Customer Reviews

Vegas Pro 8 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

Coming from the Pinnacle products, I was very pleasantly surprised by the stability of the system: so far no bug, no crash, no re-install. Also, the software seems to be relatively light since it runs without any problems on my old machine: P4 3Ghz, 1 Gb of RAM, XP SP3. In addition, it is a very powerful editing tool that comes with DVD architect, very powerful as well: more famous competing products like FCP or Avid Xpress are at least twice as expensive. What is also very nice is that you can download for 30 days a trial version from the Sony website that is almost not limited (except for color correction): you can make sure that Vegas will run smoothly on your machine and that you get used to the interface. I highly recommend this product.
Update after a few months of use: I noticed that there was no plug-in for image stabilisation, a bit cheap for a Pro version, knowing that Pinnacle Studio 9 had such a plug-in and was sold less than $100. If you want such a plug-in, you will have to buy the Mercali plug-in, starting at $50...
Also, cleaning the sound track from undesired noises is not at all practical with Vegas pro, and in the end very limited. There are a lot of plug-ins but none really to efficiently remove unwanted parasite noises, such as wind or applauses. Here Sony clearly pushes you to buy Sony Sound forge, which is unacceptable. I bought Magix Audio Cleaning for $35, it is light, simple and in the end quite efficient.
For these 2 reasons, I still recommend the product but if I could, I would downgrade it to 4 stars.

Having read the other reviews let me just say that I think this is the best version of Sony Vegas, I have been using it since V1, but it wasn't until V4
when Sony bought it that I got excited about it. It started as an audio editor and I know many professionals, including demonstrators for competing products that do much of the audio editing in Vegas because it is so intuitive. It is great for anyone wanting to learn because there is much training materials available from people like Douglas Spotted Eagle and Gary Kleiner. This is a very deep program and so you can be a beginner and be productive, but as you advance you can learn the advance functions. Many forgo buying a compositor such as Boris or Adobe After Effects because much of the ability is contained within Vegas.
Much of the criticism on the reviews here of the program is due to their buggy computers not the program. I use Vegas currently with Vista 64bit and all though it was not made for Vista, it run flawlessly, they will have a Vista 64bit version by Sept 08. Just being able to do 30 bit color render puts them ahead of the pack. There are so many things that distinguish its superiority over programs like Apple Final Cut Pro (audio tools, Acid support etc) and Adobe Premiere (needs $1000 card for effective efx preview)the couple of reviewers that have compatibility problems should download the trial version and I have had excellent knowledgeable support from Sony support with native english speakers.
There are two junior versions of this program, one in particular the platinum version of Sony Movie Studio is an incredible bang for the buck.
When you consider that this program also includes Dvd Architect is an amazing value. The fact is I have used the competitors software, Vegas is the software of choice for independent filmakers and many use it for its audio tools alone or for making slide shows. It has won awards this last year for excellence and has forced the competition namely Apple and Adobe to change their interface (elim A/B timeline, to a single time line)
and so copying is the highest form of flattery.
One of the reasons Vegas is the most intuitive program for video editing is that originally it was designed by musicians, not film editors. Other programs mimic the way film editors had been editing for nearly 100yrs.
It started as an audio program that added video edit capability and being lazy musicians, they made it very easy to use. The fact is that it is also a deep program and when you consider it all the bit color, compositing, the audio editing it provides all the tools you need and if you master them, you will be a great editor

After various trials with other software i'm going to buy this after using the demo for 5 days.

Have tried various consumer products, the worst of which was definitely Pinnacles rubbish but this has offered me as much as I can ask. The principle thing it does is work. I know this sounds odd but every other piece of consumer video editing software i have tried is buggy and crashes frequently, or wont read a format. This didn't crash once in 5 days and created a 2 hour multi source format dvd (including H.264 from a panasonic Hd SD1) with no crashes no fuss, just worked.

For me $500 is alot to pay for software (as a consumer doing this for friends and family) but after the hours tearing my hair out with substandard software im buying this.

