Customer Reviews

Sony Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Platinum Edition [Old Version]

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you are looking for a solid, problem free, exceptionally powerful video editing package in the $100.00 range, Vegas Movie Studio is the answer. The +DVD Platinum Edition comes with three (3) separate software bundles: Vegas Movie Studio, DVD Architect Studio, and ACID XMC. Each of these software packages can be used separately or together to complement a single project. Installation and registration of all three products is a breeze.

I have found Vegas Movie Studio to be a very solid and reliable editing tool. This is a product packed full of video FX, audio FX, cool transitions, keyframe editing capabilities, and much more. I have completed several projects and am happy to report that I have encountered ZERO problems. Gone are the system crashes, the 2 week edit sessions that won't ultimately render, and the sitting around hoping for a fix from the vendor that never comes. And yes, I am an ex-Pinnacle user and am glad to say that there's no looking back once you've gone to Vegas. The learning curve for Vegas is a little steeper and will require some reading of the manual. This is o.k. though. The Vegas approach to video editing is complete immersion in the process - very little is hidden from you allowing very granular levels of control in the technical and creative process.

DVD Architect Studio is the DVD authoring tool which allows you to "front end" your finished video project and burn it to a DVD. By "front end" I mean add menus, button controls, scene selections, etc., all the stuff you see on any professionally produced DVD. DVD Architect is another powerful tool that will also require a little reading before mastering, but the end results will be worth it.

ACID XMC is Sony's mid-entry level version of ACID Pro 5. In short it's a loop-based music creation tool. It's a neat little tool if you want to dabble in recording or creating your own digital music. You may find this beneficial to your video projects or you may never use it. Note: Vegas does not support SmartSound (the one feature I miss from Pinnacle). However, Vegas has the ability to easily rip any song from a CD which can then be added to a video project.

Vegas Movie Studio is available for a 30 day downloadable trial if you have any doubts. There are user forums which I have found to be very helpful as well. Don't miss out, this is a great product for the price.

BACKGROUND: Two years ago, I auditioned the Pinnacle, Ulead, and Adobe entry video editors along with Sony's Screenblast Video Editor version 3. And, I purchased Sony's editor for my entire middle school lab (25 computers) out of my pocket, and I received my money's worth! My youngest students (6th grade - 12 years old) found it both fun and easy to use.

NOW: I have purchased Sony's version 6, as it remains far better than Pinnacle' Studio 10 and Adobe Premiere Elements 2 (which I also personally own).

The tutorial section is the best of these editors, no doubt from watching my students. They are fascinated with the program immediately. After I provide a short demonstration, they charge ahead creatively. Having paid for the lab's set of Sony's video editors, you know I carefully evaluated where to spend my money.

The more advanced computer classes I have, produce a video program shown over our school's television system monthly. It is created with the Sony editor. And when I ask my advanced students to produce training products to help younger classes learn other software such Audacity and Serif's DrawPlus, they almost always choose Sony's editor. Microsoft's Powerpoint and Camtasia's Studio are its competitors and its their choice on which to use.

I am still happy!

I have had nothing but success with this software with it installed on two different computers. Even my old Pentium III, 500 MHz can handle it. It is solid and never crashes. It performs as advertised with no locked features. Reading their web board, you will see that it has had few, if any, reported issues. The installation is smooth, quick, and trouble-free.

I dumped the bug-ridden Pinnacle Studio products and moved this product. I've never looked back and am very glad I purchased this product.

At work, I edit commercial DV video using Final Cut Pro 5 and do effects in Apple Motion on a powerful MAC workstation. I'm also learning After Effects 6.5 Pro & 7 Pro. I needed something cheap to do small home projects. I also needed something for creating DVD's.

I did a lot of research on the best Windows based DV NLE (digital video non-linear editor) in the $50 - $150 price range and Sony Vegas Movie Studio came out on top in every category especially with end user satisfaction and stability. I looked at: Adobe Premiere Elements, AVE Visual Editor, Avid Free DV, Cyberlink PowerDirector, EditStudio, Jashaka, MainActor, Magix Movie Edit Pro, Pinnacle Studio, Roxio VideoWave, Ulead Videostudio, Vegas Movie Studio, Video Edit Magic and Windows Movie Maker. Again, Sony Vegas Movie Studio came out on top in every category especially with end user satisfaction and stability. Many of the other top programs received so many complaints of instability, software crashes and OS system file corruption that I was surprised and disappointed. So I knew Vegas Movie Studio was the only real choice. With the trial version, I was able to do some nice editing and was sold on it immediately! Why?

