Sony Vegas

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Vegas

Vegas 7
Developer: Sony Media Software
Latest release: 7d / January, 2007
OS: Microsoft Windows
Use: Digital video editor
License: Proprietary
Website: [1]

Sony Vegas is a non-Linear editing system produced by Sony Media Software. Currently, it runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista only. Originally an audio editor, it features realtime multitrack video and audio editing on unlimited tracks, resolution independent video sequencing, complex effects and compositing tools, 24-bit/192 kHz audio support, VST and DirectX plug-in effect support, and Dolby Digital surround sound mixing.

Vegas comes in a variety of price points based on the bundled programs and extensibility of features. The consumer level Vegas Movie Studio version (formerly titled VideoFactory and Screenblast) shares the same interface and underlying code base as the professional Vegas version, but does not include professional features like 24p editing and advanced compositing tools. Also available is Vegas + DVD, which bundles the DVD authoring software DVD Architect, as well as Boris FX LTD and Magic Bullet Movie Looks HD.

Contents

[edit] Features

[edit] Video Features

The powerful three wheel colour corrector in Vegas 6

Vegas has the ability to edit video and audio on unlimited tracks, the only limit is the speed of the host computer. In addition, it also supports any aspect ratio (4:3, 16:9,AKEBAB etc.), and can edit 24, 25, 29.97 or 30 fps video. Vegas will scale accordingly if a user needs to mix and match video of different framerates or resolutions. Vegas also allows external preview via Firewire to Firewire ready broadcast monitors or via DV deck/camera. As of version 6, Vegas can also output video to a second LCD or CRT monitor via component video or DVI connections.

Vegas is one of the few NLEs which allows project/timeline settings (frame rate, aspect ratio, etc.) to be changed at any time during editing.

In addition, Vegas also has powerful color correction tools, such as a three-wheel color corrector as well as a secondary color corrector to make changes to an isolated element in an image. A user can monitor these changes on accurate vectorscope, waveform, histogram, and parade video scopes. Modified video can be compared against the source via Vegas' split screen previewing. As of version 6, Vegas can take advantage of dual-core and dual processor systems to render projects.

In areas of compositing and motion graphics Vegas provides a substantially broader tool set than most NLE systems featuring 3D track motion compositing with control over Z-depth, and spatial arrangement of visual planes including plane intersection. A full range of compositing modes accessed as track/layer controls makes Vegas' use of compositing modes very similar to After Effects and Photoshop which is unlike most NLE systems which usually apply such modes as clip specific effects. Vegas also has keyframeable bézier masking tools with unlimited points. Masks can be feathered and blended, as well as set to certain opacity levels for each layer. The program can also do real-time event reversing and velocity envelopes for manipulating frame-rate and clip speed playback over time using bezier point manipulations. All effects, processes and video transitions--such as crossfades and wipes--are keyframable in Vegas with users having full control over the duration, motion and acceleration of effects and transitions.

Much of the visual effects processing in Vegas follows a very audio-like paradigm. Effects can be applied at any stage of the visual signal flow - event level, track level and output level effects, much like reverb, delay and flange audio effects are applied in a digital audio system, like Pro Tools, Cubase or Sonar. Master output effects can also be controlled and manipulated over time by the use of Master Bus track automation envelopes.

Vegas is arguably the most format friendly NLE on the market reading and writing a very wide array of file formats and codecs - avi, mpeg 1/2/4, mp4, quicktime mov & QT, tiff, psd, targa, bmp, jpeg, png, mp3, wma, wav, aiff, rm, ogg, ac3, wav64 and pca. It can support all major codecs employing avi wrappers including divx, xvid and various YUV codecs with the proper directshow codecs installed. Vegas is also able to utilise all major Quicktime codecs. Beyond standard formats Vegas also employs some of its own codecs as output options including a well regarded implementation of AVC/H264, a lossless 4:2:2 Sony YUV codec and a Sony DV codec that is significantly better quality over multiple generations that the generic Microsoft DV codec. Vegas will also accept nearly any format on any timeline and will not have to re-render the footage to fit the timeline, unlike many other NLEs.

In addition, Vegas has arguably the best integration with 24p DV, making it a favorite choice among those who shoot in that format. It is also one of the few NLEs which can convert other formats to 24p (or any format to any other format) without any kind of a plugin or third-party application support.

[edit] Audio Features

The 5.1 surround mixing panel

Vegas has full resolution 24-bit/192 kHz audio support, with over 30 customizable real-time audio effects included with the application. All audio effects can be controlled via envelopes for each parameter. Effects include Track EQ, Reverb, Chorus, Delay, Noise Gate, and Flange/Wah/Phase. Audio effects for 5.1 projects are also included with the program, including EQ, Dither, and Wave Hammer™ Surround compression tools. Users can expand the program via its VST and DirectX plugin support. Among the best 3rd party audio plugins are NewBlueFX. As of version 6, Vegas also supports professional-quality low latency ASIO drivers, as well as broadcast wave format.

The software provides many tools for 5.1 surround mixes, including keyframeable surround panning and effects for tracks and busses. Surround projects can be rendered with the included Dolby-certified AC-3 encoder, included with the Vegas+DVD package. Film-style surround panning mode supports panning between speakers using a constant power model, which is optimized for theater-style speaker placement.

The program includes 19 timestretch modes that allows users to choose the resampling method that best fits the audio. Users can also change the pitch of any event in a project. Pitch, tempo and stretch amount information is displayed in timeline events. New to version 6 is tape-style audio scrubbing, which mimics the effect of dragging an analog tape past the playhead.

