High-definition is not
longer high-end. In just the past year, the HDV format (HD
video on DV tape) has gone from a promise to a reality with
a the availabilityy of camcorders like the Sony
HDR-HC1 Mini DV / HDV camcorder at under $1900. And the
software has caught up -- new versions of professional
products like Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony
Vegas, and Ulead MediaStudio Pro can handle
HD material, and the technology is now flowing down to their
associated consumer products.
If you're looking to get
started with video, and want all the latest formats and
technology in one package, then head on over to
Sony Vegas Movie Studio+DVD Platinum Edition, with HD
video editing, powerful audio, and DVD creation (US $129.95
direct).
Introduced in September
2005, this is one of the new versions of the Studio line of
consumer products from Sony Media Software, including
entry-level versions of its well-known professional
Vegas, ACID, and Sound Forge
products.
The Sony Media Software
product line has a powerful legacy in audio creation and
editing, based on the Sonic Foundry products acquired by
Sony in 2003.
For professional audio
work, Sony currently offers ACID Pro 5 for
loop-based music creation (US $319 packaged, $299 download)
and Sound Forge 8 for digital audio editing
($319 / $299.96).
For professional video
editing, the current Vegas products, introduced in April
2005, are Vegas 6 for standard-def and high-def
editing ($479 packaged, $449 download), and
Vegas+DVD with the addition of DVD Architect 3
and AC-3 encoding ($719 / $674).
Sony Vegas Movie Studio+DVD / Vegas+DVD
The new entry-level Studio
consumer line, announced September 2005, features
corresponding versions of these applications: Vegas
Movie Studio+DVD 6 for video editing and DVD creation
(includes DVD Architect Studio 3, $89.95),
ACID Music Studio 6 for music creation and
mixing ($69.95), and Sound Forge Audio Studio 8
for audio editing and production ($69.95). This is an
evolution of Sony's consumer line beyond its previous
Screenblast name.
to get Sony Vegas Video- Consumer Version
Building on its audio
legacy, Sony also has introduced some even lower-priced
music tools for quick creations and kids: ACID XMC
(eXtreme Music Creation) to record, mix, burn, and share
songs and remixes ($39.95), Jam Trax music
creation software for kids 10 and up ($19.95), and
Super Duper Music Looper music-making software for kids
6 - 9 ($19.95).
Sony also has split the
Vegas Movie Studio line into two versions, the full-up
Platinum edition with HD support, and the regular Vegas
Movie Studio+DVD 6 at $89. The DVD Architect Studio 3
authoring tool is included in both versions. For video
editing, in addition to HDV capture and editing, the
Platinum version adds 3-wheel primary color correction,
hundreds of additional video transitions and effects, and
additional audio effects with DirectX plug-in support, Plus
there's other bonuses including the Pixélan
Software SpiceMASTER 2.5 TFX plug-in from for
soft/organic effects, the Sony ACID XMC music
mixing software, a Sony Pictures Sound Effects CD,
and a copy of the HDV: What You Need To Know
handbook from VAAST.
So, what's the difference
between the $700 pro Vegas+DVD and the $100 consumer Studio
version? The full Vegas clearly provides deeper audio
support, including 5.1 surround-sound mixing, full
24-bit/192kHz audio quality (Studio supports 16-bit/48kHz),
and Red Book Audio CD mastering/burning. For working with
large projects, Vegas provides unlimited video and audio
tracks (Studio provides 4 of each), project nesting, system
wide media management, and AAF import/export. And it
provides advanced pro editing features including envelope
automation, application scripting, advanced color
correction, and video scopes, plus support for devices
including external control surfaces and Blackmagic Design
DeckLink boards.
Similarly, compared to DVD
Architect Studio, the full version of DVD Architect supports
multiple video and audio tracks, subtitles, and built-in
media effects to enhance and crop video and graphics. It
also adds support for 24p progressive-scan video and AC-3
audio, importing menus from layered .psd files, and
previewing on an external video monitor. The full version
also provides mastering options for writing to DLT tape and
enabling CSS and Macrovision content protection.
