Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Pro Pack

I had this product shipped directly from Sony USA as I needed it to work on a wedding video I recently shot.

I already own Movie Studio 8 Plat edition and have upgraded so that I can work in 1920x1080 video and export directly to Blu-ray.

It's an amazing piece of software and I can thoroughly recommend it for the semi-pro/competent amateur. The pro's would naturally be looking at Vegas Pro, but for less than £100 I can hardly think of a more advanced package.

I am using a Sony SR12E camcorder and have output a few projects in high defintion using Vegas and it really has to be seen to be believed. High quality output really is at your fingertips.

Regarding system stability, I have never had either Plat 8 or Plat 9 versions crash yet and you can use anything from a P4 processor upwards to get decent results. The only thing is that the renders can be very time consuming (especially in high def), and the preview can be jerky/glitchy but this is just a side effect of very processor heavy stuff!

Brilliant software.

After much research and reading of other reviews I finally decided to go for the Sony platinum pro pack. Some comments suggested it may be complicated but though I am a newcomer to video editing I have managed to produce my first short video with only minimal assistance of the help and "show me how" buttons.
Two things finally decided me on Sony Vegas platinum. First was the inclusion of "Sound Forge". I wanted to have a lot of control over the audio for my music tracks and this is a great audio editing package which can be used stand alone or it integrates perfectly as part of the video production.
Second was the system requirements. My pc is four years old now and close to minimum spec, running Windows XP with 2 Ghz processor and 512MB RAM. Other products seemed to be more demanding for system requirements and crashes were often mentioned in reviews. I wanted something reliable so I was pleased to find this package works perfectly on my pc. When I am editing large HD video files, saving is slow and preview can be a little jerky but I put that down to the limitations of my pc which only just has minimum RAM for AVCHD; most importantly, I have had no crashes at all!

As a very keen amateur wanting to produce professional standard DVDs, I have over the years built up a collection of video cameras thro' standard 8, Hi 8 to 3 chip semi-pro handicams. During the past 18 months I have been acquiring new and virtually new HD camcorders (the wife stopped me at 3). I have been producing wedding and party/event DVDs for friends and relatives at normal DVD standard because not until the middle of 2008 did the format war finish, with Sony's Blu-ray standard winning out. I requested an LG external Blue-ray burner for my birthday and over Xmas bought a Panasonic Blue-ray player. Although my existing pro level software editing suite can edit HD, it cannot author blue-ray DVDs and the cost of upgrading made my (and the wife's) eyes water. The decision to change from a software that I was comfortable with and had invested a lot of learning hours into, was hard but made economic sense. After a lot of research into budget editing packages, the Platinum Pro Pack Vegas Movie Studio 9 seemed to be the only kit with "everything in the box" and offered the prospect of burning HD masterpieces to Blu-ray. A 3pm order to Amazon arrived the next morning and I settled down in front of my dedicated video editing PC. Within the hour I had installed the Movie Studio 9, the DVD Architect Studio 4.5, the Sound Forge Audio Studio 9 and the Cinescore Studio. As you run EACH package for the first time you have to type in a serial number (from the card included in the box) into an on-screen registration form, along with name address and email. The completed form links automatically to the Sony website and within a few seconds you get a 60 digit authentication code by email that you copy and paste into the your waiting program. There is an optional authentication code printed on the serial number card that you can enter immediately but this only allows use of the software for a limited unspecified period. FOUR authentications later I'm up and running!!!

Value for money or what? Wow!

I played with the editing package for a short while, quickly importing some HD clips from my Sony HDR-HC1E. Like most men, (and innocent children) I dived in with no instructions. Some features and moves from my previous experience worked, some features were obvious but I quickly reached a point where "stop and read" was the only way forward.

Cutting to the chase, I powered up DVD Architect and with some existing pre-edited HD mini movies, I tried to build a quick and crude DVD with menu structure (like the ones you buy). My previous experience just got in the way here. It was so simple to set up a single menu structure because all the button navigation and links are automatically set up in the background. Absolutely fantastic. Crude and unpolished, yes, but my 10 minute masterpiece worked!!! (Superb non-jerky preview). BD-R discs are expensive to experiment with so I used the BD-RE rewritable supplied with the burner. At this point my joy turned to despair as I discovered that I COULD NOT BURN MY DVD PRODUCTION TO Blu-ray!!!!! I could only burn it to normal DVD. Had I been deceived? Nowhere on the box or reviews did it say I could burn an authored DVD to Blue-ray, anymore than it specifically mentioned I couldn't. You can burn a finished HD edited masterpiece to Blu-ray for sure (it says it on the box) but the fact that the DVD authoring software was include in the package had led me to a false conclusion

That the box contents did not satisfy my dream was my fault. On reflection what on earth was I expecting? A professional package for a consumer price? That's a bit harsh because what's in the box is almost the professional package. After only a short time playing with it I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to produce a highly professional DVD at a budget price

Perhaps the review should stop at this point but I'm sure a few people will be interested to know what happened next.

On the Sony website I a found a FREE support line number for the UK. I phoned and without any of the normal menu jungle, was speaking to someone at Sony in the USA. He quickly confirmed that I could not burn authored Blu-ray DVDs from the vesion of DVD Architect supplied with Movie Studio 9 but that Blu-ray burning of authored DVDs was possible with the full Pro version. I rather apprehensively asked if there was an UPGRADE route and what would be the cost. He quickly tracked me down by my email address (I now see the advantage of instant registration) and confirmed that the upgrade route was to buy the latest Vegas Pro and latest DVD Architect Pro. As downloadable upgrades I had to pay another £263.87 plus 34.42 tax. Unexpectedly painful --- but checkout the full retail box prices of each (BIG smile)Sony Vegas Pro 8 (PC)

Within the hour I was up and running with the full pro packages and by the end of the day I had captured, edited (actually just trimmed) some HD clips, picked them up in the DVD architect, accessed them singly and jointly from a menu superimposed onto a video background with music and finally watched the end result with my wife on our 40 inch Sony Bravia. What a day!!!

I write this review a few days after my success and I must say that the Pro packages have lots of extra features that mere mortals like me will never touch. Why should I worry? For under £100 I originally bought a great little package and now, for about £300, I have software that will probably last 10 years or more. Since my original Blu-ray euphoria, I changed a few project settings to redirect the HD output to burn a normal DVD and I am staggered at the amazing "shop- bought" quality of the result when played back in a normal player.

Footnote. For those buying new generation HD camcorders that record to memory rather than tape, this upgrade route works for AVCHD as well.