Customer Reviews

Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

I researched movie editors for months, before buying Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack. Did I make the right choice? Yes, however this product is only usable if you have good general computer skills, and have the ability to learn through trial and error. I would not recommend this product if you expect to produce a masterpiece in one day.
What do you get in this package?
Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 - program to edit digital movie, add soundtracks, voice-overs, and fancy text, rolling credits, etc.
DVD Architect Studio - program to author DVD's, so you end up with professional quality DVD menus with all the bells and whistles
Sound Forge Audio Studio - a music editing program, with the added ability to convert all your L.P.'s and cassettes into digital format, so that you can then make CD's or load them onto your IPod.
Cinescore Studio 1.0 - free music of various genres, to add to your productions to give them a professional sound

There was one major problem with this software when I first loaded it, that I only managed to fix by pure luck. The problem was quite a major one. In the version which comes on CD-ROM, there is a bug which stops the soundtrack from MPEG2 files from loading into the editior program. This is incredible considering that almost every digital camcorder on the market uses the MPEG2 format, including Sony. However!!! Once you have loaded the program and registered, you need to go to the Sony update software web page. Here you will find a download that fixes many bugs in the program, including the MPEG2 problem.
There is another problem with the program if you are going to buying this to upload videos to You Tube. In the last couple of months You Tube has upgraded there video screen to Widescreen (16:9 ratio) format. There is no template in Vegas Movie Studio to handle this. So if you intend on uploading video to You Tube in 16:9, then you will need some advanced computer skills to create your own template. I'm sure Sony will work on this and provide an update to the program in time. At the moment, the program handles traditional 4:3 format for upload to the internet.

There are many cool features hidden within Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack. Only the basics are discussed in the instructional booklets that come with the program. If you explore all the alien like buttons and features, through trial and error, you will be more than happy with this software.
6/10 for ease of use
9.5/10 for cool features
All the best with your movie editing and DVD production.
Regards D.

UPDATE AS OF 28th JUNE 2010
GREAT NEWS!!!!
Sony Creative Software has just released a brand new version of the software featured in this review.
The NEW VERSION is called Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 Production Suite.
All the bugs that I had reported in the above review have now been FIXED! Yeah!!
This is FIVE STAR Software Package now. I give no hesitation in recommending this.
Dex :)

I have played with them all, including doing a fair amount of work in iMovie.

Forget Ulead, forget Pinnacle, or whatver junk you are trying. Sony Vegas is easier to use, more powerful, rock-solid stable, features a built in "Show Me" feature which walks you through anything you'd want to do.

If you were locked in a room for one hour with a camera and software and had to make a basic movie, then walk over to the Mac and use iMovie. You'll be done with time to spare, and no headaches.

Once you have made a couple of movies, the limitations of iMovie will drive you nuts. Then, you graduate to Sony, and you never have to learn another program. It does it all. Intuitively and simply. Not as easy as iMovie, but substantially more powerful and worth the effort.

Pros: Very mature, stable, powerful and relatively easy to use, and cheap, considering all that comes in the bundle and how much you can do with the software.

Cons: Not as simple as iMovie. Only works on a PC.


Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Pro Pack

The "Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Pro Pack" is another fantastic entry into the outstanding Vegas family of editing software. We make instructional DVDs (Introduction to Candle Making DVD) and have used Sony Vegas since version 4. While most of our videos are made using the higher end version Vegas Pro 8, I use the "Studio" version for home videos and quick edits.

What's included (all on one disc):
* Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Edition (editing software)
* DVD Architect Studio 4.5 (DVD authoring)
* Sound Forge Audio Studio (audio editing)
* Cinescore w/themes (sound track creation)
* 1001 Sound Effects
* NewBlue 3D Transitions & Effects ("Cartoonr" is an interesting effect)


Here are my observations:
* Very intuitive and easy to use interface
* Huge selection of effects and transitions
* Support for HD video
* Burns Blu-Ray from the timeline
* Burns standard DVDs from DVD Architect
* "Show Me How" interactive tutorials are very helpful
* Direct YouTube upload support
* Excellent Chromakey (green screen) capabilities
* Great sound editing tools
* Easy DVD menu creation

Other software that the novice/home user might want to consider is Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12 (see my review there), it has less video tracks but more templates/themes.

Over all, I highly recommend "Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Pro Pack"!

