Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9
by Sony Creative Software
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Software Reviews of Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9
Customer Review: HD and AVCHD editing
Summary: 4 Stars
Mainly I'll comment here on editing AVCHD content and producing AVCHD (HD) output, since those issues are still relatively new, not generally well supported, not well documented, and have a lot of misinformation surrounding them. AVCHD is the current standard format that DSLRs and HD camcorders use to capture HD (high definition) video content. I have only used Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 (same video editor as in Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack) to make AVCHD videos, so I can't personally compare it to other AVCHD editors, though I have read many other reviews of them and have the strong impression that Vegas is by far the best advanced consumer-grade editor (for both SD (standard definition) and AVCHD).
Vegas has reliably worked for editing my AVCHD/HD content. That is a huge issue, and one that other AVCHD editors may not share. (Some other video editors are notorious for being unreliable. That is, they may frequently crash and even corrupt your project file, destroying all your work.)
AVCHD format video is relatively difficult to decode and requires substantial computational horsepower to do so in real time.
Vegas has reasonable performance editing and rendering AVCHD video on my computer. That is a huge issue, and one that other AVCHD editors may not share. (My computer has an Intel 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo E7400 Processor, 4GB memory, and runs 32-bit Windows XP.) However, in order to edit AVCHD video natively and in real time with my computer, I do have to make certain accommodations. I must choose an appropriate preview size (like exactly quarter or exactly half size) and image quality (like preview rather than good or best), and I may need to buffer the video for it to play smoothly. (Playing a clip once may be a little choppy but also buffers it; play it a second time and it plays smoothly in real time.) If this is unacceptable, a faster computer processor may be adequate, or converting AVCHD to another more easily decoded high definition format may be done. Doing this will reduce the quality, however, unless a lossless conversion is chosen.
Vegas offers many features and capabilities, and allows you to do many useful things, but in exchange for this power and flexibility, the learning curve is fairly steep. Some other consumer-grade editors tend to be easier to learn but offer less user control and place more emphasis on making amateurish-looking effects. However, Vegas does provide a very useful "Show Me" feature to help you learn the basics quickly and painlessly.
A little background for which there is a great deal of confusion and misinformation on the net: AVCHD video can be recorded onto DVD media with a DVD writer, and played back on AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disc players and show true 1920x1080 resolution video on HD televisions. This is fact, though many "experts" on the net have written posts stating that it cannot be done. (Here is one such AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disc player: Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray Disc Player.) AVCHD video of about 40 minutes in length can be recorded onto regular inexpensive single-layer DVD media.
Vegas has an option for creating AVCHD output files, however the audio in the AVCHD file created is corrupt (as of Vegas version 9.0b) and the file created lacks all the structure and supplemental files required for creating an AVCHD DVD. Vegas also has an option for creating Blu-ray output, and that does work. Furthermore, that output can either be written to a Blu-ray disk, if you have a Blu-ray recorder and Blu-ray media, or it can be written to your computer hard disk and then converted to AVCHD-format and written to a DVD disk with a DVD recorder. However, non-Sony programs are required to convert the Blu-ray format output to AVCHD DVD format.
Here is an overview of how to do so:
1) Create and edit your high-definition video in Vegas, and render it out to your computer hard disk in Blu-ray iso image format (Make Movie/Burn it to a DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or CD/Blu-ray Disc/Render image only + Sony AVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc) + Blu-ray 1920x1080-60i, 16 Mbps video stream). (Note: 16Mbps is near the highest bit rate that DVDs support; in particular, they do not support a 24Mbps video stream. If you require a 24Mbps video stream then you must use a Blu-ray writer and Blu-ray media as well as a Blu-ray player. There is nothing wrong or unreasonable with recording your video at 24Mbps for the highest possible quality and then rendering it for 16Mbps output. The results are excellent.)
2) Mount the Blu-ray disk iso image file created in step 1 to a virtual drive on your file system. (You can use the free DAEMON Tools Lite program to mount it. If you use Windows XP you need to install UDF 2.50 file system drivers first, which can be obtained for free. Vista and Windows 7 supposedly support UDF 2.50 natively, but I don't have either and haven't tested them to confirm that.)
3) Use the multiAVCHD program to convert the Blu-ray m2ts video file on the virtual drive that the Blu-ray iso file image was mounted on in step 2. multiAVCHD converts the m2ts file to AVCHD format and writes it and all supporting files in AVCHD DVD structure to your computer hard disk. (multiAVCHD is shareware or something. You can try it out for free. If you like it, you can donate whatever you choose to the author.)
4) Burn the AVCHD DVD structure and files created in step 3 onto a DVD. You can use the free ImgBurn program to do so. You must burn the DVD using the UDF 2.50 file system, which is selectable in ImgBurn.
5) Play your AVCHD DVD on any AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disk player. You get Blu-ray disk quality on DVD media. It's great, but you're limited to about 40 minutes of AVCHD video per single layer DVD.
If your goal is to produce HD video that can be played on computers, then you can edit your AVCHD video source material with Vegas and render it in any of several high definition capable video formats, such as avi or wmv. Files rendered this way are also suitable for uploading high definition video to YouTube, vimeo, exposureroom, dailymotion, etc. (Note: video intended for playback on computers should be rendered in progressive mode rather than interlaced for best quality.)
If your goal is to produce SD video from your AVCHD source material that can be recorded on DVDs and played back on DVD players and SD TVs, then you can do as above but just choose to render your output in an SD resolution rather than an HD resolution.
