Vegas's new owner, Magix, says that it will continue to develop the product, but we have to wonder how they're going to do that, because it's a very mature piece of code now and one suspects that one of Sony's reasons for moving it on is that it might have become difficult to maintain. Often, the quickest way to see whether a video file is valid is to drop it onto a Vegas timeline.

Vegas is popular for many reasons, not least of which was that it is completely agnostic to video formats. The current version is an extremely powerful video editor that retains its unusually good audio talents. Developed originally by Wisconsin-based Sonic Foundry, and bought by Sony in 2006, its initially tentative transition into a video editor gathered pace. Unusually, it started out as a multi-track audio editor - a very good one - alongside the legendary Sound Forge. Vegas has a fiercely loyal user base, and in a sea of similar-looking NLEs, it stands out as something genuinely different. There's been no sign of activity with the Sony products for long enough now that something had to change: either the products were going to be dropped altogether or sold, as part of Sony's ongoing simplification of its business units. Sony has sold its suite of media products (Sony Vegas, Movie Studio, Sound Forge and Acid) to German software developer Magix. Well, this is a surprise, but with hindsight, maybe not so much.

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