Mainly I'll comment here on editing AVCHD content and producing AVCHD (HD) output, since those issues are still relatively new, not generally well supported, not well documented, and have a lot of misinformation surrounding them. AVCHD is the current standard format that DSLRs and HD camcorders use to capture HD (high definition) video content. I have only used Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 (same video editor as in Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack) to make AVCHD videos, so I can't personally compare it to other AVCHD editors, though I have read many other reviews of them and have the strong impression that Vegas is by far the best advanced consumer-grade editor (for both SD (standard definition) and AVCHD).

Vegas has reliably worked for editing my AVCHD/HD content. That is a huge issue, and one that other AVCHD editors may not share. (Some other video editors are notorious for being unreliable. That is, they may frequently crash and even corrupt your project file, destroying all your work.)

AVCHD format video is relatively difficult to decode and requires substantial computational horsepower to do so in real time.

Vegas has reasonable performance editing and rendering AVCHD video on my computer. That is a huge issue, and one that other AVCHD editors may not share. (My computer has an Intel 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo E7400 Processor, 4GB memory, and runs 32-bit Windows XP.) However, in order to edit AVCHD video natively and in real time with my computer, I do have to make certain accommodations. I must choose an appropriate preview size (like exactly quarter or exactly half size) and image quality (like preview rather than good or best), and I may need to buffer the video for it to play smoothly. (Playing a clip once may be a little choppy but also buffers it; play it a second time and it plays smoothly in real time.) If this is unacceptable, a faster computer processor may be adequate, or converting AVCHD to another more easily decoded high definition format may be done. Doing this will reduce the quality, however, unless a lossless conversion is chosen.

Vegas offers many features and capabilities, and allows you to do many useful things, but in exchange for this power and flexibility, the learning curve is fairly steep. Some other consumer-grade editors tend to be easier to learn but offer less user control and place more emphasis on making amateurish-looking effects. However, Vegas does provide a very useful "Show Me" feature to help you learn the basics quickly and painlessly.

A little background for which there is a great deal of confusion and misinformation on the net: AVCHD video can be recorded onto DVD media with a DVD writer, and played back on AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disc players and show true 1920x1080 resolution video on HD televisions. This is fact, though many "experts" on the net have written posts stating that it cannot be done. (Here is one such AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disc player: Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray Disc Player.) AVCHD video of about 40 minutes in length can be recorded onto regular inexpensive single-layer DVD media.

Vegas has an option for creating AVCHD output files, however the audio in the AVCHD file created is corrupt (as of Vegas version 9.0b) and the file created lacks all the structure and supplemental files required for creating an AVCHD DVD. Vegas also has an option for creating Blu-ray output, and that does work. Furthermore, that output can either be written to a Blu-ray disk, if you have a Blu-ray recorder and Blu-ray media, or it can be written to your computer hard disk and then converted to AVCHD-format and written to a DVD disk with a DVD recorder. However, non-Sony programs are required to convert the Blu-ray format output to AVCHD DVD format.

Here is an overview of how to do so:

1) Create and edit your high-definition video in Vegas, and render it out to your computer hard disk in Blu-ray iso image format (Make Movie/Burn it to a DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or CD/Blu-ray Disc/Render image only + Sony AVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc) + Blu-ray 1920x1080-60i, 16 Mbps video stream). (Note: 16Mbps is near the highest bit rate that DVDs support; in particular, they do not support a 24Mbps video stream. If you require a 24Mbps video stream then you must use a Blu-ray writer and Blu-ray media as well as a Blu-ray player. There is nothing wrong or unreasonable with recording your video at 24Mbps for the highest possible quality and then rendering it for 16Mbps output. The results are excellent.)

2) Mount the Blu-ray disk iso image file created in step 1 to a virtual drive on your file system. (You can use the free DAEMON Tools Lite program to mount it. If you use Windows XP you need to install UDF 2.50 file system drivers first, which can be obtained for free. Vista and Windows 7 supposedly support UDF 2.50 natively, but I don't have either and haven't tested them to confirm that.)

3) Use the multiAVCHD program to convert the Blu-ray m2ts video file on the virtual drive that the Blu-ray iso file image was mounted on in step 2. multiAVCHD converts the m2ts file to AVCHD format and writes it and all supporting files in AVCHD DVD structure to your computer hard disk. (multiAVCHD is shareware or something. You can try it out for free. If you like it, you can donate whatever you choose to the author.)

4) Burn the AVCHD DVD structure and files created in step 3 onto a DVD. You can use the free ImgBurn program to do so. You must burn the DVD using the UDF 2.50 file system, which is selectable in ImgBurn.

5) Play your AVCHD DVD on any AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disk player. You get Blu-ray disk quality on DVD media. It's great, but you're limited to about 40 minutes of AVCHD video per single layer DVD.

