Will Fastie's Corner of the Web

Vegas moves - again!

Vegas, the nonlinear video editor (NLE), has been around for quite some time now, nearly three decades. It was created by the excellent company Sonic Foundry. Founded in 1991 in Madison, Wisconsin, to market its audio editing software (hence the name), in 1999 it released its first version of Vegas. But in 2003, all the editing assets were acquired by Sony, first to Sony Pictures Digital and then under the moniker Sony Creative Software. That transition was extremely smooth from day one. For example, the licenses to all the products I acquired from Sonic came over to Sony.

By 2016, Sony had developed its own software under the Catalyst brand and decided to shed the creative suite. Magix, from Germany, was the buyer. Again, the transition on day one was extremely smooth. I was not particularly happy about that shift, but despite having competing products, Magix retained Vegas and kept updating it for ten years. My only true gripe was its decision to dump Movie Studio Platinum, which I considered superior to all other economy NLEs and referred to as "Vegas, Jr." (I still think it superior.)

BorisFX Logo Today, BorisFX announced that it had acquired the Vegas suite, which consists of Vegas Pro, Sound Forge, and Acid Pro. This brings Vegas back to the shores of America, which I appreciate. However, the day one transition is not a good sign. The company's login system went down. When it came back up, I followed the instructions I received to establish myself at Boris, with the promise that my records would be brought over from Magix. That did not happen, and it is a huge concern.

I hope for the best here, but the road ahead is rocky. Vegas is one of the few NLEs that do not run on Mac - it's always been a Windows-first product. That puts it at odds with Da Vinci Resolve, which is free and available on both platforms. Although BorisFX's press release and website sound promising, they always do in situations like this.

Terabyte Update - Update

For several years, I posted a note here called "Terabyte Update" in which I compared the cost of various types of storage. The primary purpose was to track the rise of solid-state storage drives (SSDs) compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). The last issuance of my guidance was in 2018.

But I haven't been silent on the matter. I've been the editor of the AskWoody newsletter since 2021, where Terabyte Update continued to appear. Here's the entire history.

Terabyte Update for 2025 ($), 2024 ($), 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 at AskWoody
Earlier editions at fastie.com for 2018, 2011, and 2009

The articles at AskWoody marked with a dollar sign are, regrettably, behind the paywall. The good news is that subscribing to the newsletter is a bargain!

Updates to my Banjo Makers list

I recently spent some time updating and modernizing my Banjo Makers list. I've requested updates from every builder in the list and will be adding them as they arrive.

However, I do not have full contact information for every builder. If you are a builder in the list, or a builder meeting the requirements who is not in the list, please get in touch with me. If you know of a builder not on the list, or know about a change to one of the listings, I'd love to hear from you, too.

I am particularly interested in obtaining a new, representative image from each builder. Previously, I used a tiny thumbnail. Now, I can create the thumbnail automatically from a larger image, which can also be displayed. For an example, check out the listing for Ballard Banjers and click the thumbnail.

Audio-Technica provides support, 20 years later!

Recently, I was using a wired lavalier microphone that I had purchased two decades ago but had not used for some time. I found that the foam windscreen had deteriorated and would soon turn to dust. That is not an unexpected condition; it's a characteristic of this type of foam and has happened on several other products, such as my excellent but old Sony headphones.

Hundreds of replacement foam windscreens are available on Amazon, but I could not find one that would fit perfectly on my Audio-Technica mic. So I got in touch with Audio-Technica and was promptly sent a replacement, at no charge. 20 years later. For an out-of-production mic.

That kind of support isn't around much these days. Kudos!