January 1, 2000

Vegas Video 2.0 is a Best of 2001 Award Winner! " Vegas Video is stable and has a nice tool set, definitely worth the price..."

Sonic Foundry is well known for their Sound Forge audio editing package considered to be the sound editor of choice. Sonic Foundry's decision to enter the non-linear digital video editing software arena is the next logical step expanding their line of multimedia products. Indeed they have learned well the concepts of multimedia authoring from the audio experience.

Video editing has, until now, been the realm of professionals using software and hardware no one has ever heard of and tools that are only for those professional video magicians-editors who names we see scroll by at the end of the movie.

Enter Vegas Video 2.0 "Digital Video Editing System". The package includes quite a heady feature set of which some are to be found only in Vegas Video 2.0. 

The inclusion of .ASF video and audio formats is sure to grab web designers by the ganglia and make them think "hmm, maybe we can deliver video on the web to modem users". I won't say it doesn't take some careful planning and some artful dodging to do this, but having a AV format available that has a built-in client connection detect variable delivery mechanism is one heck-of-a place to start.

The Interface:

As with all software, indeed with all software I have reviewed for the EYE, interface is ALL, it's how you see the world of the task at hand.

Vegas Video 2.0 has a wonderful interface. 
Above right is track properties it's here that you set the level of the image clip, the track motion, include track FX, hide and unhide playback and solo the track. 
Above left is a linear view of frames, lower right is our media pool (notice that the amount of clips that you have in the que is unlimited) , lower right is the preview. 
The preview shows exactly what's going on with your video composition. If you add an effect or change a transition this preview show those edits real-time as the playback is ongoing. This real-time responsiveness is what really makes Vegas Video shine. Most non-linear video editing packages don't do this, you stop playback select a transition, preview the transition based on last frame, first frame of where the transition is inserted, then start playback. 
This real-time editing capability in Vegas Video applies to the all video effects also.

Speaking of effects (FX), Vegas comes with a hefty supply of, and amazingly variable, set of these FX filters.
An interesting feature that only Vegas has is that these filers can be "chained" together making not a single effect but a combined effect that in other programs would take hours and hours to reproduce.

Here some examples:

Here is shown that the effects "Quick blur" and "Wave" are enabled , but also in the "chain" are "sepia" and "Chrome Keyer" which are not enabled.
Each element of an effect is configurable to some extent.

Here's my example of an Iris transition with the three out of four effects (in the chain) filters applied (Wave, Chrome Keyer and Sepia)

Click this image to see the .asf movie. This .asf (Active Streaming Format) format is capable of determining the speed at which a client is connected , it encodes bit rates that will allow 28.8 modem to see the movie "reasonably" well, all the way up to 100KB bit connections (local LAN - T1 speeds) in one file . Any speed in-between these low and high rates is automatically delivered to the client (Windows Media Player).

As far as I know Vegas Video is the only non-linear video editing package to include .ASF as a "native format".
One last stat on ASF format, the original .AVI or .MOV files of this "little" movie are 133 megs , this .ASF file is 530.90KB a remarkable size difference.

Writers Comments 

Fair warning for users of Windows 2000 Pro.

My systems are all Windows 2000 Pro, in preparing for this review I was confronted with some problems that became insurmountable for doing real-time capture with hardware I already own.
Vegas Video 2.0 runs great on Windows 2000, unfortunately my video capture subsystem does not, (and never will). 

To have the ability to do video capture you must have a capture subsystem that has the capture drivers that will hook 
(allow the use of ) Vegas Video's capture software.
The hardware available at the time of this writing is limited to "high End" solutions (like Pinnacle Systems solutions, please make sure the hardware you purchase is Windows 2000 compatible) and "Low End" solutions like USB devices from Dazzle. 
I have experimented with the USB devices and found them to be slow and entirely proprietary in that the software that comes with the device is the ONLY software that can address the device.
The USB devices I've tried DO NOT have compatible capture drivers that can take advantage of Vegas' extremely nice capture software.
They of course work with the proprietary software and  saving an AVI file and opening it in Vegas is possible.
The high end devices will have compatible capture drivers allowing the use of Vegas' capture software and you'll be in full "pro mode" for non-linear video editing. 

We at the Eye are in the process of obtaining an assortment of high end video capture hardware and will make available those reviews ASAP.

To over come the problem I had with my capture hardware I built a Windows 98SE machine specifically for this review and used Vegas' capture software that way. My very expensive Truevision capture card will never work on Windows 2000 but does work pretty well on Win 98.

The point of this warning is this: Windows 2000 is a new operating system, hardware manufacturers are always a little bit behind the curve in developing the drivers necessary for their hardware to work. Don't assume anything about the hardware you buy. Capture hardware is expensive and, as in my case ,that doesn't mean that it will work on your preferred platform. Ask questions of the manufacturer and do your homework before buying a capture system.

Sean Chappell  


Sonic Foundry site:
www.sonicfoundry.com

Online support Forums:
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/Forums

Online Tutorials : (extensive) http://www.sonicfoundry.com/Tutorials

Sonic Foundry product updates: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/default.asp

 Supported File Formats

 Features

• Multitrack video editing with unlimited tracks

• Video compositing

• Audio recording, editing, and mixing

• Supports multiple file formats and frame rates

• Real-time previews for effects and processes

• Keyframeable transitions, filters, and track motion

• Resolution independent

• Advanced encoding tools

• DV capture and print-to-tape tools

• Unlimited undo/redo

• Simple drag-and-drop operations

• Nondestructive editing

• Automatic audio crossfades

• Multiple file format encoding

• Advanced streaming media tools

• Adjustable sliders for volume and panning

• Dual monitor support

• Dual processor support

• 24-bit/96 kHz audio support

• DirectX Plug-In support with over ten free plug-ins

• Audio/video scrub

• Alpha channel support

• Full support for non-square pixels

• Full support for interlaced video

• Support for any aspect ratio (4:3, 16:9, etc)

• Sub-pixel accurate motion and compositing

• High resolution anti-aliasing on edges

• Imports CMX and Sony EDLs

• Real-time record meters

• Scribble strip for naming tracks

• Dockable and sizable windows

• 32 assignable effects

• 26 Master and Aux outputs

• Solo or mute tracks

• Drop markers in real time

• Supports Microsoft ASF and RealMedia commands

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