Sony Vegas 8 Review:

The Sony Vegas collection combines Sony Vegas 8 Pro, DVD Architect Pro 4.5, and Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding software to offer an integrated environment for all phases of professional video, audio, DVD, and broadcast production, with everything neccessary to let you edit and process DV, AVCHD, HDV, SD/HD-SDI, and all XDCAM formats in real time, fine-tune audio with precision, and author surround sound, dual-layer DVDs. The Sony Vegas 8 Pro interface provides a fully customizable workspace for accomplishing a wide range of production requirements with a wide range of convenient features, such as multicamera editing tools, 32-bit floating point video processing, customizable window layouts and more. Use the Mixing Console for precise audio control. Create standard DVDs with multiple video angles, subtitles, multiple languages, running commentary and even copy-protection flags for masters. Sony Vegas 8 Pro even comes with detailed interactive tutorials that provide walk-through demonstrations of common features and functionality.

I have been a long-time (and very frustrated) Roxio user who, after crash # 953, finally got fed up and decided to try the trial version of Sony Vegas 8 Pro.

Sony Vegas 8 Pro, of course, is a much higher-end product than Roxio Easy Media Creator (version 8 referred to herein for comparative purposes), but here are some reasons why you may wish to reconsider:

1. First and foremost, if you’re serious about video editing and wish to explore new and creative ways to create DVD’s, this one is a must. Roxio will continue to place annoying limitations like 60 second menus.

2. The controls are far more intuitive. Creating a slow-motion shot in Sony Vegas Pro 8 is as simple as ctrl+clicking and dragging a video clip to the desired length. Roxio is a frustrating experience of playing with film speeds until the shoe fits.

3. Playback while editing is no longer a processing problem with Vegas 8. Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 (on a Pentium 4 2.6 GHZ Hyper-thread, 1 GB of RAM, and a 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 card) has an annoying tendency to choke and run home to mommy when another process happens to run at the same time. Sony Vegas Pro 8 takes it all in stride.

4. RENDERING. OH, YES, RENDERING. Roxio seems to think that everything needs to be re-rendered even if the edited video was already an MPEG-2 to start with. VEGAS PRO 8 DOES NOT DO THIS - if it’s already in the right format, it won’t ruin the quality by recompressing.

5. RENDER QUALITY. Roxio offers constant bit rate encoding. Period. Sony Vegas Pro 8 offers 2-pass variable bitrate encoding which allows longer videos to be placed on a DVD, while compressing it at a variable rate so that segments requiring higher quality get what they deserve and segments that are relatively static (i.e., pictures) can be compressed at a much lower rate. Also, a 9 MBPS video encode from Sony Vegas Pro 8 looks better than a 9 MBPS from Roxio.

6. Capturing. Sony Vegas will tell me if my mini DV tape had dropped frames (and so far it has not happened at all); Roxio will not (and it HAS). I’ll make a DVD with Roxio and…surprise!! I need to recapture that portion of the video because it’s shot!!

7. Bugs. Roxio is buggy…VERY buggy. Every time I try to make additional copies of a disc image that I put on my hard drive (because I don’t want to live through another Roxio video encode), approximately 25-30 error messages (no, I’m not joking) will pop up that I have to repeatedly close out of before I can use the burn utility. Not to mention that the initial install of Roxio caused my computer to forget that I had a CD-ROM or a DVD drive. I had to edit my registry keys so that I could “find them” again. Sony Vegas Pro 8 has had ZERO issues with me.

There’s more, but why go further? If you’re serious about video editing and production, don’t settle for less. This program will do it all from video editing, importing, capturing, image effects, DVD creation (including menus), and Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding (INCLUDING 5.1!!). I have only scratched the surface of its full potential–there are plenty of tools to explore in there that can allow you to create very professional looking DVD’s.

—– By Maek

Sony Vegas 8 Features

• Precise editing tools - ProType Titling technology, multicamera editing tools, 32-bit floating point video processing, customizable window layouts, color-coded snapping, improved HDV/SDI/XDCAM support, Cinescore plug-in support, A/V synchronization detection and repair, and auto-frame quantization
• Superior audio control - unlimited tracks, 24-bit/192 kHz audio, punch-in recording, 5.1 surround mixing, effects automation, and time compress/expand. Apply customizable, real-time audio effects like EQ, Reverb, Delay, and more. Expand your audio processing and mixing options with supported third-party DirectX and VST audio plug-ins
• Create standard DVDs with multiple video angles, subtitles, multiple languages, and running commentary
• Fully customizable workspace for efficient, professional workflow
• Detailed interactive tutorials provide walk-through demonstrations of common features and functionality

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