I have tried a lot of video-editing applications, both consumer and "pro" — Avid, Pinnacle, Premiere (and Premiere Elements), Ulead — and none of them can hold a candle to Sony’s Vegas family, which includes Vegas Pro and Vegas Movie Studio.
It’s a shame that Pinnacle Studio and Adobe Premiere Elements are the two big names that come up when you talk about consumer video editing (aside from 
iMovie and Window Movie Maker, both of which are free).
Pinnacle is absolute crap. Flotsam. Garbage. It’s not about the dumbed-down interface; the thing just doesn’t work. Read the message boards and you’ll see they’re full of complaints about slow performance and frequent lockups.
Premiere is better, for sure, but compared to Vegas it’s overly complex and certainly unintuitive.
I’m not a video-editing pro by any means, and I don’t intend to be one. But I do like to take my videos and make them a bit better. I add titles and simple transitions (fancy transitions, to me, are a mark of an amateur) and edit hour long videos down to five minutes.
But occasionally I get a bit fancy — I’ll add still photos, or dub in a sound, or do a picture in picture. And I want doing those things to make sense.
With Vegas they do. (Vegas is the pro product; most of you will want Vegas Movie Studio which sells for about $100 — the same as the other consumer editors.)
Most video editors are similar. You have your timeline where you drop and arrange the clips that make up your movie, you have a preview window, you have a list of clips, and so on.
The first nice thing I discovered about Vegas is how it handled transitions. If you have two clips next to each other on the timeline, you simply drag one so it overlaps the other by a few frames (or more). You automatically get a crossover transition — one fades out as the other fades in.
With crossovers and fade-to-black being the most common and useful transition, this makes things really easy. (With Premiere you put the clips next to each other, the make your way through the video transitions lists and sub-lists until you find the crossover, then you drag it between the clips. For a feature you use a lot it’s really annoying.)
All of Vegas is like that: Clean and intuitive. Sure, there’s a learning curve. You’ll have one with any video editor. But so much about Vegas is done right that the curve isn’t that steep. (And unlike Pinnacle or Ulead products, you don’t feel like you’re being treated like an idiot.)
Vegas has a gadzillion features that I won’t bother to list, from HD support to a huge list of output formats, to tons of plugins.
If you want to get into video editing beyond Windows Movie Maker (which isn’t bad, to be honest), Sony Vegas Movie Studio is the way to go. You can even download a 30-day free trial if you don’t believe me.
Sony Vegas Movie Studio: About $70-$129 depending on version
The Fray
Andrew says:
I don’t know how many audio tracks — at least four, I believe.
Yes, you can separate audio and video — I do it all the time. They’re link when you import them, but one click and they’re separate.
And yes, you can import from a MiniDV camera; that’s what I have and use. You can also record directly from a MiniDV camera onto your hard disk, which I thought was kind of a neat feature.
gnomic says:
http://www.amazon.com/Vegas-Movie-Studio-8-Platinum/dp/B000RLQNR6
$89.99 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping
gnomic says:
Well, if you can demo it and its that good, there is no good reason to steal it – especially considering how reasonable the price is.
OTOH, Sony is one of the ringleaders or the RIAA and has put more DRM crap – including rootkits – on there stuff than any other vendor I can thing of. If they want to treat us all like pirates, the least we should do is oblige them.
Andrew says:
If someone asks me, “How can I get enough money to buy such-and-such?” I might respond, “Get a second job, ask for a raise, marry rich, rob a bank….”
Doesn’t mean I’m condoning, it; I’m just listing the options. :)
Andrew says:
For you that $90 is nothing, but what about a high-school kid who’s really getting into video editing? That’s a nice chunk of change. [shrug] ‘Course, that HS kid can probably do wonders with Windows Movie Maker….
teresa says:
I just bought Vegas Movie Studio 8.0 since I’ve had problems burning with Adobe Premiere Elements. I noticed on your blog that you think adding transitions in Vegas is so much easier. Can you share w/ me how to do it? I am a novice at this stuff but can fiddle my way around to teach myself–perhaps I’m so used to Adobe that I just couldn’t figure out how to add the transistions properly in Vegas. I would like to add a simple crossfade to ALL transitions in the timeline all at one time. Thanks!
Garrison says:
I just purchased the Vegas Sony Movie Maker, and I supposedly have the minimum system requirements of the HP WindowsXP P4 with DVD burner; however, when I submit the project to be burned, I have only gotten an audio track and no pix. Could it be the original DVD burner that came with the computer is just too old to handle this software? Will I need to upgrade the DVD burner? Also, how much memory is REALLY needed for this
gnomic says:
Its now $69 on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000RLQNR6
juubis says:
The problem of not having any control (vbr/cbr resolution etc…) in mpeg-2 generation is a big problem.
Cole says:
You said you could take the audio from a video, and move it separately into a different spot, for later use. I’m trying this and the video moves with it, regardless of what time-line the audio is in. How do you do it, specifically?
A/V says:
Andrew:
Are you KIDDING ME with the $90 being alot for a High School kid? It may be a lot for someone in Kidergarten, come on! I come from a family with slim-to-none, but it’s the willingness to succeed (something foreign to you, it seems) that gave me the ability to work hard enough to not only afford the $549 for the Pro Version of Sony Vegas, but to have an entire broadcast setup by my senior year of high school.
And to re-state, I am not some rich kid. I come from very little, but to look at $90 as a ton of money……come on! Maybe in the ’50s.
A/V says:
Cole:
Take the loop portion (whatever you want to render) and when going to render, change the file format to Wave (Microsoft) (*.wav)
That always works best for me.
Hank says:
Cole:
Even eisier than A/V said. The audio is “grouped” with the video. Right click on the audio you want to move. Find group->ungroup. Or you can press the “U” key which stands for ungroup. Then you can move the audio however you want
Cyrus says:
My Video and Voice events are appearing with with no image inside the timeline (invisable)
But the Video preview image is ok.
Can someone please help with with this invisable film strip.?
No_One says:
Vegas’ intuitive drag and overlap method of creating transitions can’t be overlooked when making a comparison between the two programs. It could not be easier. The article does discuss it but the writer missed the weakest part of premiere’s method for handling transitions. It’s not the need to search through lists for the desired transition (there are keyboard short cut for whatever transition is setup as the default). The biggest unnecessary complication in premiere is you have to properly trim the clips for the transition to work. When you place two clips next to each other, intuitively, the transition should begin and end at the edges of each clip but that’s not how Premiere does it. You have to manually trim the clips so that you account for the transition time. If you want a 20 frame transition, you need to trim each clip 10 frames from your desired out and in points. If you need to increase the transition later to 30 frames then you need to trim them again. Compare that to Vegas’ drag and overlap method and you can save so much time on each edit.
Premiere Pro is a very powerful program and does some things I can’t do in Vegas. It has to do with the “interpret footage” feature and is it’s way to involved to go into here.
Overall I like Vegas 8 pro much better than Premiere CS3 and CS4 because of the way you can drag and overlap transitions.
MsElenaeous says:
Andrew, how many separate audio tracks does it let you lay down? Can I also separate the audio from video from an individual shot? Also, can you import from a mini-dv camera? I’m used to video editing with actual tapes to tapes so this computer stuff is a real learning curve for me but I need to get on board.