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Sony Media Software has released a new version of its video editing software, adding new features that make it easier and faster to use. Vegas 6 ($600, upgrade from Vegas 5, $200) is a refined editing software package, building on its powerful feature set with new ways to group, search, and find your video clips. It also adds new compatibility with additional audio plug-ins, and much more. We tested Vegas 6 and found that this already-excellent editing software product has been improved even more with this new release. Here?s our review.
To start, I have to tell you that Vegas is one of my favorite editing software packages, so this is going to be a positive review, but I?ll also point out what I don?t like about Vegas 6, too. I?ve always liked its freeform timeline, powerful audio features, unique workflow and speedy and clean rendering. The most important attribute of this new Vegas 6 product is that it builds upon all those core strengths. Heading the long list of improvements for me is its increased rendering speed. Even when editing DV footage, it?s often necessary to render video before it can be printed to tape. In this new release, the wizards of Vegas have somehow managed to speed up its rendering performance by what the company says is 40% faster, and for me, it feels even faster than that. This speedy performance was especially apparent when using our dual Xeon 3.6GHz test machine from Dell, which is one of the fastest computers available. Vegas 6 has new code packed inside that?s able to better take advantage of the power of dual processors, hyperthreading, as well as the new dual-core chips from Intel and AMD. Beyond that, Sony has created an effective network rendering engine which can offload the number crunching to computers that you might not be in use. All of these new capabilities are important in today?s video production environment, where complicated projects are becoming more commonplace and high definition video is more pervasive than ever.
Speaking of high definition video, it?s better supported in Vegas 6 as well. Perhaps the most talked-about HD format in years, HDV, is supported in Vegas 6, and now is an integral part of the software. Using the CineForm codec, HDV?s high-definition transport stream must be converted to the CineForm format before it can be rendered, but once that?s done simple edits and transitions can be executed in real time. The only drawback to this is, because the data stream must be transcoded first, this is not what is known as native HDV editing. The transcoding to the CineForm format happens as the footage is being captured, and after that, the editing happens very quickly, with most dual-stream effects happening in real time on a powerful machine. However, the problem with non-native HDV editing is that once you?re finished editing your project, all of it must be rendered back to the HDV format, not just the parts that you?ve changed, and that takes a good long while. Other software packages such as Final Cut Pro and Pinnacle Liquid Edition (and others on the way that we can?t name right now) are able to edit HDV in a near-native format, where only the footage that you?ve changed needs to be rendered. Hopefully, Vegas will follow suit with a similar, more-efficient scheme of its own in future releases. But for now, the embedded CineForm codec works very well if you don?t mind waiting around for the final render.
A welcome new feature in Vegas 6 is nested projects. This new trick is easy and convenient to use, where you simply find a saved project in the Vegas Explorer window and drag it onto your timeline. Then, that entire project behaves exactly as if it were a single clip. In my testing, I found myself using this feature frequently, adding effects and cross fading from one project to another. In fact, anything you can do to a clip, you can do to an entire nested project that you?ve dropped on the timeline. I?ve gotten accustomed to having this capability in other editing software applications such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro, and it?s a welcome addition to Vegas 6. This feature is particularly useful if you?re doing a weekly television series, for example, where there are common elements from week to week. Interstitial materials such as bumpers can be saved as projects, and then simply dropped onto the timeline as just another clip when it?s time to use them next week. It?s a great workflow enhancement that should be in all editing software packages, especially those aimed at professionals.
A new feature that will have special appeal to those who are working on large projects is Vegas 6?s new Media Manager. This new area within Vegas 6 lets you create a library of clips to which you can attach all different kinds of metadata. Of course, the organizational power of Media Manager is only as good as you are, because if you don?t enter meaningful labels for your clips when you?re capturing them there won?t be much to sort. A favorite of mine in Media Manager is the ability to assign star ratings to each clip, and then when I?m trying to select shots for b-roll, I simply cherry-pick the five-star clips first. This is a great way to keep lots of details straight in your mind as you go through a complicated project. I also like the way you can designate the clips in your library to appear in the folder in a specialized thumbnail format, where you?re able to hover your cursor over each clip and after a second or two it enlarges its thumbnail so you can see what?s inside (see graphic below). Vegas is also intelligent about the frame selected as its poster frame of each clip. It doesn?t just take the first frame of the clip, which is often black, so you?re not required to go in and select a poster frame for each clip. At a glance, many times you can find just the shot you?re looking for, where before, it might have taken you quite a while to do the same thing.
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| Vegas 6's Media Manager will search the areas you designate, resulting in an easy-to-use library of your clips. When you hover your cursor over a clip, it gives you an enlarged icon to show you its contents. |
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| You can sort and search your clips in the Library using metadata that you designate. Here's the chooser, where you select the categories for each column of data that you can sort in the library. |
Another enhancement is support for VST audio plug-ins. In addition to a good variety of audio plug-ins already included in Vegas 6, this is a worthy addition to the collection, and VST has a variety of plug-ins on its Web site, many of which are free. I downloaded many of its Classic plug-ins and used them with Vegas, finding them well-designed and easy to implement. Just as it is with any plug-in effect, it?s a simple matter of right-clicking on the audio clip, selecting the plug-in you?d like to use, making your adjustments, and then it?s applied to that clip.
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