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MillimeterSonic Foundry's Vegas Video
Nov 1, 2000 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon
Sonic Foundry rolls dice and joins video game with new Vegas editing program
Vegas Video is Sonic Foundry's first real foray into the video editing software arena. The audio software company has put its toe in this water before, adding video importing to its audio flagship Vegas Pro (now replaced by Vegas Video and Vegas Audio), but it has never released a full-blown video tool.
Until now. Vegas Video competes against programs such as Adobe Premiere and Ulead Media Studio Pro, but this 1.0 version does not yet have the rich feature set of either. But the software does excel at audio features - no surprise there. The program seems best suited for audio professionals who are making their first steps into video, just like the company. We'll examine the program to see if audio professionals should stop working in multiple audio and video programs and simply adopt this one.
Vegas Video is set up like most other video editing programs. Clips are arranged on a traditional timeline, and a preview window and clip list sort movies for your project. The Vegas timeline offers an unlimited number of tracks that move above or below any other track with a quick drag-and-drop. This establishes more of a "mixing" metaphor than some dedicated video programs. In fact, each video track has an attached opacity slider, so you can fade tracks up and down to create smooth montages.
Another great audio-like feature applied here for video is automatic cross-fade. If you have one video clip on the time clip and you drag another one on top, the program generates a dissolve on the fly. With most video programs you would have to drag a transition effect over and deploy it on a separate track. Vegas Video makes it easy to "mix" video and as such might be well suited for productions like music videos, where cuts, dissolves, and opacity prevail.
One of its key selling points is compatibility with different types of content, both video and audio. No need to match up frame rates, resolution, and audio fidelity; Vegas Video will take them all. You can drag in a DV clip and immediately follow it with a QuickTime clip. Drag them over each other for an automatic cross dissolve. Move a WAV file into the timeline and drag an MP3 under it. Vegas will mix the two without a hiccup. Many video editing programs are very specific, especially when it comes to resolution, but this program allows all sorts of sources for maximum flexibility.
Below the timeline, a traditional preview window displays the results at a click of the play button. As added advantages, you can adjust the quality of the preview output and, if your system supports it, preview the timeline out to a monitor. When I set the quality of the preview window to "draft," I could actually see two DV streams fade between each other in real time. In regular quality, one stream at a time flowed in near real time - not bad for a software-driven computer monitor preview. Unfortunately I never got the "preview to external monitor" feature to work, as it apparently works only with certain video cards.
Also on the main screen is a file explorer and a media pool. The explorer is just like any other explorer in Windows, making it easy to track down multiple files on video and audio drives. You can move any file into the media pool window, which lists the content you would like to include in your production. From the media pool you can drag your clips to the timeline and mix away. Replacing a movie from your timeline to the media pool is easy, and the spot where that clip sat in the timeline reflects the change. Like most programs of this type, everything you do, from moving files to creating dissolves to merging tracks, is non-destructive, so nothing alters your original file.
Built-in transition effects and audio effects are a mixed bag. The few video transition effects are limited to pedestrian stock effects like pushes and reveals, but they work in real time with no rendering. Some other video effects are blur, levels, chroma, and sharpen. The audio effects, as may be expected from Sonic Foundry, are much more impressive and expandable, since the program features DirectX effects plug-ins. This gives the program a lot of room to grow on the audio side. So while the palette of effects is slim, they are instantly useable and play with no rendering. The program fully supports all the latest digital and web-based file formats, and also alpha channels, non-square pixels, and 24-bit/96kHz audio.
Vegas Video sports a lot of really useful tools and methods, but some fall just short of true utility. For example, a handy edge-trim feature lets you grab the end or beginning of a clip and trim as much as you want. But the only way to see what you are trimming is not through the video preview, but in the thumbnails on the timeline. This requires a complete zoom-in to view the frames for accuracy. Zooming that close obscures the flow of the clip.
Also shaky is the ability to scrub. The video preview and trim windows contain basic VCR controls but don't allow really precise scrubbing. There is a slider bar, but there needs to be different scrubbing options, including frame-by-frame advance and mouse-wheel scrubbing. With practice you can scrub with the slider and keyboard commands, but it would be nice to have more options.
Features such as the media pool, a window to keep available all your current movies, show advanced methods of arranging but leave out traditional options like subfolders.
Other than these, most features work fine; although the interface, a few degrees off traditional, creates a bit of a learning curve. Of course, if you are familiar with other Sonic Foundry programs such as Acid, you will immediately feel right at home.
Vegas Video's comprehensive manual is detailed yet fairly long-winded. A nice touch is the included training CD with videos that walk through most of the program's features. Unfortunately there is no way to scan through or rewind sections of the videos, just "play" and "pause." So pay attention the first time.
On the plus side, Vegas Video is great for mixing, in the sense of throwing a bunch of clips, audio, and video together and moving them around. You can drag almost anything onto the timeline, regardless of file format, and dissolve and mix and then preview in real time. The program is loose enough - not conforming to traditional desktop standards - that it feels more creative and free than some other video editing programs. The downside is that some high-level features found on the big-time video editors are absent.
Vegas Video was born out of Sonic Foundry's audio software stable and it shows. As such it may not fulfill high-end broadcast needs, but that's not its target market. I see Vegas Video as a tool for audio pros who are just getting into digital video production and want a comfortable, natural program. If audio is your background, especially if you have several packages from Sonic Foundry, Vegas Video is a great fit.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