Sony Vegas Movie Studio really surprised me to be so power packed with features I would have only expected in a professional editor such as ripple, 4 tracks of video and 4 tracks of audio; the ability to reorder tracks by stretching them above or below other tracks; the ability to layer video/audio and do simple compositing; the ability to repeat content on a track by dragging it on along the timeline ... a feature even Apple Motion can't do without having to create new layers. Although some of the features are a bit childish the way they are displayed such as Video FX samples and text editing being somewhat limited, I still remind myself that this is a $100 consumer level product. Then there are keyframes for precise timing control!!! Man!! Keyframe editing in a $100 program! This is the bomb!! Oh yeah, 3-Wheel primary color correction like in Final Cut!! It can output in Quicktime .mov format too!! It can display output on an external monitor. It can adjust the speed and even reverse video in a very intuitive way! It can be extended with plug-ins. This is almost crazy! ... for $100!! No way! If you dig deep, tweak some of the settings and utilize the keyframes, you can get some unexpected multi-layered video effects that take PIP (picture-in-picture) to a whole new level! ... far beyond what I found in the manual or the company advertises can be done.

Of course, it's not perfect. The DVD Architect Studio is a joke; especially compared to iDVD on a Mac. There's absolutely no imagination on the part of the theme designers whatsoever and the software's ability to design cool motion based menus, if possible, is lame at best! I haven't tried ACID XMC yet. Nor have I checked out the bundled sound effects yet. I just wish the video editor had better support for compositing. I'd love to be able to incorporate Digital Juice wipes, overlays and alpha channel stills. I guess I'm just spoiled by the pro apps. No video scopes either but this IS consumer level software.

Nevertheless, the NLE video editor alone at the low price I paid is well worth giving the software 5 stars! Kudos to Sony!

I bought this to make DVDs of home video, and it's awesome. I think a lot of people think making a DVD is as simple as clicking an icon and it does everything for you. It's a little more involved than that. Basically, be prepared to use a couple of the programs included in this set. Let me explain how I use this software:

1. Open up Movie Studio, and capture the video from your camera. This creates a bunch of AVI files that you can now work with.
2. Use Movie Studio to add a nice fade-out, or crop the sections of the video you don't want, add some music or sound effect tracks, and play with the volumes of each audio track to your liking, and re-render in the same format as the source, but as a different filename/location. (It should most likely be a resolution of 720x480 pixels)
4. Now that you have all your prepared videos, open up DVD studio and add them to the project, add menus, change menu backgrounds, change fonts...etc. The manual that came with the software is pretty decent, and the online tutorials can even aid you in your active project! (Just the other night, I went through the tutorial for making a picture slideshow, and it integrated right into my current project.)
5. When you're satisfied with your DVD project, simply prepare it (It creates the file structure that will be copied to your DVD) then burn the prepared project.

I made a DVD in less than 5 hours, and I did a lot of bells and whistles, adding music, a cute intro movie with sound effects and music, and the DVD was about 4.1GB when done.

The complexity of the software is directly proportional to how artistic you want to be. It can do a LOT of stuff. You probably won't use the ACID XMC, unless you want to CREATE your own music.

The steps I explained are pretty basic. You can't be afraid to poke around, and remember that these editors are non-destructive, so if you're playing with a video in Movie Studio, and you add fades, or text, or FX, it's not destroying your original work. Knowing this should give you some comfort while being adventurous and exploring the software.

This software has never crashed my machine, and I haven't had any problems other than my own lack of double-checking my work before burning a DVD that had things I forgot to edit/add.

Bought this program to use with my new Sony HD3 HD Camcorder, as it is one of the few programs that capture HDV video.
It's everything you need and more for movie editing and transferring to DVD or File format. The tutorial is not too bad but it's not great in the fact it doesn't exactly tell you what to do after you finish a certain step. I had to actually use the Help file a few times to accomplish a few tasks, but with a little time and patients I was able to accomplish exactly what I wanted to do with my movie.You can edit and add text,titles, sound effects, music, and transitions to your home movies. I'm not sure if there is anything you can't do with this program. Burn it to DVD or save it as a HD video file or a Smaller file that you can email. Once installed, I recommend updating to the latest version as this will fix a few bugs and add some needed DVD widescreen options. I'm very satisfied with this program.

With a whole bunch of video clips (DIVX) already sitting on my harddrive. I was able to drop clips in, learn about crossfading, title text media, and trim a segment without using the Trimmer. I had a really cool video going after only 2 nights.

I really like the fact that Quicktime H.264 was an output option, that it handled DIVX input without complaint, the output pixel resolution and frame rate are all easy to set.

One feature I was really looking for is the ability to slow some sections of an image down, like when a skier kicks up a spray of snow. This program lets you do that (down to 25% normal speed), but you have to split that portion of the section, and then apply your slowdown to the entire split section. They have this ability (somewhat) with the "FULL" version, so there help tells me. What they need to add is a waveform that you can adjust the speed precisely, all the way down to zero. The only other problem I've had is that you need a pretty fast computer, and lots of memory, to view previews without missing frames during effects. A 2.2GHz computer isn't quite enough.

Do not buy Pinnacle, Adobe, or Vegas (or any other program for that matter) without first downloading their 30-day trials (yes, they each have one). I did that, and found that Vegas spoke to my style. Click, drag, stop clicking. It's not that hard. Browse through your files and drag the video into the timeline (which you can customize to be the size that you want, since the layout has several boxes that can be rearranged to your liking). Go to the properties and change the play speed of a video to half as fast, and use the ACID music studio to slow the speed (and pitch) of the sound down as well. When you're done, make a DVD using the Architect. Use the Capture Video to work with your firewire or usb port (you may need an additional utility to transfer via a composite wire...the yellow, red, and white cords...). Basically, play with it in the trial, see if you like it, and maybe buy it. Best 90$ (I got it on sale) I ever spent.

