Customer Reviews

Vegas 6 Revealed: The Official Guide

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

 

 

This book is an excellent resource for someone like me who is a novice to Vegas. I believe that after reading this book and very carefully following the exercises that I have developed a firm foundation upon which to build. It would have been nice if the book went into further detail in some areas, such as vectorscopes, but I guess that would be beyond the intent of the book. After reading this book you will have a firm enough grasp on Vegas' capabilities that you will be able to deftly handle your first few projects. However, I suspect that you, like me, will want to go further and obtain additional in depth information about the hidden powers of Vegas.

My biggest complaint about this book is that the binding is atrocious. Before I read through the first 20 or 30 pages, the pages started to separate from the spine and from each other. My book now lies in many pieces and parts, some comprised of only a few pages, while others are whole sections of the book that became separated. When this first started happening I reached for the Scotch tape, and then the Scotch 2 inch wide shipping tape in an effort to stem the bleeding; I finally gave up. Even with all the taping my book is now comprised of 7 pieces/sections loosely slipped inside the cover.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was a good overview of Sony Vegas 6 and its capabilites. The tips and examples provided were interesting and useful. I would have liked to see detailed handling of topics like color correction and other more advanced techniques. I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted to get a general feel for what Sony Vegas 6 can do and how to do it. One note: There is a reference in the book to downloadable files - but these didn't exist. I e-mailed the author to find out how to get the files. I received an e-mail that he was screening e-mail and I explained what I was e-mailing about. The author never bothered to respond to my request. Disappointing behavior...but the book makes up for it. ;)

The instructions border on moronic... If you haven't used a computer maybe you would need some of advice offered in here, even after the first few pages though you'd be annoyed at the preposterous styling of this painfully dull toilet paper. Nearly all the instructions are written in a border format (literally written on the borders of the page), which would, if properly laid out, wouldn't hit 100 pages. Every single example starts with telling you to open a file (the full process of how to do it), which makes up half of the instructions for each walk through... Painfully stupid and annoying. Maybe the first time is understandable, but doing it on nearly every other page is just filling space. Just by using Vegas by yourself, you will learn as much as you won't from reading this book. This is a pure and unquestionable waste of money and time. I bought Vegas 6 Editing Workshop at the same time by Douglas Spotted Eagle. It's not what I would call the perfect book, but several laps around the earth better then this tripe trash. This may be half the price of the Editing Workshop but it's value is more then 10 fold. Unless you don't like your money and your lookin' to get rid of it... you could still waste it on something better then this.

Doug Sahlin has created a book that takes you through a series of realistic situations and shows you how Vegas 6 let's you be creative. It is not a 'Vegas 6 Bible" but it is a creative way of showing you how to master the complexities of this very powerful software. I am a fairly experienced amateur having used Pinnacle for years as well as UMAX and and MyDVD products. All those software products are good, but Vegas 6 is limited only by your skill level ... at least so far.

I had trouble finding a good reference guide for Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9. I picked this up hoping it would help. Some information is applicable, but as a beginner's guide, it falls short. I ended up purchasing the video training published by VASST. Costs more, but worth it.

To me, this book has a very disjointed teaching style that I found hard to understand/work with - and I have a Ph.D. in engineering! Can't recommend it - probably better to look at books/teaching CDs/DVDs by Douglas Spotted Eagle (the undisputed master of Vegas!)

Vegas is a sound editor (music editor etc) with video editing.
Say again? Most inexpensive video edit mechanisms edit video. Sound is whatever happens in the process. Very hard to add motion clips to a sound script, a reading, a lecture etc. Real video editing nearly always starts with a sound track which has been tailored to the time allowed. Then visuals go in. That's the way it ought to be. That's the way the big boys do it. That's what Vegas is.

But when the product suits the heavy users, how do you wade through the many "features" (distractions?) to know what YOU need to do? This is a good source. The organization is well suited to tasks rather than spin off from "features".

High end users may want neato pearls in gobs. There's some. But the book sticks to the job at hand. Get the program up and running and get the job done. I like that.