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Vegas Pro 8 | 
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| From: Sony Creative Software
Category: Software
List Price: $699.95
Buy New: $464.49
You Save: $235.46 (34%)
New (38) from $273.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp, Windows
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Windows
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 8 x 2.7
nv:Software Type: Audio/Video Authoring
MPN: SVDVD8000
Model: SVDVD8000
UPC: 855309838386
EAN: 0855309838386
Release Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Precise editing tools - ProType Titling technology, multicamera editing tools, 32-bit floating point video processing, customizable window layouts, color-coded snapping, improved HDV/SDI/XDCAM support, Cinescore plug-in support, A/V synchronization detection and repair, and auto-frame quantization | | • | Superior audio control - unlimited tracks, 24-bit/192 kHz audio, punch-in recording, 5.1 surround mixing, effects automation, and time compress/expand. Apply customizable, real-time audio effects like EQ, Reverb, Delay, and more. Expand your audio processing and mixing options with supported third-party DirectX and VST audio plug-ins | | • | Create standard DVDs with multiple video angles, subtitles, multiple languages, and running commentary | | • | Fully customizable workspace for efficient, professional workflow | | • | Detailed interactive tutorials provide walk-through demonstrations of common features and functionality |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Vegas Pro collection combines Vegas Pro 8, DVD Architect Pro 4.5, and Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding software to offer an integrated environment for all phases of professional video, audio, DVD, and broadcast production, with everything neccessary to let you edit and process DV, AVCHD, HDV, SD/HD-SDI, and all XDCAM formats in real time, fine-tune audio with precision, and author surround sound, dual-layer DVDs. The Vegas Pro 8 interface provides a fully customizable workspace for accomplishing a wide range of production requirements with a wide range of convenient features, such as multicamera editing tools, 32-bit floating point video processing, customizable window layouts and more. Use the Mixing Console for precise audio control. Create standard DVDs with multiple video angles, subtitles, multiple languages, running commentary and even copy-protection flags for masters. Vegas Pro 8 even comes with detailed interactive tutorials that provide walk-through demonstrations of common features and functionality.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Why get anything else? Bug free and SOLID performance! October 19, 2007
50 out of 53 found this review helpful
I have been a long-time (and very frustrated) Roxio user who, after crash # 953, finally got fed up and decided to try the trial version of Sony Vegas Pro 8.
Vegas Pro 8, of course, is a much higher-end product than Roxio Easy Media Creator (version 8 referred to herein for comparative purposes), but here are some reasons why you may wish to reconsider:
1. First and foremost, if you're serious about video editing and wish to explore new and creative ways to create DVD's, this one is a must. Roxio will continue to place annoying limitations like 60 second menus.
2. The controls are far more intuitive. Creating a slow-motion shot in Vegas Pro 8 is as simple as ctrl+clicking and dragging a video clip to the desired length. Roxio is a frustrating experience of playing with film speeds until the shoe fits.
3. Playback while editing is no longer a processing problem with Vegas 8. Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 (on a Pentium 4 2.6 GHZ Hyper-thread, 1 GB of RAM, and a 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 card) has an annoying tendency to choke and run home to mommy when another process happens to run at the same time. Vegas Pro 8 takes it all in stride.
4. RENDERING. OH, YES, RENDERING. Roxio seems to think that everything needs to be re-rendered even if the edited video was already an MPEG-2 to start with. VEGAS PRO 8 DOES NOT DO THIS - if it's already in the right format, it won't ruin the quality by recompressing.
5. RENDER QUALITY. Roxio offers constant bit rate encoding. Period. Vegas Pro 8 offers 2-pass variable bitrate encoding which allows longer videos to be placed on a DVD, while compressing it at a variable rate so that segments requiring higher quality get what they deserve and segments that are relatively static (i.e., pictures) can be compressed at a much lower rate. Also, a 9 MBPS video encode from Vegas Pro 8 looks better than a 9 MBPS from Roxio.
6. Capturing. Vegas will tell me if my mini DV tape had dropped frames (and so far it has not happened at all); Roxio will not (and it HAS). I'll make a DVD with Roxio and...surprise!! I need to recapture that portion of the video because it's shot!!
7. Bugs. Roxio is buggy...VERY buggy. Every time I try to make additional copies of a disc image that I put on my hard drive (because I don't want to live through another Roxio video encode), approximately 25-30 error messages (no, I'm not joking) will pop up that I have to repeatedly close out of before I can use the burn utility. Not to mention that the initial install of Roxio caused my computer to forget that I had a CD-ROM or a DVD drive. I had to edit my registry keys so that I could "find them" again. Vegas Pro 8 has had ZERO issues with me.
There's more, but why go further? If you're serious about video editing and production, don't settle for less. This program will do it all from video editing, importing, capturing, image effects, DVD creation (including menus), and Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding (INCLUDING 5.1!!). I have only scratched the surface of its full potential--there are plenty of tools to explore in there that can allow you to create very professional looking DVD's.
Buy and enjoy!!!! And NO, this software does NOT have bugs as mentioned by Dash's review.
A Very Good Product At A Fair Price November 2, 2007
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
Although I've been a customer for years, this is my first review on Amazon. I'm an experienced computer user (web designer/tech consultant) running a mildly overclocked Dell winxp pro quadcore with 4Gb RAM and 768Mb video RAM (so take that into account when evaluating this review).
