I’ve always been a long-time fan and user of Sony Vegas video editing software. In fact, I use Sony Vegas Pro nearly every day. I also use Final Cut Pro about as often.
So I know the advantages and disadvantages of both quite well.
To date, Sony Vegas has never garnered the user base enjoyed in the “professional world” by the likes of Final Cut, Adobe Premiere and Avid. While there are multiple reasons for this, it really comes down to the fact that Sony Vegas looks, acts and works differently than other traditional, professional video editing applications.
As a result, it gets picked on in the industry…as in “Yea, it’s really good software but…”.
Well now Sony appears to be addressing those “buts…” with their latest release, Vegas Pro 9. I should note the software is not available yet (it has a release date of May 11), so I can’t review it, but I can tell you about some of the notable new features.
First, they’ve added support for Red cameras. Red cameras are basically Hollywood-quality cameras without the Hollywood camera price. They also happen to be some of the most drooled-over cameras around. You can learn more about Red cameras here.
They’ve added sophisticated lighting effects like glints, rays, fill lights, defocus and more. These allow you to simulate lighting and re-direct the focus of your footage. Over 190 customizable video effects are now included.
They’ve added new window layouts to speed the process of video editing (they’ve also darkened the color scheme to be more consistent with other video editing applications).
They’ve added support for gigapixel sized images. This means you can put really big photos in the timeline and then pan them for very dramatic effects.
They’ve added new templates for rendering Sony AVC (.MP4) videos. Everything from YouTube to HD for the Internet settings.
They’ve added…well the list goes on. If you’d like to learn more, just go here.
Is any of this earth-shattering? No. But what it means is they’ve updated the software so it’s more inline with other premium video editing packages. And for you that means you can get these features for about half of what you’ve have to pay for other software.
And no, Sony Vegas Pro doesn’t match Final Cut, Adobe Premiere or Avid tit-for-tat yet…but it has taken a nice step forward (at least on paper). And as always, it has a much smaller learning curve.
What I like the most is that they added the sequence functionality you see in Premier Pro, so now you will be able to group tracks and have sequences within sequences. To me, this is a major improvement worth the upgrade.
Janet Garcia said:
“…they added the sequence functionality you see in Premier Pro, so now you will be able to group tracks and have sequences within sequences.”
I do not see where you can have Multiple Sequences in the same Vegas project. Nor do I see where you can ‘Group Tracks’ in Vegas Pro 9.
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Dave Kaminski said:
“…Sony Vegas Pro doesn’t match Final Cut, Adobe Premiere or Avid tit-for-tat yet…”
Neither FCP, Premiere, nor Avid match each other tit-for-tat either.
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I use all of the mentioned NLE’s and must say that historically Sony Vegas runs the best/smoothest and offers the most intuitive user experience. You do not have to leave Vegas to complete most tasks where you need a ‘Suite’ of the other NLE’s. There is no NLE on the market that can handle Audio like Vegas.
Out of the box its GUI is set up different than the other NLE’s but the seasoned editor can arrange the GUI same as they may be used to then it functions same as any other 3point editor.
Janet Garcia said:
“…they added the sequence functionality you see in Premier Pro, so now you will be able to group tracks and have sequences within sequences.”
This functionality has been there since before version 9. However, it’s not very obvious how to do it. You create a whole separate project for each sequence, then you can import that project into another project and it treats it like a single sequence in the new project. Changes to the original sequence project are automatically updated in the main project.
Yes Todd but that is not the way it works in Premiere Pro. In Premiere, you create 1 project file and can create many sequences inside that same project and drag them into another sequence and you need to change something to any secuence, you also do it from within the same project. There is no need to save a project and then import it back into a new project.
Vegas is smoother than Premiere with larger files, for sure. However, Premiere beats the crap out of Vegas for ease of editing to one frame’s accuracy. If I have several takes from different angles I can use the multicam in either. But in Premiere, I open the Trim window and match each take/shot with precision and confidence. In Vegas, it’s annoying to do that kind of editing. With Vegas you can import DVDs from the DVD drive, that’s also nice. Nothing even close in Premiere. Vegas also outputs a very nice WMV file somehow, based on the same settings. I prefer Premiere, but Vegas has a lot of edges. I actually choose which one I use based on the project.
My first NLE software was Premier 4.0, but I never get use to it the right way because I found it difficult to learn, then I updated to version 6 that was the same story… even reading books it was kind of annoying, once I got Vegas 7 OMG, that was the end of Premiere… Will never go back to Premiere… But I do use Adobe After Effect for Visual FX
You’re giving Final Cut Pro WAY too much credit. Yes, it’s an EXCELLENT video editing software, but don’t make it seem like it’s on par, equal to or BETTER than AVID or Sony Vegas Pro because it’s not. Vegas is smoother and much more user friendly than FCP, not to mention it has TONS more professional grade video effects & transitions. I’d even say Adobe Premiere Pro 4 gives FCP a run for it’s money. If you’re going to create user movies or montages FCP is ideal, but for professional high quality editing Premiere 6, Avid and Vegas 8 & 9 are as good as it gets.
