I love a program where you can immediately sit down and it all just seems intuitive, without the program being "dumbed down" or feature-impaired as a result. Vegas Video 3 (referred to as "VV3" hereafter) is like that. Using an interface similar to the that seen in the acclaimed Acid audio looping tool (which I also highly recommend), VV3 presents you with a three-paned interface and professional video-editing power. The top pane is the timeline where you can drag and drop video, audio, titles, photos and effects to assemble your project.
At the bottom left, a tabbed, resizable window interface provides panes allowing you to browse and preview media files, trim clips, or apply and adjust effect. In the low right, by default, is the preview window. It is resizable, and the preview video can be set to a variety of different quality settings, of which "Draft" is the fastest.
Unlike most other video editors employing a timeline metaphor, VV3 allows you to drag clips or titles (etc.) directly on top of others to automatically create dissolves or overlays. You can also set up multiple tracks if you prefer.
The effects are of excellent quality -- more advanced than any other we've seen on an under $1000 video editor (including the much ballyhooed Final Cut Pro). In particular, we like the film grain, light streaks and lens flare effects. All effects are easily animatable, making VV3 as a post-processing powerhouse.
We were delighted to see that VV3 remains compatible with Pixelan's excellent collection of Spice filters for Vegas Video. These filters -- primarily, a collection of soft-edge, organic wipes and displacement filters, complement the program's not insignificant collection of built-in transitions. The program uses an "Effects chain" metaphor, allowing effects to be precisely controlled.
Version 3.0 addresses our biggest complaint with previous VV releases by finally including an integrated video capture tool.
The program includes MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 output codecs from MainConcept, and a DV codec providing higher quality than that provided with Microsoft. Sonic Foundry says that quality loss is negligible, even after as many as 10 editing sessions. The MPEG-1 and 2 output options produced crisp, high-quality results -- much better than we've seen from recent releases from Sonic Solutions (e.g., DVDit) and Ulead (VideoStudio, Media Studio Pro, etc.).
A demo version of VV3 is available at www.sonicfoundry.com
Key Features- Vegas Video 3 supports a number of new capabilities, including:
For Further Reading:
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