Vegas 8 in my experience is buggier than v7 or even v6. That said, it is reassuring to know that Sony coders are very good about getting user feedback and fixing issues. For now, I am opening my VEG files and saving them in the new version while retaining the original v7 counterpart as a precaution since you cannot go back. Saying that, I find Vegas 8 to be a worthwhile improvement overall and very intuitive.

As far as the app goes, I edit HDV video and keep it in native .m2t stream the entire process until final output to DVD. I recently bought one of those fancy hdtv's and have had the joy of seeing the file rendered back to the HDV camcorder; We were stunned by the incredible quality. Sony Vegas lets you "print" to your camcorder so you can use the camcorder as an HD source. Quality is comparable to blue-ray dvd.

Final comment, IMO this app is probably far more than a casual user will want; this app is more for the serious hobbiest or pro. With ALL these apps there is a learning curve, and Adobe's premiere ELEMENTS and Sony Vegas MOVIE STUDIO are probably more appropriate for someone who will only use it to edit baby's first steps, birthday parties, etc. The reason I say this is "lightweight" apps tend to have more built in templates than the Pro apps. Lightweight apps will have pre-built birthday and Christmas graphics for titles and backgrounds, for example. Be aware, lightweight apps sacrifice flexibility for simplicity.

I recommend you read the reviews, then download the free trials of apps you think may be useful before buying. Some people just don't "get" the interface of one app, while finding another app quite intuitive.
See you in Hollywood!

I demo'd both Sony Movie Studio Platinum and Vegas Pro 8. MSP was priced right for it's features, but VP8 hands down outweighed MSP. For home movies/videos/occasional user, go with the MSP. For the serious hobbyist and professional, go with the VP8. MSP limits the number of tracks you can have per project, VP8 is unlimited, which gives you better control of overlays and takes. I added Cinescore after using VP8, and it integrated seamlessly. No Regrets! Using Vista on a 3 Gig Pentium D with 1 Gig RAM -- No hangups!

Sony "Vegas Pro 8" is simply one of the best high-end video editing software on the market. The package includes Vegas Pro 8 and DVD Architect Pro 4.5. (Update 1/3/2009: Vegas Pro 8 users can update to DVD Architect Pro 5 for free, providing Blu-Ray support).

We have produced over 20 instruction videos using Vegas (starting with Vegas 4) and could not be happier with the results. Every step from capturing the footage off our Mini-DV Canon GL2 Camcorder to authoring the master DVD is a smooth process.

Here are some general observations:

* The interface has a nice layout right out of the box, but is also easily customized to suite your personal editing habits
* The included plugins are top notch and compare nicely with some of the high dollar add ons for Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects
* Easier to use and learn than Adobe Premiere Pro
* Unlimited Video and Audio Tracks
* Great interactive tutorials are actually useful
* Great chromakey (greenscreen) functionality

Home and casual video editors might also want to consider Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9, which has most of the same features (with a limited number of Video and Audio tracts), but is much less expensive.

Highly recommended!

CFH

You would think the following would be very compatable--- Sony Vegas software; SONY camcorder; Sony DVD/VHS player; Sony DVD/CDROM writers installed in PC--- BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS! I don't know how anybody can get anything done with this SLOW, QUIRKY, nearly unmanageable LUMP of programming garbage! Maybe writers of this bomb just assumed that everyone buying it would be a doctorate degree in motion picture/films or something--- because they throw all this arcane terminology around that even a person with a college level education has trouble figuring out what it means. Did you have an idea what "COMPOSTING" was before using this program? Well you won't have a clue until you spend a few days searching, trying to find it in the HELP files! "Movie" is in the software title somewhere but how in H3ll are you supposed to write a ONE HOUR MOVIE to DVD when the STUPID PROGRAM RENDERS 11GB sized file? How stupid is this--- well. did somebody actually try to use this stupid program BFORE they put it on the market? Don't go here, you will have wasted tons of money amd even more time before you just toss it in the trash can.