If your goal is to produce HD video that can be played on computers, then you can edit your AVCHD video source material with Vegas and render it in any of several high definition capable video formats, such as avi or wmv. Files rendered this way are also suitable for uploading high definition video to YouTube, vimeo, exposureroom, dailymotion, etc. (Note: video intended for playback on computers should be rendered in progressive mode rather than interlaced for best quality.)

If your goal is to produce SD video from your AVCHD source material that can be recorded on DVDs and played back on DVD players and SD TVs, then you can do as above but just choose to render your output in an SD resolution rather than an HD resolution.

In other words, Vegas allows you to edit your AVCHD content once, and then render it several times, each in a different resolution and/or format so that you can distribute your production on any type of media for any type of playback hardware, SD or HD. (Of course, the HD versions will have higher quality than the SD versions.) Incidentally, Vegas also allows you to render your output compliant with either the NTSC or PAL standards (not all video editors allow this) so that your production can be played on DVD and TV equipment around the world, not just in the US or Canada or the few other countries that use the NTSC standard.

Basically, Vegas Platinum has many of the features of a professional-grade video editor, but at a consumer-grade video editor price. If you want to produce professional-looking video on a budget, I know of no other choice. By the way, despite all the marketing hype, producing professional-looking video takes a lot of effort and time. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. That's one of the reasons that editor reliability is so extremely important... if you've spent days editing your video to make it the best you possibly can, you REALLY won't appreciate your editor crashing and corrupting your project file, destroying all your work. Just ask most any Pinnacle Studio user if you don't appreciate the significance of this. (I owned two different versions of Pinnacle Studio before switching to Vegas. I haven't looked back. I've read of others' similar experiences with other video editors, too.)

Finally, you can download a free trial version of Sony Vegas from Sony's sonycreativesoftware website. It's fully featured, but only works for 30 days. So, you can test it out with your own gear and see if it works for you before laying out any cash. Amazon.com sells it at a better price than Sony, and you can register your trial version with the code you get when you buy it from amazon so you don't even have to reinstall anything if you decide to buy it here after trying it out. You can probably download free trial versions of other video editors from their companies' respective websites, which is strongly recommended if you are leaning towards another video editor. But test them out with videos of substantial length. Any of the editors probably work fine with a 30 second clip. Try something at least 10 minutes long, unless you will never edit anything that long.

P.S. I have read that including high megapixel still photos in Vegas projects does expose a bug that may cause Vegas 9.0b to crash. If this is true (I haven't tested it) and it's an issue for you then until this is fixed, simply reduce the resolution of your photos in any photo editing program before bringing them into your Vegas project. I have used 3 megapixel photos extensively in Vegas projects without any problems. I don't know what resolution triggers this bug.

I bought Sony Vegas Platinum Pro but when I went to render a 2 hour movie 720x480 with some saturation and noise adjustments is when I found out that it doesn't support Hardware Assist (GPU) encoding, transcoding, or rendering. I just watched the counter click up to 29+ hours to render my movie.

Since I already have Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 installed (and it does use my GPU Hardware) I decided to render it in VSP X2 and it took less than 5 hours, burn and all.

If you go onto the Sony Vegas Forums you will see many people bummed that Sony is not supporting Hardware assist. The canned Sony answer is that they would have to rewrite the core of the program and don't want to do so.

Sony Vegas does have its bells and whistles, especially soundforge which is almost worth the purchase price in itself.

And I know what some of you are thinking....that I didn't have enough hardware to run it properly...WRONG! I have a 3.0GHz Quad with 4GB RAM, a Diamond HD4870 512MB video card, and the SATA disks are Enterprise nearline drives running RAID 1+0 on a 3Ware 9650SE PCIe true Hardware controller.

I place this is the same mistake category (other than SoundForge) as Pinnacle, which is a dog.

Earlier on I was reading the reviews about 64-bit none-compatibility for this software. So I never really decided if the reviews were correct or not. After I installed it on a 32-bit Vista Ultimate it worked fine and incredibly well for it. Then purchased a Dell Studio XPS with Vista Home Premium 64-bit here are the specs for the hardware:


Intel® Core(tm)i7-920 Processor(8MB L2 Cache, 2.66GHz)
Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
6GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs
640GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MB
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

Now after I got the computer set up I was somewhat curious about the patch update for the software. So I did a simple search and it stated in forums that people had 64-bit of Vista and were able to get it to work after they installed the patch. So as I read I decided to install it on my new computer and low and behold it works. All the features are enabled; everything else works fine apparently. If there is a feature that doesn't work with it I'll probably come back and edit this review to state what doesn't work. But so far everything does. Now I'm not to sure about the other versions of Vista cause throughout the forums it would always state Home Premium but no one stated that it wasn't compatible with the other versions of Vista or that it was. If you have Vista Home Premium I would advise this software even if you have 64-bit. But if you have a different version, either research it on the web or just try it anyways. I don't see how they would make it compatible with one version and not the other. I hope people will be able to figure this out sooner or later.

