Sony Vegas Pro 11 Review

With decent basic tools built right into Windows 7, you don't have to look too far to perform casual video editing if you're bound to a PC. But if you work in media or Web-site production, or are the serious go-to person for your entire brood's vacation and event videos, a stiffer solution is in order. Midrange consumer-grade video-editing packages will work for many, but pro-grade programs like Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas Pro are all that will do for folks for whom time spent processing frames equals money.

That's the kind of user that Sony Creative Software’s Vegas Pro serves. The latest version of this professional video-editing package includes a wide variety of enhanced features and performance optimizations that make it worth considering for any regular Vegas Pro user. While version 10 was light on new stuff and primarily of upgrade interest to producers of 3D video, Vegas Pro 11’s interface tweaks, improved performance, and superb new titling module make it an upgrade that will pay off for just about any Vegas loyalist.

 

  

Newcomers to the series will find plenty compelling, too. Among the appealling items is a video editor and disc-authoring system that’s arguably more accessible than the multi-program approach taken by Adobe Premiere. It's also more laden with high-end, pro-friendly features than Apple’s controversial Final Cut Pro X.

Whether you're upgrading from a previous version or diving into your first prosumer video-editing application, Vegas Pro 11 is a strong choice. Read on to find out why.

User Interface

As with previous versions, the strength of Vegas compared with other editing packages, such as Adobe’s Creative Suite, is its one-application workflow. Adobe's approach is to break each task into a module, with separate applications such as SoundBooth for audio editing, Premiere Pro for video, After Effects for titling and other effects, and Encore for DVD authoring. This multi-module approach makes sense if you have a large production staff with specialists handling each aspect of a video; it's akin to how traditional film is edited.

For smaller production houses or video hobbyists, however, Vegas Pro 11's integrated approach of putting all of the major functions (apart from DVD authoring) into the main application is more appropriate. It makes the process flow much more smoothly, since you don't have to switch among a bunch of applications.

Vegas Pro's user interface is not difficult to learn if you've used a video editor before. As you can see here, it's timeline-based, with your audio and video tracks stretching across the bottom of the screen...

  

   

Basic editing is as simple as dragging-and-dropping an unlimited number of tracks on the timeline, positioning them, cutting out the parts you don’t want, and dropping in effects and transitions. As you become more familiar with the program, you'll want to take advantage of more advanced features, such as the ability to thoroughly customize the various effects and transitions. There’s extensive support for editing 3D video, and you can preview your work using solutions ranging from cardboard anaglyph 3D glasses to dedicated hardware such as Nvidia’s 3D Vision.

The program includes an extensive suite of keyboard shortcuts that can really speed editing procedures once you get familiar with them. By default, all of Vegas Pro 11’s modules live in a single window, but if you have a multi-monitor setup, you can tear off various modules and place them on your second display, which is a handy option. This screen shot, for example, is a sample screen that we had spread across two displays...

  

  

You can also save layouts, allowing you to create optimized module layouts for particular editing tasks. Vegas Pro 11 also integrates sophisticated audio editing with built-in editing functions and effects that are very similar to the company’s popular Sound Forge audio editor...

  

  

You're not limited to stereo editing, either. You can encode full Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, complete with 3D panning.

The program’s scripting feature lets programming-savvy users add new functionality to Vegas and create programs that automate common procedures. The scripting language is sophisticated, though, and nonprogrammers will have to negotiate a tight learning curve before they can take advantage of it. Some useful sample scripts are included, such as a script that batch-encodes a video in different formats. But expect some work ahead of you if you want to create custom scripts.

The only time you need to leave the Vegas interface is when it's time to create an elaborate DVD or Blu-ray disc (BD). Vegas Pro 11 can burn simple DVDs and Blu-ray discs (including 3D Blu-rays) directly from the video editor. But for full control of the DVD-authoring experience, you’ll want to use Sony's bundled application, DVD Architect Pro 5.2.

DVD Architect Pro is quite sophisticated. It lets you encode DVDs and Blu-ray discs in NTSC or PAL (the latter format is used mostly outside the U.S.), complete with Dolby AC3 5.1 surround sound. We especially liked DVD Architect Pro's preview mode; it lets you test your design with a virtual onscreen remote, as you can see here...

 

It's a powerful, flexible program (one of the sample projects is a simple DVD game), and its user interface meshes well with that of the main Vegas Pro 11 editor. Even if you don't intend to create complex multi-menu DVDs, it may come in handy; it has a selection of predesigned themes that covers events such as weddings and birthdays, as well as general-use designs.

New Features

One of the big enhancements with version 11 is Vegas' wider embrace of better performance via GPU acceleration. In the context of a video-editing program, GPU acceleration leverages the power of a dedicated graphics card or processor on your system to help speed video rendering. (Video editing, traditionally, is a process that is tied heavily to the power of your system's CPU.)

Vegas Pro 10 introduced GPU acceleration, but only for AVCHD-format rendering. Vegas Pro 11 extends the GPU acceleration (which works with both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards) to cover rendering and quite a few of the effects and transitions. The result is not just faster rendering times than earlier versions, but also much smoother previewing and a more responsive editor in general.

For example, we had one test project in which we applied half a dozen effects to a particular sequence. In Vegas Pro 10, the preview would drop to a jittery 7 to 10 frames per second when we ran it. Under Vegas Pro 11, it plays smoothly at the target frame rate of 24fps (the frame rate of the film). The amount the rendering speed increases varies by resolution and how many effects you use, but we saw speed increases ranging from 10 to 60 percent with GPU acceleration enabled on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 card.

