Having this recent infatuation with video, I embarked on a trip in the video editor world for Mac, Windows and Linux a few months ago. After days of intense searching and testing last June, I decided on the Windows platform and Sony Vegas. Vegas is one of the quickly rising video applications on the market today. This is an introduction of the application and the features that sets it apart from all the rest.
Sony Vegas comes in three flavors: Movie Studio (usually abbreviated as VMS among its users), Movie Studio Platinum (VMSP), and Pro. In simple terms, Movie Studio can only use DV-sized video, Platinum can deal with AVCHD/HDV-sized one (not full HD), and Pro can go full HD. Other differences include the amount of A/V tracks allowed in the timeline, available plugins, editing picture quality (8bit vs 32bit), .NET/VB scripting, and the various exporting options. Prices range from $80 to $600 for the three products. As of this writing, the latest versions are 8.0c for the two consumer versions and 8.0a for the Pro version.
A Vegas window consists of the timeline, the extra tools organized in a tab window format, the audio mixer, and the preview window. The first thing that a user must get right on Vegas is the project properties, which must reflect the source footage’s properties. Vegas supports a variety of mpeg, h.264 and intermediate formats and it can also read codecs installed system-wide on Windows (I tried the popular open source intermediate codecs Huffyuv and Lagarith). It couldn’t read our XViD/DivX files, but apparently it can export as such as long as an encoder is installed. Vegas supports a variety of audio formats too, including AAC, mp3, WAVE, OGG and the Pro version supports FLAC too. Vegas Movie Studio is perhaps the only NLE in the consumer market that supports 24p properly. Reports for such support for Premiere Elements have been conflicting, while the rest of the consumer video editing applications like Ulead, Magix, iMovie and Movie Maker don’t support 24p at all (which is important if you are an owner of a recent Canon HD consumer camera).
The preview window allows you to playback and view the currently selected clip, selected track or the whole project. Vegas has support for secondary monitors that can go full screen, but the preview window itself doesn’t (that would be a nice feature to have). One of the sticky point on Vegas is HD playback speed. While our iMovie ’05 can playback 1080i footage real-time on a dual 1.2 Ghz G4 PPC, the same can’t be said about Vegas on a 3 Ghz hyperthreaded P4. I usually get about 27 frames out of 30 when playing back HDV on the preview window (using “preview” quality), which is good enough for editing. When using the “Best” preview quality, frame rate drops down to 10fps. Editing .mp4 and .mov files (some digi-videocams shoot as such) are not ideal either in terms of editing speed. Vegas uses DirectX-9 hardware for basic acceleration, but no special hooks are used like other pro NLEs do with OpenGL.
On the plus side, Vegas uses fewer resources than some of its main competitors. For example, we found Premiere much slower than Vegas: slower to load and slower to operate. Premiere also used from the get-go about 1.2 GBs of RAM and about 1.6 GBs when some HDV footage was loaded, while Vegas was happy with 512 MBs of RAM on load, and up to 1 to 1.4 GBs when some HDV footage was placed in the timeline. When using plain DV footage, the RAM requirements were much smaller, below 1 GB.
The heart of the editing process, the timeline, is a bit difficult to get into at first, but it becomes second nature after a while. I have written a crash course on Vegas here if you are interested in learning the basics in 5 minutes time. Vegas supports plugins, transitions, markers and regions, it has great trimming tools, it allows you to mix different kinds of footage in one track (including pictures), it supports panning & cropping and motion tracking. You can have up to 4 audio and 4 video tracks on the consumer versions of Vegas and unlimited on Pro. Slow motion and timelapse is easy to do, moving the footage left and right frame by frame is easy to do too, while compositing and the masking tool are also a breeze.
I believe that the best feature of Vegas is its color plugins. Where some other NLEs don’t even offer basic color correction tools, Vegas comes with at least 30-40 powerful ones. Coupling these with the powerful freeware Aav6cc plugin and the commercial “Magic Bullet for Editors 2.0”, you can achieve amazingly professional results in seconds. I’ve written a guide to Vegas color grading and color correcting here. Another great editing feature is A/V “envelopes”. With these you can apply different properties to the same A/V clip without having to split your footage. For example, if you want a smooth transition from high volume to low volume and back up, you use these. And speaking about audio, a number of mixing consoles and audio plugins are coming with Vegas by default too.
Regarding exporting, Vegas Pro can export to h.264 and WMV, mpeg1-2 regarding delivery formats, and cineform, uncompressed and a number of other formats for intermediate usage. The retail versions come with the companion “DVD Architect” application that will let you author good looking DVDs. However, if you are not too much into menus and fancy images, you can burn a VCD directly from Vegas, or a multimedia CD (mpeg2 files written raw on a DVD — for those players that support these), while Vegas Pro is also able to burn the Blu-Ray filesystem in plain DVD media (holds up to 45 minutes of 1080p footage).
