Vegas Pro 8 [OLD VERSION]

by Sony

Product Features

• Precise editing tools - ProType Titling technology, multicamera editing tools, 32-bit floating point video processing, customizable window layouts,
• Color-coded snapping, improved HDV/SDI/XDCAM support, Cinescore plug-in support, A/V synchronization detection & repair, & auto-frame quantization
• Superior audio control- unlimited tracks, 24-bit/192 kHz audio, punch-in recording, 5.1 surround mixing, effects automation, & time compress/expand.
• Apply customizable, real-time audio effects like EQ, Reverb, Delay, and more.
• Expand your audio processing and mixing options with supported third-party DirectX and VST audio plug-ins

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000VVC01A
• Item model number: SVDVD8000
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 10, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,006 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #77 in Software > Video & Music > Digital Video > Video Editing

Product Description

The Vegas Pro collection combines Vegas Pro 8, DVD Architect Pro 4.5, and Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding software to offer an integrated environment for all phases of professional video, audio, DVD, and broadcast production. These tools let you edit and process DV, AVCHD, HDV, SD/HD-SDI, and all XDCAM formats in real time, fine-tune audio with precision, and author surround sound, dual-layer DVDs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why get anything else? Bug free and SOLID performance!, October 19, 2007

By 

Maek (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Vegas Pro 8 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I have been a long-time (and very frustrated) Roxio user who, after crash # 953, finally got fed up and decided to try the trial version of Sony Vegas Pro 8.

Vegas Pro 8, of course, is a much higher-end product than Roxio Easy Media Creator (version 8 referred to herein for comparative purposes), but here are some reasons why you may wish to reconsider:

1. First and foremost, if you're serious about video editing and wish to explore new and creative ways to create DVD's, this one is a must. Roxio will continue to place annoying limitations like 60 second menus.

2. The controls are far more intuitive. Creating a slow-motion shot in Vegas Pro 8 is as simple as ctrl+clicking and dragging a video clip to the desired length. Roxio is a frustrating experience of playing with film speeds until the shoe fits.

3. Playback while editing is no longer a processing problem with Vegas 8. Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 (on a Pentium 4 2.6 GHZ Hyper-thread, 1 GB of RAM, and a 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 card) has an annoying tendency to choke and run home to mommy when another process happens to run at the same time. Vegas Pro 8 takes it all in stride.

4. RENDERING. OH, YES, RENDERING. Roxio seems to think that everything needs to be re-rendered even if the edited video was already an MPEG-2 to start with. VEGAS PRO 8 DOES NOT DO THIS - if it's already in the right format, it won't ruin the quality by recompressing.

5. RENDER QUALITY. Roxio offers constant bit rate encoding. Period. Vegas Pro 8 offers 2-pass variable bitrate encoding which allows longer videos to be placed on a DVD, while compressing it at a variable rate so that segments requiring higher quality get what they deserve and segments that are relatively static (i.e., pictures) can be compressed at a much lower rate. Also, a 9 MBPS video encode from Vegas Pro 8 looks better than a 9 MBPS from Roxio.

6. Capturing. Vegas will tell me if my mini DV tape had dropped frames (and so far it has not happened at all); Roxio will not (and it HAS). I'll make a DVD with Roxio and...surprise!! I need to recapture that portion of the video because it's shot!!

7. Bugs. Roxio is buggy...VERY buggy. Every time I try to make additional copies of a disc image that I put on my hard drive (because I don't want to live through another Roxio video encode), approximately 25-30 error messages (no, I'm not joking) will pop up that I have to repeatedly close out of before I can use the burn utility. Not to mention that the initial install of Roxio caused my computer to forget that I had a CD-ROM or a DVD drive. I had to edit my registry keys so that I could "find them" again. Vegas Pro 8 has had ZERO issues with me.