I made a feature length film with my high school buddies on this nifty thing. Sure, my harddrive is now devoured by the files (movie files are gigantic and require ram, for those of you who are complaining because you don't have the 512mb that it needs). I've successfully bluescreened a face onto a tree to make it look alive, and I even used the ACID program to lower the pitch of his voice - No one recognized who played him, and it looked magnificent. I know my stuff, so using only a solid color of cyan and a picture of one butterfly wing I downloaded from Google, I made a fluttering and flappy winged fairy that I bluescreened onto the screen where my actors had been talking to nothing. Using the transition elements, I made a Yu-Gi-Oh card-duelist scene where the defeated fighters would zip out via a spinning card slide. I was also able to edit the picture as I pleased, whether it meant coloring it red (evil..ooo!), making something filmed during the day appear night with the night filter, adding some light bursts to create some sweet special effects, or simply taking something that was filmed standard screen and making it wide screen. You can edit any effect or transition that you want, and you can even save your layout so the "Night-Filter" which is actually just a 'color-curve' can be sitting right next to the effect you customized: the blood-red filter.

You can edit to so many video formats, but this is only the home-edition, remember, so don't expect high quality hollywood style formats (although the platinum does offer HDV formats, which is amatuer quality). The movie maker works with the DVD maker so that it'll even tell you what format works best on the DVD Architect. Here are a few: Mpeg-1, Mpeg-2, Quicktime, Real Video, AVI, wmv, and if you use the more complicated rendering selection you can go a bit further into the file formats that nobody uses or cares about.

If you don't have a fast computer, don't buy this. Not because this software sucks on slow computers, but movie editing and dvd burning in general needs an up-to-date supply of harddrive (I advise 40gb at least) and ram (256mb, but preferably 512mb) (recommended requirements are the wisest to follow). That's the tech specs.

This program suited my movie-making methods. I liked the drag-n-drop personally, as well as the many file formats, the dvd program, the music program, and all the cool effects as well. They even update their site (not often I must add) with cool things like DVD templates, moving background videos, backdrops, buttons, etc - but honestly, you can make anything you want through this program with some good ol' Paint and Google Images. You can either take a treasured childhood video, tinker the image a bit (if it was recorded badly it wont change much, sorry. *is a Film Major*) to make it look better and plop it on a DVD for family storage and treasure, OR you can do what I did. Make a 2hr 42min feature length film with a Sony Handycam, making even your own floating fairies and talking trees and epic adventures.

May I also add that if you're willing to pay the (what is it?) 1000$ or 2000$ (or whatever it is) bill, you can even upgrade your studio by a download. But that's for the Pros. You aren't a Pro, are you? Vegas Movie Studio is wonderfully adapted from professional software to suite home movie editing. Try it. I dare you.

I am a beginner with video editing and decided on Movie Studio after reading some of the reviews. I am happy to report the the product performed as promised right out of the box. This was my first time editing video, my prior projects were slideshows with a product Roxio puts out and this put the Roxio product to shame.

The initial setting up of the software was painless as was the capturing of the video from my camera. Be warned though that the product does not support some video taken from still digital cameras. With my mini-dv camcorder though everything was smooth.

The timelines and ability to cut/paste and trim audio and video seperately or together is easy to use once you get the hang of it. Yes, like anything worthwhile you need to spend time with the manuals and tutorials but if this is a complaint then you don't need this product.

There are enough effects and transitions to put together some nice projects and the ability to pan across still photos is a awesome.

There is a decent how-to section to show you how to get things going and the package even includes 2 discs with sound effects to add to the project.

As for the DVD software while it works well I am still trying to master it to get beyond the basics. I found the how-to tutorials much less helpful than in the editing suite but I can still make some decent dvd menus.

All in all I can't complain. Everything has worked like it should. I have only had one glitch burning a dvd which a simple reboot of my computer fixed. The editing suite has not once crashed and even though the rendering times are long the final product looks great.

I have not tried other products but I really can't imagine anything out there that will work much better than Movie Studio for the same price.

ST

Vegas Studio is a great video editor. Once you get used to the menus and navigation it is quick to use and has all the features you need. I have used Pinnacle 10 in the past, and still use it for some things, but thought it was intuitive but extremely buggy.

Vegas is a great product but I do have a bone to pick. If you are planning on using it for DVD authoring be carefull. Creating a Single Layer DVD works just fine, but Dual Layer Authoring has a few bugs. So far I haven't managed to create a Dual Layer project becasue of errors I'm getting about DVD project size. It seems that Vegas has trouble with knowing/ predicting file sizes so you may get similar errors.

Their one saving grace is that the e-mail tech support is very helpful and I'm currently working with them to figure out a workaround for this problem.

Over all it is a very good program, and probably the best you can get for the money, but no program is perfect.