Vegas is a great great tool. I think is the NLE of the future.Avid is sticked to the old users, Final Cut i think is first of all a success of the great marketing of Apple. Premiere is worth ONLY for the dynamic link with the AE. Please support VEGAS is a very creative tool for everything!!!
I predict that sony vegas will overtake the video editing software andf will stay on top perhaps forever, huge prediction, but i have seen vegas like a long distance runner gaining ground, i just love the vegas, i think it’s the best and will only get better and better till oops, guess what, year 2012, sony vegas has over taken and is unstoppable, remember i said it today.
i have to admit I love vegas. It was very easy for me to pick up and learn. Once I had a project I just started finding things one by one. It took some time but from what I see it has only gotten better. The work I do comes out very professional and people seem to like the end product of it all. So I am definitely excited about getting this newer version,
Have used Sony Vegas from Verion5 upgrading everytime a new release is out, and for sure Vegas Pro9 has the ulimate tools needed by Video editors to output quality HD video. Got my copy yesterday and editing has never been easier and faster to complete with this new bundle. Was never interested in using Premier since it consumes alot of system resources. If its Visual Effects, everyone should try AE, but Vegas is the ultimate editors tool for pro and post-production jobs. Hail VegasPRO for its sweet editing magic and 3D environment unlike premier.
Have used Sony Vegas from Version5 upgrading everytime a new release is out, and for sure Vegas Pro9 has the ulimate tools needed by Video editors to output quality HD video. Got my copy yesterday and editing has never been easier and faster to complete with this new bundle. Was never interested in using Premier since it consumes alot of system resources. If its Visual Effects, everyone should try AE, but Vegas is the ultimate editors tool for pro and post-production jobs. Hail VegasPRO for its sweet editing magic and 3D environment unlike premier.
I’ve used Sony Vegas since 2006 on my personal projects and since then I’ve used Premiere editing video for a newspaper website and I’ve tried FCP and Pinnacle out of curiosity and personally I would not use anything else but Vegas. It is one of the most intuitive and rock solid pieces of software I have ever used and as far as I’m concerned the best NLE with a workflow that ensures editing video is fun and hardly ever work. I certainly give FCP the nod in the professional filmmaking arena though. Oh and I have a deep hatred for Premiere now that’s not likely to go away soon. I was mildly interested in Sony’s new acid pro but I’m too attached to Sonar to care to try it.
Hi,
I mainly work on the MAC for media these days but really like Vegas pro and had a lot of time & money invested; so I ran it in MAC bootcamp [dual boot XP] which turned out to be really hard on my workflow.
I’m happy to report that it runs pretty good in the pararells XP VM so far on the small projects I have tried ! I wonder if they will make a MAC version in the future ?
Hi Dave,
Far as Vegas never garnered the user base enjoyed in the “professional world” by the likes of Final Cut, Adobe Premiere and Avid. You are currently wrong…I have checkout all the popular user base forums.
Sony Vegas is currently the most popular as far consumer and prosumer users. I was really surprise. Now looking up on the Digital Juicer forum, DV.com, You Tube tutorial’39, 500’/292,000
and others you get the sense more people asking questions, using and posting video’s.
The problem that Sony is having is marketing and promotions. Don’t just post an Ad of your product on different web sites, you have to explain what it can do. All the big 3 have high-end video tutorial demos of what they product can do on their websites. Sony had one high video out when Vegas Pro 8 came out last year. The other tutorials look basic and amateur. Also, they need to update website look. The site is looking very old fashion of a 10 years old site. Right now Sony has the ball they have to run with it!!!
i discoverd vegas by accident and never looked back. i am a self taught editor and found vegas to be very user frindly. clearly with vegas 9 i have seen improved quality in my output. it is a very stable software. i tried adobe but keep comong back to vegas for ease and simplicity. could do with some more transitions though.
I am an Adobe fan and have been using Premiere Pro 2 for some time now in preference to other – Ulead and Pinnacle NLE softwares. Since changing my computer to 64bit system with Vista OS, I have had to abandone PP2 which does not support Vista. I did a trial of PP4 but found it to be great, but too expensive for me, luckily, I was introduced to Sony Vegas two days ago by a company at an offered price that is almost 40% lower than Sony’s recomended tag.