Aside from new additions, Sony Creative Software tweaked the interface to make Vegas easier to work with. For example, the updated Render As dialog box makes it easy to filter out render options that don’t match your current project settings, and it now lets you designate frequently used templates as Favorites for easy access.

Another good tweak, Sync Link, lets you associate events on the editing timeline to keep them together, while maintaining the ability to make adjustments to individual clips. Essentially, one clip is the Parent, while linked clips are Child clips. You can adjust the timing, placement, and other settings of the Child clips without affecting the Parent clip, but if you move the Parent clip, the Child clips will move along with it...

  

  

Sony Creative Software also reorganized things a bit within the program. Vegas Pro’s plug-in effects are now organized in folders, which not only makes them easier to manage, but also lets you see at a glance which effects support GPU acceleration...

    

  

Also, the image-stabilization plug-in that was added in Vegas Pro 10 has been updated to give you more control. Now, you can specify the amount of overall stabilization and pan smoothing independently...

  

  

The image stabilization also works better than it did in the previous version, and it turned some extremely shaky footage into smooth, stable sequences in our testing. Unfortunately, you can’t set zoom limits on the stabilization process, so you may get some unwanted clipping at the edge of images on very shaky footage. That's a bit of a downer, seeing as even Adobe’s consumer-oriented Premiere Elements allows you to do that.

Another addition worth noting: Vegas can now directly import images in RAW format. That added support will save you from the preconversion step that used to be necessary when working with RAW still images shot on digital SLRs.

The Titling Feature

One of the most significant additions in Vegas Pro 11 is a bundled license for Titler Pro from NewBlueFX. Until now, the titling functionality hasn’t been one of Vegas Pro’s strong points. Recent versions improved things a bit, but Titler Pro finally lets you do impressive and elaborate title effects with ease.

Not only is the feature set a lot better with Titler Pro, but it's GPU-accelerated, so adjusting 3D text and previewing effects and transitions is smooth and snappy. For example, you can easily position text in 3D space, extrude characters, and add textures to both the text face and the 3D extrusion...

   

  

Now, paragraphs in a title sequence can feature individual effects—and, in fact, you can even set styles for individual letters. Also, keyframe support makes it easy to precisely time and place your title effects. For example, we were able to easily time the movements and positions of Titler Pro’s spotlight effect on a 3D title so that it followed a stage spotlight in our footage across the screen.

Titler Pro comes with a variety of preset text styles, which you can further customize. You also get several built-in animations for moving text, as well as effects that you can apply to titles, such as lights sweeping across them, reflections, fish-eye views, or energy emitting from characters. It’s very easy to get impressive-looking results with just a little experimentation...

  

  

We have to give kudos to Sony for continuing to upgrade the program’s titling capabilities. With the addition of Titler Pro, you get enough power, variety, and control for just about any type of project.

The only downside on the titling front is that Vegas now has multiple titling plug-ins. The less powerful “Titles & Text” module from the consumer-friendly Vegas Movie Studio has been added to Vegas 11, as well, and Vegas' two older text modules are still around to maintain compatibility with projects created with earlier versions of Vegas Pro. (In fact, the similarly named but now dated ProType titler’s interface was tweaked in this release to make it easier to use.)

Conclusion

Vegas Pro 11 remains a solid, powerful video editor, with an efficient workflow and an approachable interface. For users new to the series, Vegas Pro 11 builds on the solid foundation of earlier versions and remains an excellent choice if you need a powerful nonlinear editing system.

For upgraders from earlier versions, Vegas Pro 11 offers quite a bit more to justify its $189.95 upgrade cost than Vegas 10 did. For one thing, Titler Pro is a $299 value all by itself. Bear in mind that Sony lets you upgrade any version of Vegas Pro to the latest; this means you can skip versions without paying for intermediate-version upgrades or worrying whether it will impact your ability to update later. This version, though, is the one you’ll want to pick up. (One caveat: Vegas Pro 11 does away with Windows XP support, so you’ll need to be running it on a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7.)

Sony has added GPU acceleration to many of its effects.

If you're looking at buying the full program, Sony Creative Software sells Vegas Pro in a download version for $599.95, or in a full, packaged version for $679.95. However, both versions rely on PDF manuals—the packaged version includes just a DVD and a small installation reference card—so we can’t see a good reason to spend the extra $80 for the boxed version. You don't get a paper manual in the box.

For those who do want good old-fashioned paper documentation, Sony offers a printed version of the 508-page manual on CafePress for $22.24. The well-organized, heavily illustrated manual is nice to see in an age where some applications rely exclusively on the Help menu. (The Vegas Help menu is also well-done, but the manual is more detailed and better illustrated.) Sony also regularly offers Webinars that walk you through Vegas features, and these are archived on the Sony Creative Software Web site.

On the technical-support front, Sony has an extensive knowledge base on its Web site and user forum, and the company offers free e-mail support via a Web form. If you want to talk to a real person, phone support will cost you, with packages ranging from $29.95 (to talk to a rep about a single issue) to $149.95 (for 180 days of phone-support access).

Hobbyist videographers might be interested in the scaled-down version of Vegas, called Vegas Movie Studio. That inexpensive version (available in three editions, priced at $49.95, $99.95, and $129.95) is limited to 10 video tracks, and it lacks Vegas Pro 11’s scripting, 4K-resolution video features, and high-end hardware support. Free trials are available for both versions on Sony Creative Software’s Web site, so you can determine which one best meets your needs.