Now, regarding the negative points, I’d say that the biggest two problems with Vegas are:
a. The restrictive exporting dialogs in the consumer versions of Vegas. You can have a cumbersome UI, you can crash all you want if you must, but under no circumstances limit the exporting options from your users, because this is what they ultimately want to be successful with. The non-ability to export in DivX by default and mpeg-4 for cellphones, and the version of h.264 only used via some pre-cooked templates, is limiting the consumer products in my opinion. Which is why I had to write (a now pretty popular) tutorial on how to go around this limitation and export in various popular formats using FFmpeg. The obvious reason for the exports being limited on the cheaper Vegas versions, is possibly the encoder licenses fees, but still…
b. Not enough third party plugins/filters. The industry support is just not there. Even Red Giant Software who released their new version of ‘Magic Bullet Suite 2007′ recently for 3 NLEs, but they left Vegas out. The word is that they will work on a Vegas version in 2008, but still, this was pretty shocking for many Vegas users. It is my opinion that Vegas should either license or work towards a compatibility layer with After Effects’ plugin system which will allow them to use hundreds of existing Adobe plugins. This is of course no easy task — if not close to impossible architecture-wise.
In conclusion, Vegas has become the choice of the “geeks”. The new kids on the video block if you like. Exactly because both its consumer versions and its Pro version have the best ratio in price/features, this is a major selling point for the new wave of the rebel videographers out there. I don’t expect all the Avid, FCP and Adobe professionals to flock into Vegas overnight, but I do expect all the new professionals and amateurs to do so.
Rating: 8/10
I don’t know about the competition, but one of the things missing in Vegas is a multilanguage support. Only English, German, French and Spanish are available. Smaller language communities (e.g. Dutch) are left out in the cold.
Larger language communities (e.g Russian) are left out in the cold too.
Often the translation (if there is one) is horrible/unreadable.
Well … it prolly does not justify the cost. I dont think native dutch or russian version would add a lot to sonys pockets. Face the fact that those little or poor countries without a good language standard
are left out for a reason.
Premiere Elements comes in Dutch. It is also strongly marketed here. Not so for Vegas. Vegas is also kept a secret on sites such as Zdnet.
I have been running Kino for some time now first on OpenSUSE, now on Kubuntu and it works. No fancy effects, just the basics – trimming and some basic effects. But it actually works. I would like to find some better app for video editing but do not want to switch platforms just for this (I do edit videos just one in i while..).
There is cinelerra http://cvs.cinelerra.org/ for linux, but i havent used it in a long time.
but this application processes and creates propritary Sony video formats. No professional wants that.
Please allow me to correct your information:
Vegas works with ‘what-ever-codec’ is installed in the system, ranging from Video for Windows codecs (like old DivX 3) and latest MPEG4 codecs, even Quicktime.
It properly support exporting to MPEG2, AVI DV, DV (raw, which maps to .dv files under linux) and other formats, even OGG.
BTW, was the first NLE to ship with Audio exporting to OGG.
I use Vegas Video 7.0 every day. One thing to note was left of out of the review is that Vegas allow you multiple instances of the application, which let you work on other projects while exporting or doing some rendering. YMMV due hardware requirements, but on Core2Duo I can have 2 or 3 instances working without too much problems.
Also, the velocity envelopes concept implemented in Vegas is more close to the audio editing concept than video, which make timeline handling a really big thing compared to strcit NLE like Premiere or Canopus EDIUS.
Plugins support also came from proDAD (a german firm) who makes Adorage, Vitascene and Heroglyph using the DirectX plugin architecture that Vegas provides.
OK, just my comments 😉
It imports and exports far more than just Sony video formats. Get your facts straight.
Supported Formats
Import: AIFF, ATRAC, AVI, BMP, GIF, JPG, MMV, MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Sony M2TS, OGG, PCA, PNG, PSD, QuickTime®, SFA, SWF, TGA, TIF, W64, WAV, WMA, WMV
Export: AC-3, ATRAC, AVI, MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, OGG, PCA, QuickTime, RealAudio®, RealVideo®, W64, WAV, WMA, WMV
I use Vegas Home Studio Platinum, and it’s a very powerful tool for $70.
EDIT – Luis beat me to it
Edited 2007-11-14 14:34
AVCHD, HDV and XDCAM are interpretet by the software according to Sonys implementation. If your source material comes from an JVC camera, for example, you may run into problems.
Thats what I meant with “propritary”.
Welcome to the “not-so-standard” world!
Some owners of Sony DVD Handycams (DVD-VR is the format) reported that footage captured in 16:9 by the camera (in MPEG2 Program Stream format) wasn’t flagged as “16:9” stream and required you use the Sony download utility to properly correct that.
That happens with Panasonic, JVC, and whatever you name as creator of consumer, professional and broadcast equipment.
