Hollywood comes to Kent (Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8)

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Product:	Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8
Date:	07/04/08 (257 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to learn and use

Disadvantages: Maximum of 4 Audio and 4 Video tracks

Do you own a video camera? No, well in that case there may not be a lot of point reading on. However, if you answered yes can I ask a further question. Do you have a box full of tapes that you never watch? Yep, thought so.
I bought my first camcorder about eight years ago and over the next five years gradually filled a shoebox with tapes of holidays, honeymoons, day trips and babies doing cute things. I'd finish a tape, then maybe - and I stress maybe - play it back to the telly from the camera once and then put it in the box marked 'Things to do sometime in the future'.

You see I always considered video editing to be one of those jolly clever things that needed a top of the range PC, expensive software and a degree from some Californian film school. The truth, as is so often the case, is very different indeed. Thumbing through a copy of some PC magazine I came across an article talking about the little known applications that come with XP but that no one knows about. One of these applications was Movie Maker, a brilliantly simple but unheralded piece of software that was said to be easy to learn and use and capable of producing very good movies. We'll see about that I thought but immediately fired it up anyway.
With this you are presented with a screen layout that is familiar to all editing packages I have seen. You get a large area for timelines, this is where you place your media files (film, text and sound), below that is the Explorer area to select the media files from and a preview screen to watch back what you've just created. Not having any video files to hand I imported a bunch of photos, placed them on the timeline and then added an MP3 music track. Press the 'Make Movie' button and sit back, job done. Within a couple of minutes there was a complete movie file which opened in MS Media Player and played the slideshow I'd just created with the music blaring out. A bit embarrassing as it turned out as I was in the office and meant to be working at the time but hey ho.

It literally took that long to get me fired up about video editing and I couldn't wait to get home to have a proper go. First thing I did was connect the camcorder to the PC, open Movie Maker and select 'Import Video'. That's when I got my first shock as I realised just how big video files are, my once capacious 60GB hard drive had just been hammered by 15GB from a single 90 minute tape and I've got dozens of them in the 'to do' box. More storage would be required and this could be just the excuse I needed to buy a new PC, but that's a story for another day.
It took about ten minutes to find the limits of Movie Maker's capabilities and as good as it is I knew that if was going to do anything more sophisticated than just sticking the clips together one after the other and adding a music track I would need to buy some proper editing software. A trawl through the review sections of some magazines later and I settled on a copy of Sony Vegas, at that time it was at version 4. I liked it so much that when I moved to a Vista machine last year I upgraded to the Version 8 release here which, you'll be glad to hear, I am now prepared to discuss.

When looking at home video editing software the choice comes down to two packages: Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier. There are several other perfectly capable products available but they lack the sophistication of these two and don't offer that great a step up from Movie Maker. Both Sony and Adobe offer two flavours of their software aimed at either the home or professional market, the home versions retail at around £50 while the professional versions are in excess of £500 each. Adobe Premier Elements is clearly a cut down version of its big brother and although it is very well regarded I've found it harder to get to grips with than the Sony and a little intimidating. In contrast Vegas has been significantly tweaked for the home market and is far more accessible. The clincher though is that it comes with the excellent Architect DVD authoring software, an amazing add-on that could easily and successfully be sold separately.
Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8
Sony Vegas pulls off the neat trick of offering both a high a degree of functionality and being easy to pick up and use. Immediately upon opening the application anyone who has used a video editing package from Movie Maker up will be able to get started. The screen layout is well designed and very intuitive. The main part of the screen is taken up with the time lines, here can have up to four video tracks and four audio tracks. This is about right for the home market, you'd certainly struggle with less, but more ambitious users may want further tracks for building composite images.
To the bottom right is the preview screen, this can be resized as necessary or even moved to a second monitor if you domestic setup stretches to such things. On the bottom left is a series of tabbed windows including an Explorer, library, effects options and trimmer.

This latest version will accept raw footage in a variety of formats and can process HD footage, both HDV and AVCHD (although only Sony AVCHD is currently supported) although you will need a good PC to handle these.
Media files are selected in the Explorer window and imported to the library. The video file will store links to the media files rather than take actual copies to keep file sizes manageable so it is important that the originals are kept in the same location or they will need to be re-imported.

From the library the media files can then be dragged directly onto the timeline or more likely transferred to the trimmer. The trimmer window allows clips to be edited, to remove any unwanted bits, the remaining good part is then sent to the timeline.
Vegas has a large selection of formatting and editing tools. There are a whole host of video effects to use whether you want to age your footage or adjust colour balances, some of these effects get quite sophisticated but all have example thumbnails to show their effect before you commit them to your own footage. A range of text and backdrop options are available as well as over 100 transitions. However, as anyone who has prepared PowerPoint presentations will know using fancy transitions rarely works and will usually just annoy the audience. The best option is to follow the big boys in TV and film and stick to simple cross fades and cuts between scenes. All of these are easily accessed and utilised; the learning curve for making full use of the software is very short. The harder part, as with photo editing, is understanding the underlying techniques.

Your finished project can be exported to a variety of media types, viewable in most media players. Outputs can be configured for publishing to the web or even for the Playstation Portable
The second part of the Movie Studio package is DVD Architect. This software is no afterthought, but in fact a very powerful authoring tool. With this you can create very slick DVDs for viewing on TV with as many choices for menus and buttons as your imagination and patience will allow. There is a selection of themes (matching backgrounds and buttons) to choose from or the more adventurous can import virtually any image file to use for either. The software will allow you to create playlists for music and pictures. Every object can be configured to set their look and behaviour to your needs. There is a preview area which replicates a TV so that you can check that your efforts will work and all menus can be successfully navigated. DVD Architect will allow you export your project to work on a variety of TV formats (PAL or NTSC) and configurations (16:9, 4:3). Once exported to DVD you should be able to view your completed movies on your large screen TV in all their glory.

Movie Studio itself doesn't ask a lot of your hardware, all you need is a PC running at 800MHz with 256MB RAM and 200MB disc space. It will run with XP (SP2) and Vista. The bigger demands will come from the footage you are using; manipulating HD videos will ask some tough questions of even the latest PCs.
If you've got a box of tapes gathering dust, or if you think you're outgrowing Movie Maker or one of the other entry level editors give Sony Vegas Movie Studio a try. I guarantee that within days you'll be boring the pants off everyone with another film of your pet/baby/car/holiday of a lifetime. You'll have a lot of fun in the process though.

Summary: A great tool for bringing home videos to life

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