Unfortunately,
even with that in mind, simple tasks like trimming clips
on the timeline or rendering footage in the project are
made overly convoluted. Additionally, there was a whole
lot of menu swapping and scrolling required to apply effects
and search through bins, which leads me to believe that
streamlining redesign of the interface would increase efficiency
for both new Vegas users and for cross-over editors.
The
included DVD Architect 3, on the other hand, seemed
to make more sense than the competing DVD Studio Pro
software. Especially simple to use was the ability to add
subtitle and additional dialogue tracks, which can easily
allow you to put in both language and commentary tracks
often found in professional DVDs.
All
in all, once you get thoroughly immersed in the Sony design
of both programs, you'll find that they work pretty well
and become more and more intuitive with continued use.
With
a little experimentation, even traditional
favorites like before-and-after previews
can be created with Vegas.
Depth
of Options
They've crammed a whole slew of new options in the newest
version of Vegas, from the very powerful support for .VST
plug-ins to the new Media Manager. Additionally, there's
pretty decent support for HDV, which is appropriate as Sony's
HVR-Z1U is one of the best selling HDV cams on the
market. There's also support for rendering cards like the
Black Magic card, which allows much faster throughput into
and out of your system.
The
.VST support will allow you to go out and use a tremendous
number of audio plug-ins, from free ones available from
VST's site to the more advanced ones from Waves and Bias.
This was one thing that fans had been clamoring for in this
new addition and it really helps Vegas compete with
the new Final Cut Suite which has a fully redesigned
audio editing system in the newest Soundtrack Pro.
Incoporating that, the amount of information on the audio
waveforms available in Vegas, the new analog audio
scrub feature, and the ability to mix and export 5.1 Surround
Sound and you've got an amazingly powerful audio application
by itself.
The
new media manager that's been brought over from Acid
Pro is incredibly helpful, as well. This is basically
an incredibly powerful search and find tool for keeping
track of your audio/video clips, pictures, and other editing
resources that could quickly become unmanageable without
it. This is especially useful due to the fact that Vegas
6 now supports nesting of timelines for drag and drop
applications, which means that your editing projects can
get incredibly complex and long running. This is most useful
for people who are making TV shows or are using a certain
effect in a film over and over, as you can edit a timeline
and then drop it into an uber-timeline at need. (Users of
FCP and Premiere Pro are already familiar
with this feature.)
While
HDV is supported in this new version of Vegas, it's
not as streamlined as in Final Cut Pro 5, requiring
an importing codec that converts the HDV into Cinestream
in the computer and then has to reconvert all the imported
footage to HDV when you fly it out. This means that you'll
have longer wait times on the export than you do with FCP5,
which only has to export the footage that's actually been
changed rather than the entire line of footage.
