricing is quite competitive, I think it’s quite the challenge to go up against the likes of DaVinci Resolve, which offers many features even with the free version. In my opinion, it might come down to the ease of use and workflow preference.

Which software do you use for post-production work? Have you ever worked in VEGAS Pro? Let us know in the comments section underneath the article.