But the Studio version is
not about dumbing down and removing functionality. Says Dave
Chaimson, vice president of marketing for Sony Media
Software: "The philosophy really not so much to simplify the
interface (though there is some work done in toning things
down a bit), but rather to simplify the complexities of the
feature sets. Our user interface is probably one of our
strongest assets. Customers like the way they can
efficiently maneuver around our programs, and the fact that
moving from one Studio application to another, is very easy
to do. We did build in nearly fifty Show-Me-How tutorials
into each application, along with extensive wizards to help
you prepare your output."
If you've seen
Vegas before, Vegas Movie Studio will look very
familiar. There are two horizontal regions: the Timeline at
the top (with the Track list on the left), and a collection
of docked and tabbed windows at the bottom (including the
Preview window at the bottom right). You can drag the
horizontal splitter bar across the the main window to resize
the timeline area, and adjust the vertical bars to resize
the windows across each strip. If you don't like the default
arrangement, you can drag out the individual windows and
tabs to tile them in different positions, or to have them
float above the main window as individual pallets.
Vegas Movie Studio
The nested windows at the
bottom left of the screen contain tabs for accessing clips,
tools, and effects to use as you are editing. You can start
with the Explorer tab to browse your disks for material to
import into the project. The Project Media tab then displays
thumbnails of your imported clips, with a nice summary of
their format underneath. To acquire more clips, the Project
Media tab also has handy icons to help assembling the clips
you are using in the project: Import Media, Capture Video,
Get Photo (from camera or scanner), Extract Audio from CD,
and Get Media from the Web (stock libraries of content
listed on the Sony website).
Once you've imported some
media, you then can start editing together your production
in the Timeline. Vegas Studio supports up to four video and
four audio tracks. It comes pre-configured with six tracks:
the main Video track, with Text and Video Overlay tracks,
and Voice, Music, and Sound Effects audio tracks (although
you can put any kind of video or audio on any of the four
associated tracks).
You can edit and trim
clips directly in the timeline, of course, but Vegas also
provides the Trimmer tab to help prepare individual clips by
setting markers at important points so you can easily select
portions of the clip to add to the timeline. Vegas users the
term "Events" to describe clips in the timeline.
Then as your timeline
becomes more complex, Vegas has plenty of tools to help
layout your clips -- zoom in and out, select and group
multiple clips, and controlling ripple editing, adjusting
the timeline automatically as you insert and trim.
As you
assemble clips along a track, and overlap them, Vegas will
automatically add fade in/out transitions. You can easily
adjust the fade offset by hovering the cursor at the corner
of a clip and dragging. To change the transition, just
right-click to select various envelopes and effects, or use
the Transitions tab to preview the effect (hover the cursor
over the thumbnail to animate it), and then just drag and
drop your selection to the timeline. Vegas adds small tags
to the timeline to display the transition type and duration
-- double-click to display the Video Event FX dialog to
adjust the various parameters for that transition.
Similarly, use
the Video FX tab to browse video effects to clean up,
enhance, or otherwise manipulate your video. You can drag
and drop to the timeline, or click the Event FX icon (also
overlaid on the end of each clip) to display the Video Event
FX dialog, where you can select one or more effects,
rearrange their order, and adjust their parameters. You can
also define Track effects, which are applied to all the
clips in the track. Similarly for audio, you can apply any
of the available Sony and third-party plug-ins as track
effects, or apply them to individual clips as non-real-time
operations saved to a new file.
Video Effects
Next, start
layering multiple tracks. Use the Media Generator tab to add
basic backgrounds and textures, and to select pre-defined
text styles and animated rolling credit overlays. Again,
these offer dialogs to define the parameters of the
generated graphics and text. Now position and composite the
overlay tracks. Use the controls in the track list to set
the overall video opacity or audio volume and pan.
