Customer Reviews

Vegas Pro 8 Editing Workshop (DV Expert Series)

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

 

 

It must first be said that Douglas Spotted Eagle obviously understands Vegas, which is the best NLE program for its price. But this book did not live up to the editorial review hype
I purchased this manual hoping for an in-depth Vegas Pro 8 learning experience, but I am somewhat disappointed. Editing mistakes within the book made some parts a bit confusing. And if a working veg file is on the DVD to follow what the book is teaching, use the same image as in the book.. But, the author did do a great job of explaining things that were previously murky to me. (Masking, for example.)
The single most important thing I gleaned is what Douglas Spotted Eagle espouses throughout this manual. EXPERIMENT. Check out every fx - every transition - every filter. Add multiple fx to events - see what happens.
The workshop is advertized as 528 pages, so I figured it would be worth the price. But a chapter touting plug-ins should not have been included. I can get that kind of info by Googling.
By the way, there are many Vegas Pro 8 user "tutorials" posted on YouTube. All free!

I've been wanting a Vegas reference book that starts where the meagre Sony documentation leaves off. So when I saw the Amazon blurbs for this book that said, "a complete handbook for new and advanced user", "exhaustive, richly detailed resource that no Vegas user should be without" and "This comprehensive guide delivers the nuts and bolts of the essential tasks" I immediately bought it.

After looking through it for several days I'm returning it. Contrary to the specific praise I quoted above, this is not a comprehensive reference book, it's more like a compilation of the author's favorite Vegas applications.

There are 90 pages on Vegas audio, many pages in two separate places talking about making video look more like film, a whole chapter talking about third party plug-ins and another chapter on using multiple cameras. But there are less than 20 pages talking about the dozens of video fx plug-ins that come with Vegas, something much more fundamental to my being able to really use this program than any of the above.

And even when the author spends time on a subject I found it incomplete for someone without prior knowledge of the subject. A perfect example is his treatment of color correction in Vegas, something I am very interested in. He presents about a dozen examples of the videoscopes and other color monitors available in the program but never explains how to read them or how to use the information they represent.

If your interests coincide with the author's you will probably find this a rewarding manual, but if you're looking for a book that explains this software in depth and in breadth you will just have to join me in hoping that somewhere someone is writing the Missing Manual for Sony Vegas.

Preface: If you are a beginner and not intending to do video very much, the whole Vegas/DVDA kit may be a bit much. However, if you want a veritable Swiss army knife and are willing to learn, this application can do just about anything you may want, including Blu-Ray DVD authoring. For Hi-def editing/authoring, it's far cheaper than Final cut and most other "pro grade" apps too. Neither the app, review, nor this book is intended for a beginner IMO. It's best for someone who started out on a consumer editing app and wants to grow beyond those limitations economically, or the upgrader.

While the author is acknowledged as an authority on Sony Vegas, this book has some noticeable gaps, such as virtually no information on using the sister application that ships with Vegas 8 Pro, DVD Architect. I am keeping the older Vegas 6 book for this reason. This is the main reason for three stars.

In the areas of DSE's core competencies, such as effects, keyframes and especially audio, the book is an indispensable reference and well worth the price. There are additional chapters in PDF format on the included CD, some useful, such as a glossary, some dated. Despite the deficiencies, it's still the only thing out there besides trolling the web and in the areas covered it's understandable and worth every penny.

Focal Press used to have high editorial standards. But you wouldn't know it from this book. It's pretty much impossible to follow any of the step-by-step instructions, because they have significant errors.

For example, using masks, page 394, looks easy enough. We add six video tracks, and fill some with generated media. Now we select the Parent/Child button in Track 7. There of course is no track 7, and since most exercises take the "wait until we're done and see why we did this" approach, it's hard to guess which track is meant.

In the same exercise, it tells us to select the Track Motion button and confirm our action by observing the position of the "F" in the preview window. Track Motion control doesn't have an F. The Pan/Crop does - so did he mean to use Pan/Crop? Another guess. Time to put aside the book and pull out the Sony manual which keeps looking better and better.