In other words, Vegas allows you to edit your AVCHD content once, and then render it several times, each in a different resolution and/or format so that you can distribute your production on any type of media for any type of playback hardware, SD or HD. (Of course, the HD versions will have higher quality than the SD versions.) Incidentally, Vegas also allows you to render your output compliant with either the NTSC or PAL standards (not all video editors allow this) so that your production can be played on DVD and TV equipment around the world, not just in the US or Canada or the few other countries that use the NTSC standard.
Basically, Vegas Platinum has many of the features of a professional-grade video editor, but at a consumer-grade video editor price. If you want to produce professional-looking video on a budget, I know of no other choice. By the way, despite all the marketing hype, producing professional-looking video takes a lot of effort and time. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. That's one of the reasons that editor reliability is so extremely important... if you've spent days editing your video to make it the best you possibly can, you REALLY won't appreciate your editor crashing and corrupting your project file, destroying all your work. Just ask most any Pinnacle Studio user if you don't appreciate the significance of this. (I owned two different versions of Pinnacle Studio before switching to Vegas. I haven't looked back. I've read of others' similar experiences with other video editors, too.)
Finally, you can download a free trial version of Sony Vegas from Sony's sonycreativesoftware website. It's fully featured, but only works for 30 days. So, you can test it out with your own gear and see if it works for you before laying out any cash. Amazon.com sells it at a better price than Sony, and you can register your trial version with the code you get when you buy it from amazon so you don't even have to reinstall anything if you decide to buy it here after trying it out. You can probably download free trial versions of other video editors from their companies' respective websites, which is strongly recommended if you are leaning towards another video editor. But test them out with videos of substantial length. Any of the editors probably work fine with a 30 second clip. Try something at least 10 minutes long, unless you will never edit anything that long.
P.S. I have read that including high megapixel still photos in Vegas projects does expose a bug that may cause Vegas 9.0b to crash. If this is true (I haven't tested it) and it's an issue for you then until this is fixed, simply reduce the resolution of your photos in any photo editing program before bringing them into your Vegas project. I have used 3 megapixel photos extensively in Vegas projects without any problems. I don't know what resolution triggers this bug.
Customer Review: Basically Sony Vegas Pro, but cheaper
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had the trial of Sony Vegas Pro and this is almost the same. It is the best video editing software I have used so far, and it makes it easy to edit basically any file types.Customer Review: Excellent software
Summary: 5 Stars
I liked everything about this software from Sony. While there a little bit of a learning curve, it is not as challenging as some of the pro versions. And there are many tricks on You Tube that explain just about anything you want to do with it. I have not had any problems with the software and I can make a DVD with it in very little time. I have also used it to render high definition files with no problem. I have seen reviews where some other brands take hours to burn a DVD but not with this software. I have compared it to others and while some others were easier to use, the time to burn DVDs on the other programs took considerably longer. I do have 6GB of ram that came with my computer and I am sure that helps a great deal. I am not sure that you need that much ram but I did see some reviewers that had trouble with the software. I used this software on an older computer with less memory and it worked fine. The good thing is that you can download a trial version from the Sony site to try it out before you buy it to see if there are any issues. That is what I did along with other trial versions from other companies before I bought this version. And in my case, Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 won hands down. Customer Review: Sophisticated and time consuming to learn
Summary: 3 Stars
Wow, this is a challenge to use. I got this to edit HD mpeg-4 movies from a Flip. The Flip software (the version as of 10/31/09) is very intuitive but not sophisticated. Sony Vegas is sophisticated but not intuitive. I decided to recreate a movie I made with the flip in this software just to compare. It took me about 4 minutes with the Flip software and about 1 hour with Sony Vegas. I didn't use any of the tools other than a title screen, end credits and changed the audio from the video track to an .mp3 song from my iTunes library. Unfortunately, after all the work and pre-viewing the video, I couldn't turn it into a movie. The software kept crashing. I determined it didn't like my .mp3 file. I use a sound leveling software which modifies the mp3 file slightly so all the songs are the same level on my iPod. Some video editors don't seem to mind the modified songs, but this one does. Many, but not all of the .mp3's crashed the software. I was forced to use a .wav file to make it work.
The movie did look nicer due to the ability to stretch some clips that were to short as well as change the way the shots transitioned. Unfortunately, not all .mp3 files work. In all, there is a failry steep learning curve to learn this non-intuitive software. The help files get you through it but aren't written in a language a beginner will easily understand.
Customer Review: As unintuitive as it gets - Crash-o-rama
Summary: 1 Stars
As a person who is pretty well versed with software and usually picks up on interfaces and software methods quickly I have to say that this is one of the most unintuitive software packages I have ever used. I admit I am not an expert in video editing but I am no stranger to the concept of using time lines, tracks, transitions and effects. What that in mind the methods one needs to use to implement very simple tasks in Vegas is just absurd.
After using this software for several days and putting a solid 8 to 10 hours of time into trying to create a very simple 3 minute video that should take 30 minutes max to create, I have simply given up on this software. I was able to create my video, but the time and pain I endured in the process was just not worth it. This same 3 minute video took me about 15 minutes to create in Adobe Premier the very first time I used the program. Premier was very easy to figure out even with no use of the help system, but Vegas was very difficult to use even with frequent reference to the help system.
I also had significant issues with crashes when rendering video with Vegas. This occurred regardless of the output format (.avi, .mpeg4 etc). This crash was not due to using overburdened hardware or memory as I am running XP Pro on a E8200 Core 2 Duo CPU with 3 gigs of RAM.
It may be that this software has tons of features and may do a lot for the price, but unless you are prepared for a very painful and long learning curve I would look elsewhere.