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Powerful but complex video editor
The part of the vast Sony empire that makes its Vegas video-editing software is tucked away in a tiny little corner, metaphorically speaking, which means it gets little publicity, especially compared with rival programs such as Adobe’s Premiere Elements.
The other comparison between these two products is that, just as Premiere Elements is a cheaper version of Adobe’s professional Premiere video editor, Vegas Movie Studio is based upon an advanced program called Vegas Pro.
Adobe has made a big effort to redesign Premiere Elements to simplify it for home users, but Vegas retains most of the rather daunting design it inherited from its big brother.
The basic elements are similar to those in most video-editing programs. There’s an Explorer window that allows users to locate audio and video clips on the hard disk and a Preview window where they can examine individual clips in more detail while editing.
Finally, there’s the Timeline window, which runs across the entire upper half of the screen. This is very similar to the timeline displays found in most video-editing programs, and allows you to arrange the various audio and video clips in sequence to create a complete movie.
The Timeline in Vegas Movie Studio is festooned with icons and tools that will seem confusing to the inexperienced user. Icons with names such as Make Compositing Child and Lock Envelopes To Events may make sense to trained professionals, but they’re not going to mean much to someone who just wants to put together simple home movies.
Sony is clearly aware of the complex interface because it has made an effort to include plenty of tutorials and help files. There’s a Show Me How button that activates some very good tutorials, and a help tool that displays extensive information about any tool that you click on. Even then, we can’t help thinking that it would have been better if Sony had simply reworked the program’s design to make it more suitable for ordinary home users.
Vista compatible: Yes
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Better than 3 stars
My adventures in video editing started with using Premiere Elements 3 which I was mostly happy with. Yes it's extremely easy to use. BUT, version 4 felt dummied down and the inclusion of do it for you publishing that produced lower quality than if I'd done it myself along with other issues I won't get into here because this is a Vegas Movie Studio 8 review, I finally decided to chuck Elements and after trialing a few I chose Sony Vegas MS 8 Platinum. It was daunting the first day but I got quickly up to speed...and frankly decided it felt like more a professional program. You're get a LOT of power for little cash and it produces magnificent results. What's more, if you're into scoring your own music it integrates excellent with ACID Studio 7. The interface isn't fancy but I totally disagree with making it "easier." Some things could be improved like putting the scrub bar with the preview but that being said, it's not that difficult to learn at all and produces magnificent results. It runs cleaner on more systems than anything out there and deserves more recognition than being hid in a corner of the market. Am I biased? Yes, I've only used it for a month after 2 years of Premiere Elements and find the 1 day I took to get acclimated was worth the effort. Don't be fooled, this is the top Video Editor on the PC for prosumers bar none.
Posted by Mark E. Saetta, 23 Nov 2007
Vegas vs Premiere Pro
Well, I use both - I discovered Vegas while halfway through a large project, so couldn't switch to it. However, Vegas is amazing. For those doing multicamera work (music videos, for example) then Vegas is hugely better. I struggled to edit together a music video that had 9 camera passes in Premiere; in Vegas, I loaded the material in and found you could do the same job in minutes - at least for the first, rough pass. I also like that you can apply effects to an entire edited sequence - yes, you can do all this in Premiere Pro but nowhere near as easily. And if you want to have a go at masking or compositing, then again, I'd say go for Vegas. Finally, if you are using HD, you will find Vegas is a LOT quicker to work with as it seems to have been optimized for working with HD - much more so than Premiere Pro.
Posted by Mark Harmer, 27 Nov 2007