XDCAM is a transport system and not a format [1], the thing recorded in the optical disc are DV or IMX files.
HDV is set as “standard” between Sony, JVC, Canon and Sharp that later get support by major software developers like GrassValley, Adobe, Sony and others. [2]
There are a few “breeds” of HDV that aren’t compatible between each other, take as example JVC’s variant of HDV: ProHD [3]
AVCHD [4] was set as “standard” (consortium) for HD in H.264 (MPEG4) format by Sony and Panasonic for flash-based camcorders.
Every software implementer took the best codec implementation for the task and used in their solution. Another “standard” solution.
So, at the end, everything is propietary 🙂
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDCAM
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProHD
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD
Propitary… is that anything like proprietary?
doesnt run on linux 🙂
doesnt run on linux 🙂
Neither does Photoshop, Premiere, Cubase, Sonar, Avid, Pro Tools, Reason, Halion, Logic, and a ton of other creative applications that have no real equivalent on Linux.
Unfortunately these software vendors choose not to code for Linux, which is unfortunate.
Any chance that Vegas might run under Linux using WINE?
Edited 2007-11-14 17:47
I find it highly unlikely, unless someone on the WINE team specifically put effort into getting it to work.
I know a lot (okay, most) of you folks hate Windows, but there’s a time and place for it, especially until software houses choose to open up their eyes and realize there’s a third (major) player out there to code for.
hoho, the first time that I read the Subject of this post, I thought that Sony Vegas was a personal name… ( Sony Vegas.. Who is this guy? ) hohoho
Never heard of vegas myself. Only saw it on some cracking and p2p sites. When i deal with graphic artists and other professionals i get the impression they are more Apple centred.
Edited 2007-11-14 16:23
Hehehe… Probably a mispelling when referring to the third least-known Vega brother: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vega_Brothers (By the way, I really wish that Tarantino could get such movie going… It would be awesome!)
Kinda like Chad Vader being Darth Vader’s younger brother trying to get outta his older brother’s shadow, you know? OK, I’ll shut up now… XD
I used Vegas before…..like 3 years ago, it was good then, looks like the same now. Think premier is much better (thats just my experience)
Before buying, I ran both programs on my low spec portable. Vegas was smooth, Premiere slow and sluggish. For me, Vegas was the obvious choice. Vegas is stubborn and has character, and its users are very loyal. Updates and upgrades are stable, and this is where the competition fails (pinnacle anybody?).
If you want a more advanced editor then Kino for Linux then get Mainactor:
http://www.mainconcept.com/site/?id=954
I tried Cinelera awhile back and it was way to unstable to get any work done. Havent tried it lately though.
Mainactor is no longer being sold:
http://www.mainconcept.com/site/consumer-products-4/mainactor-v5-15…
There is a possibility that it will be open sourced:
http://pdavila.homelinux.org:8080/blog/?p=226
FC Studio!
at least till sony pulls there head out of balmar’s ass!
You mentioned something about “It can crash all it wants” but you didn’t mention whether or not Vegas crashes in any way you can cause or just have randomly happen to you. There are a lot of people that will run away from a product that crashes, especially where their time and sanity are worth money.
Also, the playback rates: sounds like you’d assess that you’d be better off editing it under Windows under Vegas, but watching it on Mac for good playback performance: seems like a dual-booting Mac would fill the bill nicely
Vegas is pretty stable for me. Crashes do occur, but not as often as on other video editors.
Who’s the guy with the Peavey 5150?
Can’t see much of the guitar — definitely not any model currently in production in America, it looks like an early ’90s pre-Gibson-lawsuit EX series.
That’s Brian da Motta, guitarist of the rock band Drist. Check the “rehearsal with the Drist” video to see that video shown in the screenshot:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DristTV
I shot a few interviews for them.
Edited 2007-11-15 02:11
After I read the review the first time, something was sticking in my brain, that for the life of me, I just could not explain, it didn’t feel exactly right, no not right at all, when I realized you weren’t on the ball. You say the PPC kept nicely at the desired speed and you gave the CPU’s rate, you stated the PC dropped frames and gave its speed, but that still is not all that great, as there’s much you left out that’s required to truly know, if the software was limited by hardware, or if the software was just so-so: what speed were the hard drives and what were the machine’s RAM, because if the PC was notably lacking, of course it will go BLAM! So, tell me, Eugenia, also which OS’s versions were used as well as video cards besides, before I continue this rhyming, and everyone groans and hides?
Jonathan, you don’t understand. The reason iMovie and FCE didn’t cut it for me because they don’t support 24p, not because of any OS versions or graphics cards. The reason for me going with Vegas was its sheer features, not how much faster or slower my PC was. iMovie is great as a learning project, but after a month, it just doesn’t cut it anymore in terms of NLE features.