This is my first exposure to the Sony Vegas products. Before this I used Pinnacle Studio 9 and Adobe Premiere 6.5, old products by comparison. I'm a hobbyist so keep that in mind. I'm finding Vegas to be very easy to learn and it does whatever I want so far. I have a Canon AVCHD camera and Vegas edits it with no conversion, though your PC will need plenty of HP to see the clips in smooth realtime. I haven't had an opportunity to burn DVDs yet, so I haven't much input regarding Architect Studio. Cinescore allows you to create some decent sound tracks and is very automated. It's very easy to use. Sound Forge Audio Studio is a very robust audio editing tool. I imagine any hobbyist would be very pleased with this product. It's hard to believe how inexpensive Amazon sells it for.

I am fairly new to video editing. After reading the reviews on Amazon of several well known video editing programs (Corel, Ulead, Pinnacle, Adobe, etc.), I bot this version of Sony Vegas.

I love the program so far but getting started with it was quite difficult (tho, it turns out, unnecessarily so). Like most instruction manuals, the one that comes with Vegas is fairly mediocre (and yes, in very small print, but all you have to do to cure that is print out the manual from the DVD for the product).

Thus, I struggled to learn the program for several days but then realized that there may be some tutorials on YouTube. Sure enough, there are hundreds, and they are extremely helpful. You may want to start with these two, but they are just two of several people who have posted really helpful instructional videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DOqUVbzlD8

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=montagical&view=videos

As for my opinion of the program, this is the only video editing program I have used so far, thus I can't really compare it to others. But after watching instructional video tutorials on YouTube, I'm very satisfied with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 - Platinum Pro Pack.

As for the reviewers on Amazon who complain that the program is not stable, freezes up, crashes, etc., I suspect they do not have computers adequate for the program. For one thing, you just have to have more than 512 mb of RAM. I have 3 GB, plus a Core 2 Quad Q6700 processor running on 64-bit Vista Home Premium.

My only major complaints so far are that (1) Sony made the process of editing out frames far too difficult for beginners, and (2) the instruction manual is not very good. Fortunately, the videos on YouTube are great for offsetting the latter.

But notwithstanding those two problems, this is one very feature-rich and impressive video editing program.

This is a very strong package. The interface looks intimidating and is likely above a very green computer user, but for those that are very comfortable on a PC, this a great. One thing I figured out recently (on Vista) is that when you leave a folder view open of your media (pics or video), and with thumbnails on, you can drag an drop into you timeline without having to look for the file through the Sony Vegas explorer.

The output can be sent out in many different formats to be burned to a DVD. I found that is you have a smaller amount of video, the AVI (uncompressed) format puts out the best picture, but takes up a lot of space. If you are not worried about space, then MPG-2 video seems to be the best bet.

The BEST part of this software versus others that I have used is that it does not lock up or crash. I had many problems with Roxio Media Creator, but that was also several versions and years ago, might be better now. Best of luck.

This program is indeed stable and powerful. However, newcomers will find two big limitations, especially if they want to convert AVCHD video into blu-ray discs. First, nothing in the Studio program quick start guide or help files tells you that adding chapters and chapter menus to your video project requires using a second program, DVD Architect. In fact, the help files for Studio do not even include the term "menus." Why Sony requires two separate programs to simply add chapters and a basic scene menu to your project is never made clear and is a distinct shortcoming. And no documentation even explains the need to use both programs. Second, when you do finally figure out that you need to use DVD Architect to add chapters and menus, the unpleasant surprise is that DVD Architect Studio 4.5 -- the program supplied in this package -- does not allow you to burn blu-ray quality video. For that, you have to pay over $500 for the Vegas "Pro" package. So after buying my Sony AVCHD camcorder and Movie Studio 9, the only thing I can produce that contains menus is fuzzy standard definition video. Sony's claim that this program allows us to burn high definition discs is highly misleading. Yes, you can use Studio 9 to burn HD, but only if you forgo standard disc features.