What do you think of Vegas 8 Platinum?

[Jensen]

I'm Looking to step from my cheap (starter) editing program, I dont have alot of money to spend. I see Vegas 8 Platinum is under $200 and looks great. Some of the things I am working on an novice/intermediate level are short productions and music videos. I am currently using Avs4you editing software and have found myself running out of options to use with videos. Plus I was having trouble with the end result after encoding music videos with a seperate audio track synced in. I would like to hear pros and cons, and if there is something better for under $200 aswell. Thanks

Jensen

[guns1inger]

Vegas Movie Studio 8 Platinum should cover pretty much all of your needs at this time. There are cheaper solutions that might suit you now, but they don't have the growth potential of Vegas Movie Studio. Probably the only comparable package in that price range is Premiere Elements. Cheaper, but with less expansion possibilities, is the Ulead VideoStudio range.

As a very happy Vegas Pro user, I am admittedly biased, but regardless I think your choice is a sound one.

[Jensen]

I looked at Premiere elements and didn't think it can do as much. Out of curiousity, you can add things to vegas pro? I imagine upgrade packs? I havent been able to find an in-depth review of what all can be done with it. Thanks for you advice

Jensen

[guns1inger]

Not sure what you means. There are plugins that add extra effects and transitions etc, although not the same wide range as Premiere Pro, which can also use many After Effects plugins.

For the most part, I use Vegas for editing, colour grading/correction and overlays etc. Any source clean up is usually done in Avisynth before I come into Vegas. I find most transitions cheesy, and use only a small number on a regular basis. My installation is pretty much vanilla except for Magic Bullet and a few free plugins from the net.

You can use WAX2 as a plugin, which opens up many of the plugins for virtualdub so you can use them on the Vegas timeline as well.

[Jensen]

I must correct myself, I referred to Vegas 8 platinum as pro. I assume 8 has even less than pro and premier. I was speaking of the possible opportunities to buy add-on effects. Are there none.

I downloaded the trial and love it so far. I know there are limitations to the trial, though I dont know what they are and I have only been able to get 60 sec of the video.

I have a couple of questions maybe you can answer. Can I Remove the audio from certain clips on a time-line? An example of what I mean, when making a music documentary with a friend, we went from an introduction using the cam mic ,to filming them performing the song being recorded by the studio w/audio from the audio cd track, to a summary with the cam audio. With the previous prog. I encoded the clips idividually then opened them together to get what I needed, a semi-clever solution but time consuming.

If I'm using a consumer mini-dv cam to capture from with, will my capture in vegas be enhanced at all? Can this be done?

I agree with you on the transitions, I do find them useful when going to credits or a still.

I'm also looking to have a video overlay where the second video is transparent over the main video, and hopefully be able to pan between the 2. Can I do that with this or is this something even more advanced? Out of curiosity in what way do you use avisynth before going into your editing?

Thank you again for a quick response

Jensen

[guns1inger]

You can have up to 4 video and 4 audio tracks in Movie Studio, whereas for Vegas you are limited by available memory only.

The full Movie Studio Platinum package includes third party transitions, and there are certainly more available.

There are a couple of ways you can work with the audio. To simply remove audio from a clip, click on just the audio track and hit Del. Your audio should disappear, and the video remain. More subtle is to use the volume envelope. This is added at the track level, and allows you to add points and vary the volume up and down smoothly. By layering audio on different tracks and using volume and pan envelopes you can smoothly bring different audio in and out of the mix.

I find with most DV footage I need to at the least colour correct, and often play with black levels etc. The platinum version of Movie Studio has the three wheel primary colour corrector that ships with Vegas, and can do most standard enhancements.

You can do basic overlay - look at the text generators etc - as well as being able to use the opacity envelope to x-fade between video tracks.

I suspect the key limitations will probably to do with encoding features that require licenses, such as AC3.

[ingeborgdot]

I don't mean to hijack this thread but also have many questions.
I have vista 64 bit and love it to death. People can complain all they want about it but it is much more stable than xp. The only problem is the software companies are so outdated and slow they can't keep up with todays advancements.
I have found that Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 to work with vista 64 bit. I have found that Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate to not work. I have not tried Ulead Video Studio Plus or the Sony editing program along this category. What all in one seems to be the best and the one that people like? Have you used it in vista 64 bit?