If users don't have 5.1 speakers, Vegas offers real-time downmixing of audio from 5.1 surround to stereo. Users can also downmix from stereo to mono. Complicated mixes can be obtained with bus-to-bus routing, as well as with bus envelopes to set track effect parameters, volume, and panning for a Vegas project.

[edit] Other Features

Vegas has the ability to run user created scripts. Microsoft .NET is required for scripting functionality. Scripts can be written in Visual Basic or Javascript and can be built to control, manipulate or automate almost any aspect of Vegas. The online community of Vegas users has produced a vast array of such scripts which can be downloaded and run without any scripting knowledge.

Vegas provides full functionality for nested timelines allowing individual project files to be placed within each other and utilised as singular clips without pre-rendering on the timeline.

Vegas has native support for network rendering, allowing up to 2 'render nodes' per license to be installed on extra machines. This allows long renders to be shared across 3 total computers as long as the project is on a networked folder. When network rendering, the file is broken up into smaller pieces in which the three computers render separately, then the 'stitch host' pieces them back together to form the fully rendered file.

[edit] History

Vegas 6
Vegas 6

Vegas was originally developed by Sonic Foundry based in Madison Wisconsin USA as an audio-only multi-track system. From version 4 Vegas has been developed under Sony after the corporation bought a portion of Sonic Foundry.

Vegas was the first non-linear editor to offer external preview without any form of acceleration hardware[citation needed]. Native 24p editing was first made possible in Vegas; more than a year in advance of the competition.[citation needed] It was also the first NLE with serious audio tools, such as integrated 5.1 surround mixing, 24-bit/192 kHz audio support, and ASIO driver support. Vegas has been used by engineers and artists as diverse as the 5.1 surround mix for Yes, as well as recordings by Shania Twain, Rod Stewart, and Quiet Riot and music video/live recordings for Sheryl Crow.

Vegas started life as an audio-only tool with particular focus on rescaling and resampling audio, making it arguably a leader in its category with substantially more sophisticated audio tools than any other NLE.

Vegas was among the first NLEs to embrace HDV support both as native TS files and through lossless transcoding tools such as Cineform Connect HD.

Vegas has won awards for major broadcasters using it, including Nightline w/Ted Koppel [2]. Several film festival winners have used Vegas to cut their features. [3]

Vegas 7.0 was released on September 12th, 2006.

[edit] Criticism

Vegas is still a relatively new NLE by comparison to the long standing apps of Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid and to a lesser extent, Final Cut Pro. Originally developed by small independent software developer, Sonic Foundry, and only relatively recently taken over by Sony, Vegas has not had the massive marketing and promotion budgets of its competition so doesn't hold the same market recognition or large scale user base. However Vegas's profile and popularity have grown steadily and substantially in recent years and its community of users is well known as very proactive in online discussions and forums.

How Sony chooses to develop Vegas into the future will depend in some part on its intentions for their high-end hardware-based system XPRI which has struggled to find a substantial foothold in the TV broadcast market it was intended to penetrate. The fact that Vegas now supports IMF XDCAM files for both SD and HD might indicate that Sony plans to continue to develop Vegas as a potential replacement or partner to XPRI.

Vegas' greatest perceived weakness in the face of its main competitors, Avid and Final Cut Pro, is in several areas. The lack of hardware support was initially a problem but Vegas now enjoys compatibility with Decklink SDI interfaces which goes some way to addressing this. Vegas also currently only functions in 8bit colour space with no support for 10bit. This is still a major shortcoming of Vegas in the professional sphere and many Vegas users are hoping new versions of Vegas will move to 10bit support. Text titling tools in Vegas are also regarded as weak by comparison to Premiere Pro's superb title engine (ported over from Photoshop) and Final Cut Pro's equally good Live Type sub-utility. The other area often criticised is media management. This criticism is largely unfounded as Vegas employs a complete bin structure to its media pool including sub-clips, takes and full search functionality. Vegas did implement a media manager tool in version 6; however, it is not integrated with the main media pool and is intended more as media mangagement system for stock media libraries for production houses and broadcast facilities.

Vegas was also criticised for its interface which moves away from several long standing NLE conventions that have drawn their legacy from linear production methods - flatbed and tape-to-tape. An example being Vegas' combined source/preview window and its focus on timeline rather than source window as central process area. New users also often dislike the "upside down" arrangement, in which the timeline is situated at the top of the screen and tools are placed at the bottom-- the opposite of the arrangement of its competitors. The interface, however, can be inverted to a traditional layout using settings in the application preferences. Since version 6, The window arrangement has been fully-customizable and savable, allowing quick recall of different layouts for various tasks. For example, you could have a large timeline, and have it set up for your video preview to be on another monitor, and save that preset, and have another preset for when you want to focus on the audio, etc.

Finally, Vegas also lacks the wide-ranging third-party plug-in support of its competitors, or the integration with other other applications in a bundle such as the Adobe production studio or Apple's Final Cut Studio. This is changing, however. Notably, in 2006, NewBlue, Inc. released NewBlueFX, a wide-ranging collection of audio and video plugins for Sony Vegas, a subset of which Sony is now including with its Vegas-based products.

On the plus side, Vegas is the only pro NLE that allows for multiple instances of the application to be opened simultaneously. Clips and sequences can be copied and pasted between instances of Vegas with ease. Moreover, one instance can be rendering a sequence in the background while the user continues to edit in a different instance of Vegas in the foreground.

[edit] External links

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