Not only that, but a well‑designed keyboard interface is usually quicker to work with. Working in the professional arena, I come across many instances of hard‑working editors suffering from RSI (repetitive strain injury) induced by excessive mouse use, and there's a general feeling that doing as much manipulation via keyboard commands as possible is ultimately better for health when using software a great deal. The Vegas Pro interface is quite reliant on drag‑and‑drop techniques for many aspects of editing in the timeline. FCP and Premiere sit somewhere in the middle - they are designed to work equally well either way round, so users can choose their own method. Vegas builds the timeline the other way round, by asking that you put everything in and then remove the unwanted - it's subtractive editing. Avid Media Composer is designed to let you build a timeline by selecting the clips you want and adding only the parts of them that you choose: the timeline is additive, if you will. There are two fundamental kinds of timeline editing. It feels odd, though, to have to delve into Preferences to do something that seems the natural way to operate. From there, clips can be marked up and either saved as Subclips back to the Project window until needed, or added to the timeline by dragging and dropping. Clips will then load into the 'Trimmer', which functions much like other programs' Source Viewers. This is all very well if your clips are short and well organised, but it's an approach that falls down if you have long clips, or clips which contain many useful shots.įortunately (for me at least!), there's a program preference to change this. The Vegas approach encourages you to you trim off or delete the unwanted material once you've put a clip in the timeline, leaving behind the shot you want. This was a bit shocking at first, as I'm used to clips loading into a Viewer or Source Monitor, from which I can select what I'm going to edit into my timeline. Unlike its rivals, the default layout of Vegas Pro doesn't have a conventional source viewer: if you double‑click a clip in the Project window, it loads straight to the timeline, rather than giving you a preview in a separate window. Bins can only be viewed in the Project Window - they can't be opened separately as they can in Premiere or FCP - and this means that you can't display the contents of more than one Bin simultaneously, which is a pity. There's a Project window much like that in many other NLEs, where you can organise the clips you're working with, and you can create Bins to separate them into different categories such as stills, interviews, music and the like. The Video Preview window now has transport controls beneath it, the audio meters have shuffled over to the far right, and the Trimmer (used for editing footage before placing it in the timeline) is now displayed as part of the interface by default. Unlike FCP, Premiere or Avid, which are both very much studies in grey, the interface of Vegas Pro is alive with colour, populated with multi‑coloured icons which are much more pictorial in their design than the rather 'runic' approach taken by most other NLEs.Ĭompared with previous versions, however, the v10 interface does look more like those of its rivals. On starting up the software, the answer seems to be 'partly'. Does Sony Vegas 10 fit this trend as well? The Interface There seems to be something of a convergence of approach taking place. In writing recent reviews of Avid's Media Composer 5 (See SOS Video Media September 2010) and Adobe's Premiere Pro CS5 (See SOS Video Media November 2010) it's apparent how similar these products, along with Apple's Final Cut Pro (FCP), are becoming. Included in the package is DVD Architect 5.2 for burning video to optical media, but if you want to add the companion Production Assistant 2 (see the 'Production Assistant 2' box), you'll need to shell out a further £124. At $599 £581 including VAT, it's relatively affordable as full‑featured software goes, being significantly less expensive than Adobe's Premiere Pro CS5, and much less expensive than Avid's Media Composer 5. As such it has a whole raft of professional features, including support for XDCAM and Red One media, the ability to interface with the Aja Xena series of video-capture hardware, 5.1 surround sound mixing and so on. Sony Vegas Pro is the professional version of Sony's consumer software package, Vegas Movie Studio. Sony Vegas has always had a reputation for being a little bit 'different' to the mainstream video‑editing products, and I was keen to find out why. When the chance came to review Sony Vegas Pro 10, I jumped at it. So can you expect compromises in performance, or is Vegas Pro a spectacular deal? The latest version of Vegas offers plenty of professional features at a competitive price.
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