After checking out the Sony site, I downloaded a trial version of Vegas pro 9. I found Vegas Pro 9 much easier to use with the mouse and the slow motion is very smoothe indeed. I like the single frame capture button which gives a better image than PP2’s version. However, I find the learning curve to be quite steep, being so different to the other NLE softwares. I need to get some tuition videos or at least a classroom ebook or so to master it as well as PP2. Can anyone recommend a good book? I am so very excited about Vegas pro 9
I was stuck on premiere for years, waiting 1 hour for a 2 minute preview, crashing, sloooow edit… well I found Vegas 3 and my editing change super fast, now I jump from FC in apple to vegas in Windows, they are the nicest marriage I’ve ever known, in avid you need so much hardware, premiere just trying to mimic avid GI and attitude…..
There is a reason why all of Hollywood and most Indie filmmakers use Avid or Final Cut Pro. Simply put, they are the best designed with the most features and the best compatibility out there. I personally would take FCP over Avid any day but do see the usefulness of both for different projects. One of the great things about these programs is the audio files can be ported in from very well made professional audio software. Most film audio in narrative film work is overdubbed after the project for clarity and to eliminate unwanted ambient noise. Between Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas Pro, I am more likely to take Premiere simply because I have the option to send the output file to another editor for further work. Sony is notorious for using proprietary file extensions, and this is of major concern to me. I don’t like to be locked into just one option for my work, so unless I see proof of compatibility with other programs, I will undoubtedly reserve Vegas Pro for my last choice option when purchasing my editing software.
I think we’re having the wrong discussion here. The choice of NLE that an editor uses has far less to do with a successful edit than the skill and knowledge of the editor.
To imply that professional work can’t be accomplished with NLEs in the class of Vegas, Avid, Final Cut, Premier Pro, Edius, etc is wrong.
Pro level work can and is done with all of these NLE’s as well as some of their less wheeled counterparts.
The most important thing, in my opinion, is finding a program that works for you. One that makes you more efficient and makes the process of editing more fluid.
NLEs on this level do 99% of what the overwhelming majority of users need them to do. If you have a specific situation that only one NLE can handle than your choice is clear. For the rest of us we should be looking for something that fits the way we work.
Become A Navy Pilot
DOES ANYONE KNOWS HOW TO OPEN OR IMPORT IN VEGAS A SEQUENCE EDITED IN FCut??
TRIED OMF BUT DOESN’T WORK PROPERLY
Vegas pro offers flawless AAF export and import, I have used this feature to export projects to Nuendo for audio Post and also to import nuendo projects for video editing. Protools makes you pay fro Digitranslator to have this feature. Vegas is the best and fastest video editing software I have ever used. There are 3 major problems with it though as I see it.
1. When capturing form HDV tape I cannot recapture at a later time as the reel information is not stored. I have tried to capture with same clip names but it seems that the re-capture is not frame acccurate, therefore the clips dont align properly in the sequence. This basically measn that once you have clips in the computer for editing these are the clips you will be working with. Final cut pro has a much better logging and capturing facility.
2. I love the way Vegas utilises multicamera, (different formats, and syncing) but there is one piece missing. A Preview of the edit in real time. You can only ever have full screen preview or multicamera mode. This makes choosing shots difficult and is not the way I do Multicam on any other system, such as hardware switchers, avid, final cut and Premiere.
3. Realtime Full res playback. Although this is dependent on the processor, graphics etc there is no way to lock playback to full quality full frame rate for preview. Even if the project is prerendered there is still no way to guarantee full playback. Final Cut does this with an option for playback. I find myself saying to clients on the couch a lot “This is not a glitch, it’s just the playback from the computer. ANd then they inevitably say, “But this doesn’t happen in Final cut.” The only way I can get full res full frame playback is to export a file into media player to preview.
If vegas fixed these 3 issues it would knock every NLE off the shelf. It is without doubt the most complete software program for digital production.
Please Sony, fix these issues so I dont always have to defend Vegas to clients and editors alike who are Brainwashed by industry talk.
Dave
I used, in my past 14 years of Professional video editing Adobe Premier/Pinacle Pro-one, Final Cut, Avid Liquid, AVID MC, New Premier, nothing like Sony Vegas 7, 8, now 9.0c.
Multicamera mixing of different frame size and rate by track mixing is one of the best on the market.
My new Panasonic HPX300 P2 equipment with RayLight Ultra is the easiest work flow for multicamera editing.
Try to mix DVCPROHD with sony HDV footage on the same sequence with any other NLE and than export the sequence to any format, like BLURAY. Nothing like SONY VEGAS.
(sing R and B style)
Love Vegas…I cant quit you baby..no matta how hard I try.
Just so solid and fast ooohhh audio so smooth oooohhh
Everyone always tryin to hate on you…but we gona last.
