PINNACLE VS. SONY VEGAS- NEW TO SITE

[krufruf]

Hi there. I'm new to site and not sure where to post this - so I'll start here.

I currently own Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus (past user of Stuido 8 and 9). All versions have given me extensive grief. I love everything Studio has to offer - but the instability and system crashes are unbearable. I have almost 2GB of Ram and a 350GB hard drive with WindowsXP - so I thought my hardware was enough.

My question: Does anyone have great success with a package called Sony Vegas Movie Studio +DVD Platinum? My last project I created in PINNACLE consisted of about 200 still photos and about 3 or 4 video clips captured from my dvd recorder. I included many different transitions, fading effects, title slides, menus, and music from cds. I then rendered to a DVD. The final project was approx. 40 minutes long. What I would like to know is if Vegas Movie can do everything that I mentioned? (combining stills and videos, music from cds, fun/creative transitions, background rendering, dvd burning..) And is it stable? (no crashes!)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I really have to switch products and don't want to make the same mistake twice! THANK YOU!

[mwkurt]

Hello,

I'll try to help you out a little bit. Compared to Pinnacle Studio, Vegas is rock solid! I have and use Vegas Video. Vegas Movie Studio is based on the same engine. So I would highly recommend VMS. Crashes will be a distant memory for you should you switch.
You will not have the amount of plugins available to you that Studio has. In fact there are very few plugins for Vegas and what ones that claim to be do not seem to play nicely with Vegas. Vegas' designers did not make Vegas so that plugins could be implemented easily.
As far as dropping photos on the timeline...you can do that however, reading the Vegas boards gives me the impression that the results can be hit or miss. There are some different settings in Vegas that need to be used to give decent results. Some even suggest using a slight blur on the photos to prevent shimmering and such. I would prefer not to use any blurring on photos so I don't use Vegas for that purpose. Some don't use Vegas for photos at all and prefer to use something like Canopus Imaginate for photo shows. Which I use.
I would suggest that you head over to the Sony website and read the forums over there and get some ideas and suggestions from those very knowledgable folks. There are some very helpful people there. Do a search for different terms like photo, slide show, etc.
Overall...Vegas is like a Cadillac compared to Pinnacle which would be a Volkswagon. One more thing...with Pinnacle you almost need a supercomputer to make it work. Vegas is very computer friendly. You don't need much to make Vegas work wonderfully. I assume the same could be said of Movie Studio.
Mark

[slacker]

I concur with mwkurt 200%. Of all the packages I have tried, Sony Vegas+DVD Architect and Sony Movie Studio are in a league of their own. As mwkurt said, photos are not a problem and questions regarding them can be answered in one of the many Vegas forums.

Mark

[rcguy]

Any editor is better than Pinnacle 8 thru 10!!

[krufruf]

Thanks for the input! I'm torn. Pinnacle has some really cool features....the transitions, the pip, chroma key... etc. I guess I'm looking for a package that does all the same things - but has some sort of stability to it. I have a few big projects coming up and I know I can't live with Pinnacle any longer.

Does anyone know if Sony Vegas Movie has picture in picture? Or Chroma key abilities (putting a foreground object in a different video scene) .

Thanks all for your help!

[mwkurt]

Hello again,

Looking over the abilities on the Sony website, I see this:


Transitions and Effects
More than 185 customizable 2D and 3D transitions
Nearly 300 customizable video special effects
Add text animation, titles and scrolling credits
Red-eye removal tool
"Green screen" chroma key effects
Pan and crop tool to animate still images
Video and audio time stretching


There a 4 tracks for video, so if it is anything like Vegas then yes you can do P-I-P. Why don't you download the 30 day free trial version and try the things that you need?
Mark

[krufruf]

Thanks. I also was looking at Sony's site. I'm a bit concerned about the limitation of 4 audio tracks - as my last project in Pinnacle was 6 audio tracks (very lengthy).

I'm definitely going to download the 30 day trial version.

Thanks again.

[Bjs]

Sony vegas movie studio + dvd is very close to an "all-in-one" , from start to end ... and reasonably priced , though the standard edition dose not support ac3 audio .

Standard features cover (290+) customizable video effects , and (180+) customizable 2d / 3d transitions ... pic in pic should be in there ... somewhere ... have not had time to play with it yet .

As for stability ... it's rock solid ... but to get the best out of it for your own projects it is worth visiting the forum's to seek best advice .

To cover all it can do with freeware would require around 12 programs ... and for a newbie , likely to consume hour's of scripting , cutting , stripping , conversion ... Then again , you may spend as much time in vegas , if the result's were anything but what was expected .

To get the same results from freeware : requires time

Avisynth
Vdub
Besweet
Bbmpeg or quenc
Gimp
Dvdauthorgui
Pgcedit
Imgburn
Wax2
Blender
Visualsubsync
Subtitleworkshop
Batchdemux
Ifoedit or muxman
Vobedit

Addon

Audiocity
Super
Syncview

Time , and coffee ...

[kdc300z]

I have no problems whatsoever with Pinnacle Ver12 Ultimate. No lagging, no freezing, nothing. My pc is a Pentium 4, with Ati basic card, and onboard sound, 1gb ram, PC3200. I was very worried when I bought it because of all the problems people have had with it. But I guess I may possibly just be lucky that im not having issues with it? I dunno... But its packaging was too appealing to me and I bought it anyway....but no problems. I am assuming that the high % of people that have had problems are online discussing what a POS it is, and the remaining folks that dont carry on....

[live4fun]

Ulead Video Studio 11.5 plus is best option for you.
it does almost everything what you need. more over it's easy
to handle...

you can download 30 days Trial version and see whether it meet your requirement.

http://www.ulead.com/