Text generator
Then click the
Event Pan/Crop icon on individual clips to set the position,
scaling, and rotation of the overlaid clip. Plus, you can
use the same dialog to set keyframes to adjust the
parameters, and have Vegas interpolate between them. In this
way, you can animate a title or a picture-in-picture effect
to grow and move across the screen.
The real excitement of the
Platinum Edition of Vegas Movie Studio+DVD is the support
for editing high-definition content, especially the HDV
format. HDV is simply high-def video, but
stored on standard DV media. The video is compressed using
MPEG-2, like DVD, but in wide-screen 16:9 aspect ratio, at
higher resolution than standard-definition 720 x 480 video (www.hdv-info.org).
As a result, HDV video is more aggressively compressed to
fit up to 6X more data into the same bandwidth used for DV
(25 Mbps), and not much more than used for MPEG-2 on DVD
(typically 6 to 8 Mbps). HDV supports two basic formats:
- 720p (1280 x 720, progressive), at approximately 19
Mbps - 1080i (1440 x 1080,
interlaced), at approximately 25 Mbps
Vegas Movie Studio can
work directly with HDV camcorders and native HDV file format
(i.e., M2T MPEG-2 Transport). These are large files, like DV
(25 Mbps is around 3 MB per second of video), and take
significant power to decode and process, so you'll need a
high-end machine to an significant work with them. Instead,
it's much more efficient to convert to an intermediate
format like CineForm or Windows Media Video (WMV)
for your editing. When you are done editing, you then can
export directly from high-quality CineForm, or replace
lower-quality intermediates with the original HDV video for
the final rendering.
HDV Editing
Of course, this begs the
question of how you are going to share and display your
final HD production. You can transfer back to your HDV
camcorder and display from there. And you can export to SD
formats -- you'll loose the higher resolution, but get great
quality on DV or for wide-screen DVD. (You also can mix HD
and SD material on the same Vegas timeline.) To watch and
display HD material on a computer, export to WMV HD format
-- you can use 720p for good playback on a wide range of
machines, or higher-res 1080i on higher-end systems.
If you have enjoyed
creating movies with some of the simplified consumer video
editing tools, then Vegas Movie Studio+DVD is an appealing
option for moving up to do more sophisticated video editing.
And there's even room to grow further -- you can edit
high-definition HDV video with the Platinum Edition, and
even have the ability to eventually move up to the full
Vegas+DVD.
Sony has taken an
interesting approach with the Vegas product family, removing
some of the more complex functionality from the Studio
products, but retaining the full Vegas interface. In
comparison, Adobe went further with Premiere Elements to
change the interface to help new users, not only
simplifying, but also adding new elements for common
operations -- but still providing the same Premiere Pro
functions one level away in the menus.
In comparison, Vegas
Studio is still Vegas -- you can click back and forth
between the two products and not notice glaringly obvious
differences. The on-line documentation for Vegas Studio, and
the nice paper manuals, actually describes the full Vegas
product, with the addition of notes for capabilities only
available in the full version. Vegas can open Studio
projects for advanced editing, but not vice versa.
The Studio version does
remove some of the more esoteric toolbar buttons in the
various windows, and adds two buttons on the main toolbar.
The nice Make Movie wizard steps you through choosing export
options, including saving to file formats, burning to disc
with DVD Architect Studio, and transferring back to a DV or
HDV camera. The extensive Show Me How tutorials step through
common operations, highlighting the associated button or
operation for you click.
Of course, the Platinum
Edition is a great option if you're interested in getting
into HDV editing, and adds other bonuses including the ACID
XMC music mixing software. Just be sure that your system has
the processing performance and memory and disk capacity to
handle these significantly larger files.
Go ahead and try out Vegas
Movie Studio+DVD for yourself -- Sony offers 30-day trial
versions of its software as downloads from its website,
along with other materials including the product manuals.
Vegas Movie Studio
Video Effects 
Text generator
Event Pan/Crop 
HDV Editing