I completely disagree with the earlier reviewer who trashed the product. Although I'm somewhat of a newbie to video (I previously owned Premiere Elements 3 & 4), my experience with Vegas Pro 8 has been that it is very stable for a relatively complex program (certainly more stable than Premiere Elements 4). The only bug I've encountered was some erratic behavior with the pro titler, which was completely cured by downloading/installing the Microsoft .Net 3.5 (Beta 2) update. Vegas requires Microsoft .Net 3.0 be installed to run properly (perhaps the source of the earlier reviewer's problems). Also, it goes without saying that it's usually good policy to be running the manufacturer's latest stable release of any product (currently ver. 8.0a of Vegas, which can be downloaded at the sonycreativesoftware site).
Unlike the Adobe video products (Premiere, After Effects, etc.), the interface "look" is quite basic, but very functional. Everything just seems to work pretty much the way you would expect it to. It comes with a fair amount of useful transitions, effects, transparency support, and supports the VST plugin architecture (check out the NewBlue motion blends/effects).
In fairness, although it can do a LOT of what the Adobe Production suite can do (and even some things it can't do, e.g., Sony AVCHD support), it lacks some of the advantages that the Adobe suite has (at roughly 3 times the street price) in terms of integration with other technologies/products (e.g., Illustrator, Flash, etc.). However, it does recognize/import Photoshop psd files and Flash swf files, the latter being particularly useful for their (vector-based) high quality rendering and native background transparency.
I've discovered that there are a lot of dedicated Sony Vegas Pro users out there (some in professional editing environments). If you're looking for a very solid, very reasonably priced "prosumer+" level video editor, you should take a long, hard look at this product (download the 30 day demo). I really don't think you'll be disappointed.
 Buggier than V7 December 5, 2007
18 out of 22 found this review helpful
Vegas 8 in my experience is buggier than v7 or even v6. That said, it is reassuring to know that Sony coders are very good about getting user feedback and fixing issues. For now, I am opening my VEG files and saving them in the new version while retaining the original v7 counterpart as a precaution since you cannot go back. Saying that, I find Vegas 8 to be a worthwhile improvement overall and very intuitive.
As far as the app goes, I edit HDV video and keep it in native .m2t stream the entire process until final output to DVD. I recently bought one of those fancy hdtv's and have had the joy of seeing the file rendered back to the HDV camcorder; We were stunned by the incredible quality. Sony Vegas lets you "print" to your camcorder so you can use the camcorder as an HD source. Quality is comparable to blue-ray dvd.
Final comment, IMO this app is probably far more than a casual user will want; this app is more for the serious hobbiest or pro. With ALL these apps there is a learning curve, and Adobe's premiere ELEMENTS and Sony Vegas MOVIE STUDIO are probably more appropriate for someone who will only use it to edit baby's first steps, birthday parties, etc. The reason I say this is "lightweight" apps tend to have more built in templates than the Pro apps. Lightweight apps will have pre-built birthday and Christmas graphics for titles and backgrounds, for example. Be aware, lightweight apps sacrifice flexibility for simplicity.
I recommend you read the reviews, then download the free trials of apps you think may be useful before buying. Some people just don't "get" the interface of one app, while finding another app quite intuitive.
See you in Hollywood!
Pro Video editing at an amazing price point December 19, 2007
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
Vegas Pro 8 is aimed at the professional, prosumer and broadcast market. its able to handle multi camera inputs and contains sophisticated color correction tools, a DVD production platform, surround sound capabilities and will work with a wide variety of formats including HD - not the kind of stuff most folks will dig into who just want to cut video together and put simple titles on. I think that if you want to wow your friends even with your family video work, it is worth learning how to work on a pro platform at this price, especially since it contains some Cinescore basics (canned music) and the best audio editing capabilities on a video app I have experienced. Great audio is the difference between a great video and a mediocre one. I have worked on Adobe Premiere and Ulead MediaStudio, and basic editing is pretty much the same with all of these apps. However, the value is in the details. Most of what makes Vegas Pro 8 such a good value requires sitting down and learning the workflow and capabilities. There is a great user base to get a lot of free information and good training materials available. The 30 day free trial is a great way to put it though its paces. You can still as of this writing purchase Vegas 6 at B&H Photo for 79.00 and learn much of it on that platform, or spend the additional 99.00 at Tiger Direct for the Pro 8 upgrade and have a top of the line state of the art editing platform for less than $200. If you are composing video for the Web, Adobe Production Suite has many more capabilities, but if you are doing straight independent film/video production to DVD or for broadcast, this pretty much has everything you need except talent!
Stable, Powerful, good value for money May 28, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Coming from the Pinnacle products, I was very pleasantly surprised by the stability of the system: so far no bug, no crash, no re-install. Also, the software seems to be relatively light since it runs without any problems on my old machine: P4 3Ghz, 1 Gb of RAM, XP SP3. In addition, it is a very powerful editing tool that comes with DVD architect, very powerful as well: more famous competing products like FCP or Avid Xpress are at least twice as expensive. What is also very nice is that you can download for 30 days a trial version from the Sony website that is almost not limited (except for color correction): you can make sure that Vegas will run smoothly on your machine and that you get used to the interface. I highly recommend this product.
Update after a few months of use: I noticed that there was no plug-in for image stabilisation, a bit cheap for a Pro version, knowing that Pinnacle Studio 9 had such a plug-in and was sold less than $100. If you want such a plug-in, you will have to buy the Mercali plug-in, starting at $50...
Also, cleaning the sound track from undesired noises is not at all practical with Vegas pro, and in the end very limited. There are a lot of plug-ins but none really to efficiently remove unwanted parasite noises, such as wind or applauses. Here Sony clearly pushes you to buy Sony Sound forge, which is unacceptable. I bought Magix Audio Cleaning for $35, it is light, simple and in the end quite efficient.
For these 2 reasons, I still recommend the product but if I could, I would downgrade it to 4 stars.
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