Sorry
Truth of the matter is that Avid and Final Cut are the leaders of the pack for a reason. They have the tools that filmmakers need. I do agree that Vegas does have some well conceived features, but it will not gain professional acceptance for at least another couple of years. Vegas really needs a bit of time to mature from the prosumer package it is to a full on professional contender. Sony also needs to get Mac support as well. The majority of film editors out there edit on a Mac because Macs tend to be superior to PCs(with all of their problems and conflicts) in creative work. Adobe messed up by yanking Mac support when they acquired Cool Edit Pro and renamed it Premiere. If you want to be a competitor, you have to pay attention to what everyone is using, and I do not know of many editors that use PCs. Macs are more flexible and tend to be faster for editing, whether you are using Final Cut or Avid.
Vegas is a great great tool. I think is the NLE of the future.Avid is sticked to the old users, Final Cut i think is first of all a success of the great marketing of Apple. Premiere is worth ONLY for the dynamic link with the AE. Please support VEGAS is a very creative tool for everything!!!
Quit trying to advertise for Sony and give reasons you like or don’t like something, in detail. Just an advertisement helps nobody. Smells like an automated post to me.
I started out using vegas 3 found by accident while surfing the net and I felt that it was different but had a great feel to it while editing.
I have been through ALL versions of sony vegas and found the latest version (9)to be the best yet and a decidedly superior product, although I did make the investment in the Adobe Premiere Suite (CS4)however, I feel that vegas 9 gives an equivalent dollar for dollar bang for the buck that and can out-perform premiere once it it mastered by the editor.
WC
I’ve used Premier Pro for years and even worked with Final Cut when I went to school. I was hardcore about Premier but decided to give Sony Vegas 6 a chance since it came free with our Sony Z1U. I have to admit it didn’t take me long to figure out that Sony Vegas was far more superior when it came to production value and speed. I edit 100x faster with Sony and it handled HD footage with barely any processing power. I love it’s chain feature when it comes to color correcting and effects and audio is far more superior then the other packages.
Sony Vegas is just the new kid on the block and of course established production houses don’t use it only because it’s fairly new to the market, But I can guarantee slowly but surely I see a lot of professional editors starting to see why Sony Vegas is actually a great editor. I currently use Sony 9 now. I edited our first full lenght feature “Ominous” with it. I’ve never looked back.
I’ve used Premier Pro for years and even worked with Final Cut when I went to school. I was hardcore about Premier but decided to give Sony Vegas 6 a chance since it came free with our Sony Z1U. I have to admit it didn’t take me long to figure out that Sony Vegas was far more superior when it came to production value and speed. I edit 100x faster with Sony and it handled HD footage with barely any processing power. I love it’s chain feature when it comes to color correcting and effects and audio is far more superior then the other packages.
Sony Vegas is just the new kid on the block and of course established production houses don’t use it only because it’s fairly new to the market, But I can guarantee slowly but surely I see a lot of professional editors starting to see why Sony Vegas is actually a great editor. I currently use Sony 9 now. I edited our first full lenght feature “Ominous” with it. I’ve never looked back.
I’ve been using Sony Vegas Pro 9 for quite a while now and I enjoyed using it. I tried to use to Premiere CS4 trial and it’s very hard to use and takes a lot of brain power to understand and use it and I still can’t quite get it. Compared to Vegas just a little brain power is all you need and you are ready good to go.
I’m just about to get Sony Vegas (maybe), and I’m so excited! Good review 😉
Don’t want to give a lengthy story so I’ll just get right to the point.
I’ve been using Movie Maker when I was in my pre-teens. W
Vegas is the best editting tool humans ever created.
Theres always a simple solution (i.e Sony vegas) to the complex problems.
Sony Vegas Pro 9.0e is the best of all movie software. For a new user it takes only minutes to do basic editing.
This will be the best software ever from sony. I’m looking forward to trying Sound forge Pro 10 which i think is the best from sony also.
And now, with Vegas 10, with perfect playback of Canon DSLR files, I love this damn program even more. I’ve been with it since Vegas 4, when it was still owned by Sonic Foundry, and I just can’t quit it. I run it on the latest Mac Pro workstation, running 64-bit Windows 7 in BootCamp, and it just simply rocks. I also have the latest Final Cut Studio on the same Mac, but every time I use it I just find myself wishing that Final Cut could be more like Vegas…. The main drawback is the condescension Vegas and Vegas users get from other people in the film community…
I’ve used various versions of Final Cut, Premier and now moved onto Vega simply because it works so well across a variety of needs, from live video to 3D animations. I work in it every day or two… just wished the major releases weren’t about a year apart.
Jon
Founder of WoodMarvels.com