This isn't an isolated example. Almost all the exercises are like this, with multiple errors. Many important steps left out. Look for the button on the left, when it's really on the right and most likely called something different. Or apply an effect to "opening shot" when it really means closing shot. Sample project files can't find their associated video clips, because the path on the CD has changed. What does this tell you? Despite the technical editor's assurance that he pursued his "thankless task" diligently, it's clear nobody even bothered to try out the exercises before the book was released.

I think a lot of these errors arose from sloppy updating, where details that may have been correct from previous versions weren't carefully reviewed against newer versions of the program. For example, the missing file pathname includes "Vegas 6."

The samples are underwhelming. They could have been inspiring, like many of the illustrations in Focal Press's photography books. I could understand if they were simplified to make a point, but most of them are just poorly edited, really bad home movies. And most have bad photography: composition, focus, lighting. Far below the standard set by teens on Youtube.

Poorly organized, poorly written, no evidence of editing except for the editor's self-congratulatory note. Good info on audio. And ProType Titler coverage, though superficial, is mostly accurate.

One review here praised the book because it can be read without being near a computer. I suggest that's the only way to read it. Reading it with Vegas Pro 8 in front of you is just too frustrating.

Took delivery of this book recently. There's a lot of good information in it. Another reviewer remarked that it's not a book for beginners and assumes an existing level of knowledge, particularly as it relates to colour and digital editing. I'd agree with this.

While there is a lot of good information contained in the book, it is without question one of the most poorly written books I've every bought. Graphic examples don't seem to relate to the content on the particular page. There are no references in the written material to the graphic examples so you're left trying to guess what goes with what. There are repetitions of the same discussion. It's a very, very poor editing job as well as less than stellar writing. Having read other books from Focal Press this is a bit surprising.

If you can wade through the poor writing and editing, you can probably pick up some things from the book.

For some reason, this book is far harder to understand than most. As I work through it I also am working through C#.net and those books (Wrox)provide a much better reference and are much easier to understand.

Although the author is, I'm sure, an expert with Vegas, he seems to ramble a bit. One thing that is missing is enough subheaders to make it easy to understand his focus.

When one reads a book and finds a glaring error, then everything else in the book becomes suspect. I found such an error on page 363 where the author is talking about the Event Pan/Crop window but continually refers to it as the Track Motion Window. After spending a day and a half trying to find the buttons that the author was talking about I realized that he was referring to the wrong window.

I would not recommend this book. I guess it is better than nothing, but not up to the quality of the many, many computer related books I have on m shelf.

I liked this book firstly because you can read it even without having a computer in front of you. It is full of pictures and you can read it even when you are traveling. Initially it covers all menus of Vegas one by one and gives occasionally real examples of how to use them. So it's good for the beginners. After that, covers specific methods and there is an accompanying disk containing several .veg projects. So advanced users will also be satisfied. The author appears to have deep knowledge of video and especially audio aspects. My overall feeling is that I have a book I can refer to whenever I need help in Vegas.

The issues that other reviewers mentioned are pretty much all true. Especially frustrating is "Graphic examples don't seem to relate to the content on the particular page." Also, this book has gone through revisions from previous versions of Vegas, so examples and figures are from those older versions. There are typos - which is hilarious in that in one of the intros an editor states that they found them all.

Even with all the warts the book has raised my level of Vegas proficiency to a new level. Oh, Vegas-9 will be out in the next month or so - hopefully Spot and his editors will get their act together and do a major rewrite.

GA

I will just echo the comments made by another reviewer, NDFILMER.
You can read his comment in Amazon's list of 13 reviewers. There are some errors that should have been spotted and corrected before publishing.Otherwise, the manual gives some useful instructions in editing .
Hoever, as NDFilmer states, I would like more careful editing of this work before it is released for publication.

I had trouble finding a good reference guide for Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9. I am a rank beginner at video editing and picked this up hoping it would help since I could not find anything specifically for Vegas 9. 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.