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.)

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.