There's more, but why go further? If you're serious about video editing and production, don't settle for less. This program will do it all from video editing, importing, capturing, image effects, DVD creation (including menus), and Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding (INCLUDING 5.1!!). I have only scratched the surface of its full potential--there are plenty of tools to explore in there that can allow you to create very professional looking DVD's.

Buy and enjoy!!!! And NO, this software does NOT have bugs as mentioned by Dash's review.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Good Product At A Fair Price, November 2, 2007

By 

Jimmy Ray "Just apply Occam's razor." (Bloomfield Hills, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vegas Pro 8 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Although I've been a customer for years, this is my first review on Amazon. I'm an experienced computer user (web designer/tech consultant) running a mildly overclocked Dell winxp pro quadcore with 4Gb RAM and 768Mb video RAM (so take that into account when evaluating this review).

I completely disagree with the earlier reviewer who trashed the product. Although I'm somewhat of a newbie to video (I previously owned Premiere Elements 3 & 4), my experience with Vegas Pro 8 has been that it is very stable for a relatively complex program (certainly more stable than Premiere Elements 4). The only bug I've encountered was some erratic behavior with the pro titler, which was completely cured by downloading/installing the Microsoft .Net 3.5 (Beta 2) update. Vegas requires Microsoft .Net 3.0 be installed to run properly (perhaps the source of the earlier reviewer's problems). Also, it goes without saying that it's usually good policy to be running the manufacturer's latest stable release of any product (currently ver. 8.0a of Vegas, which can be downloaded at the sonycreativesoftware site).

Unlike the Adobe video products (Premiere, After Effects, etc.), the interface "look" is quite basic, but very functional. Everything just seems to work pretty much the way you would expect it to. It comes with a fair amount of useful transitions, effects, transparency support, and supports the VST plugin architecture (check out the NewBlue motion blends/effects).

In fairness, although it can do a LOT of what the Adobe Production suite can do (and even some things it can't do, e.g., Sony AVCHD support), it lacks some of the advantages that the Adobe suite has (at roughly 3 times the street price) in terms of integration with other technologies/products (e.g., Illustrator, Flash, etc.). However, it does recognize/import Photoshop psd files and Flash swf files, the latter being particularly useful for their (vector-based) high quality rendering and native background transparency.

I've discovered that there are a lot of dedicated Sony Vegas Pro users out there (some in professional editing environments). If you're looking for a very solid, very reasonably priced "prosumer+" level video editor, you should take a long, hard look at this product (download the 30 day demo). I really don't think you'll be disappointed.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pro Video editing at an amazing price point, December 19, 2007

By 

P. Verberne "Media Vortex Studio" (Wisconsin USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vegas Pro 8 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Vegas Pro 8 is aimed at the professional, prosumer and broadcast market. its able to handle multi camera inputs and contains sophisticated color correction tools, a DVD production platform, surround sound capabilities and will work with a wide variety of formats including HD - not the kind of stuff most folks will dig into who just want to cut video together and put simple titles on. I think that if you want to wow your friends even with your family video work, it is worth learning how to work on a pro platform at this price, especially since it contains some Cinescore basics (canned music) and the best audio editing capabilities on a video app I have experienced. Great audio is the difference between a great video and a mediocre one. I have worked on Adobe Premiere and Ulead MediaStudio, and basic editing is pretty much the same with all of these apps. However, the value is in the details. Most of what makes Vegas Pro 8 such a good value requires sitting down and learning the workflow and capabilities. There is a great user base to get a lot of free information and good training materials available. The 30 day free trial is a great way to put it though its paces. You can still as of this writing purchase Vegas 6 at B&H Photo for 79.00 and learn much of it on that platform, or spend the additional 99.00 at Tiger Direct for the Pro 8 upgrade and have a top of the line state of the art editing platform for less than $200. If you are composing video for the Web, Adobe Production Suite has many more capabilities, but if you are doing straight independent film/video production to DVD or for broadcast, this pretty much has everything you need except talent!