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 - Great value with some caveatsCasual observers looking at Amazon ratings for Sony Vegas will be inevitably confused by the wide spread of scores, and I attribute this partly to varying expectations. For starters, Sony Vegas is not: 1) paint-by-numbers production software suitable for family vacation memories. For this, look to Ulead and Pinnacle; their software, while less powerful, covers 80% of what most people need in a more convenient fashion. 2) serious competition to Final Cut Pro and Premiere. Though Vegas has much of the functionality, one can't expect top end software for $60-$100. 3) a complete solution. I'd be surprised if many were completely satisfied with Vegas Premium out of the box. Luckily, some of most powerful add-ons cost nothing. I researched and purchased Sony Vegas for professional use at my employer, a small time media company that wants professional video production but only has a few hundred dollars to throw toward it. Vegas is the best compromise between features, price, and compatibility. In particular, it was one of the few pieces of software compatible with AVCHD at the time of purchase (for anyone confused by Internet discussions, Vegas is indeed compatible with Canon's VIXIA). Though priced and marketed as a consumer product, Vegas is definitely "prosumer" and has a feature set less like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker and more reminiscent of professional products like Premiere and Final Cut. Vegas includes independent multi-track editing, scrubbing, and even compositing effects. Its interface is definitely finicky and wants a user to do things its way. Once one discovers what Vegas wants in order to function efficiently, movies can be quickly cut and produced. Reading the reviews, it seems AVCHD output is a highly desired feature, but it is not to be found in Vegas Platinum. One needs the more expensive Vegas Move Studio for that. We output our videos in lossless FFV1 to maintain maximum quality and perform the lossy step separately from Vegas, so this limitation does not affect us. Note that the basic Vegas package does not handle AVCHD at all! Another common complaint I see revolves around low compatibility with standard formats. Luckily, Vegas respects the standard Video for Windows interface, meaning that it'll more or less accept any codec Windows recognizes. A simple solution to cover the gamut of MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 part 2/ASP (DivX), and MPEG4 part 10/AVC (H.264) is to install ffdshow, a freely available most-in-one codec interface. After that, one should be able to read and encode to nearly any commonly used format (at least in Microsoft's AVI container), with the exception of Quicktime, which is best handled by Apple's own product or the "gray market" Quicktime Alternative. Vegas is far from the best tool for video encoding. If your needs are advanced, research into a dedicated encoding tool is appropriate. I suggest one based on the freely available ffmpeg or mencoder, such as frontends like meGUI or SUPER. Additionally, Vegas is apparently picky about which analog capture cards it accepts and has been for its entire history. Unfortunately ours is unsupported, so we use VirtualDub to capture video from our analog video cameras before passing it to Vegas. This process is not completely compatible: at times, Vegas stops updating the video preview when handling an AVI from VirtualDub. Nothing outside a reboot resolves it, and even then the issue may return. Fortunately, analog video editing was a temporary stopgap for us while we researched and budgeted more advanced options. Internet forums claim Canopus is the best option for Vegas compatibility. DV capture works the same as any other application I've tried. In conclusion, Vegas is most suitable for high end consumer or low end professional work. It's not an all-in-one solution, but research and (mostly free) companion programs can pole vault over most of its important shortcomings. Vegas is an unbeatable value at its current price point. Rating:  - All That I Thought It Would Be...and More!A very professional program...I learn more each day. So glad I didn't buy a product I wouldn't be happy with within a few weeks. Well worth the investment. Rating:  - Go for ProI regret buying the Platinum version since it doesn't render AVDHC H.264 at HD resolution. Buy the Vegas Pro version instead since it's about the same price on other sites. Sony makes you also buy DVD Architect, a separate software, if you plan to make DVD/Blu-Ray discs. Rating: - Good productMovie Studio 8 does more than I know what to do with it. I previously used Pinnacle but it had many limitations. Some of the "fancier" things I wanted to do like reverse, I couldn't. Vegas does that and much more. I can't yet complain about the lack of AVCHD playout in HD. Hopefully Sony gets a clue and offers an update. It does take some time getting used to it but there are several tutorials that help. Rating:  - Limited File SupportI tried the demo of this product and found it lacking. The knowledge base at Sony confirmed that it doesn't support DivX formats. For my application, it was worthless.
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